By Temptations and by War

by Loren L. Coleman

  Daniel had only backed off under the Cavalry press under orders, saving his armor for the final assault that would cut out Ijori’s heart. More reinforcements had come up from the Capellan backfield, giving Mai Uhn Wa’s mobile HQ some protection, but not enough. Not against a Zeus and Daniel’s Tundra Wolf leading the final charge of Republic forces. If Mai Wa had any chance to worry the heavier BattleMechs, he would have to mass up a decent infantry screen. . . .

  No.

  Turning from the waist, Daniel stared out through his ferroglass shield. He saw movement, counted a few indistinct shadows crawling over the ground, and was opening his mouth to warn the Legate when Fa Shih troopers rose from concealment and jetted out over the Suriwong Floods.

  Daniel did not stop to think. He spent one last flight of missiles at Evan Kurst, then throttled up to his best speed, striding forward into the Cavalry’s heavy armor. Legate Ruskoff was in trouble, and Daniel had to act.

  “Forward!” he ordered. “To the Legate’s aid!”

  The trio of Regulator II’s pounded Daniel from both sides as he broke through their cordon, smashing Gauss slugs into the better armor of his flanks and his right leg. He stumbled forward under the hard shoves, but stayed on his feet. His ATM launcher pounded one Regulator, opening up its crew compartment so that his lasers could stab deadly energy down inside.

  Another of the armored tanks drove into his path, and he kicked it aside, caving in one side of the sleek vehicle.

  Then Evan Kurst’s Ti Ts’ang dropped out of the sky, lasers spiking hard, ruby energy into the Tundra Wolf’s face. Daniel’s vision swam with laser blindness, and he nearly lost his footing. Fortunately, the polarized ferroglass took most of the glare. He slowed, recovered, and blinked his vision clear.

  In time to see Viktor Ruskoff fall.

  No one was going to reach the Legate in time. Under the full fury of an infantry swarm, Ruskoff had seconds—heartbeats—before the Fa Shih cracked his cockpit and took him prisoner . . . or took his life. Anyone close enough had to go through Kurst’s Ti Ts’ang. At the least. More Ijori units pressed now, thrown forward by Mai Wa in an attempt to permanently sunder The Republic line.

  “Right flank, curl inward!” Daniel ordered at once, taking local control. “Recover the Legate. Forward units press Ijori now!” A solid gut-punch might push some of the Ijori forces back, giving Daniel time to rescue Ruskoff. If Mai Wa was threatened—was taken—the battle might even be salvaged.

  Too late. It was all too late. Only a few Republic units surged forward at his order to rescue Ruskoff. Fewer backed Daniel’s move toward the center of the fray. Most milled about uncertainly.

  Then Evan Kurst stung at him again with lasers. Daniel slammed the medium-weight machine with everything he had at his disposal as he slashed across Evan’s path, missiles and lasers scouring armor and shaking the sixty-ton machine hard. As fast as his weapons cycled, he struck again, and again. Kurst went down under the barrage, but immediately began to struggle up again.

  A pair of hoverbikes swung away from the Zeus, rallying to Daniel. One of them burst into flame and shredding metal when a Regulator II’s Gauss rifle gutted it. A JES tactical missile carrier also caught up with Daniel, to accompany him on the desperate run.

  Daniel wanted to believe they might be throwing themselves forward because of him. Wanted to believe it, but would not let any more good men be wasted on his account.

  Planting his right foot firmly, he managed one last scourge of lasers against a nearby Regulator. Then Daniel throttled up and twisted his controls to do an about-face launch into a full run, stepping into the middle of a Purifier squad converging on his position. Turning his back on the still struggling Ti Ts’ang, Daniel plunged into the oncoming mass of Ijori troops and surged forward, weapons blazing as fast as he could cycle them.

  Daniel Peterson or Ezekiel Crow—he was a Knight of Liao now, and he was attacking!

  The unconventional move caught Ijori off balance, and let him make several hundred meters before the first tank boxed him in. A Po II. A score of short-range missiles hammered across its length, scouring away armor, and it was then that Daniel noticed the Jessie sticking by him.

  Crosshairs flashed red and gold as Daniel second-guessed his targeting system and pulled into several flights of missiles, ATMs and lasers. He left the Po II a smoking wreck.

  Sensor alarms wailed for attention. A Gauss slug smashed into the back of one leg.

  Two missiles tapped the back of his Tundra Wolf’s head.

  The cockpit shook like a cement mixer, jerking Daniel about like a rag doll. He saw the ejection controls out of the corner of one eye, knew he could have his hands on them in an easy reach. No. More trading of weapons fire. More return pounding.

  He plowed past the Po II, his mind set on the Praetorian mobile HQ. He knew Evan Kurst was behind him, throttling into pursuit, but he had a good lead. Without stopping he kicked in the side of a Marksman tank, and spent his lasers into a scattering of Fa Shih battlesuits.

  More hammering, coming from all sides as House Ijori moved forward to contain him. Surviving Fa Shih leapt up and grabbed handholds where they could. Evan Kurst reached out at range with his lasers, but was too far behind him.

  Warning lights and alarms fought for attention as he lost armor, shielding, his missile launcher and a few heat sinks. Temperature soared and his vision swam. Only the cooling vest’s maximum capacity kept him conscious now. Didn’t matter.

  New target. Full salvo. A Joust rolled over in explosive flame.

  Next. Full. VV1 Ranger.

  Giggins APC.

  Schmitt.

  More frenetic fire, and one of his restraining straps tore free. He pressed himself into his seat by pressing both steering pedals to the floor and holding himself in. Ejection controls. No.

  Somewhere along the way he’d lost the JES tactical carrier. He could no longer be certain when, or where. The HUD was a tangle of threat icons and his damage schematic showed his systems as more memory than fact. He put the finishing touches on the DI Schmitt. Stepped over it.

  And a hard shove nearly sent him sprawling as Evan Kurst’s ax bit into his back, caving past armor and striking a deep cleft through his reactor shielding.

  Sweat stung his eyes as Daniel Peterson hauled what was left of his BattleMech back around. He’d fought his way almost entirely through the House Ijori force. Vehicles lay scattered and ruined behind him. But right along that same path had come Evan Kurst in his Ti Ts’ang, followed by a number of hovercraft and infantry carriers.

  Daniel levered out his right arm, lasers probing, but Evan beat it aside with the flat of his ax blade and then chopped down again. And again.

  The titanium edge on the ax took his right arm off at the elbow, and opened up another deep chest wound. Laser fire and several Gauss slugs slammed into him at once, rocking him back several paces. Fusion-fed flames licked out of multiple rents in his armor, blackening the bottom edge of his cockpit shield.

  He fed what few weapons he had left into the wall of onrushing forces. He couldn’t breathe.

  His boots stuck to the floor as their soles began to melt.

  More lasers. Flames licking higher. Throttling forward, Daniel Peterson made two steps before Kurst spent one last crushing blow against the Tundra Wolf and its reactor finally let go. Golden fire burst up through the plate decking and speared out of a dozen wounds fatal to his BattleMech.

  Ejection controls. . . .

  No.

  An unhealthy glow sparked inside the Tundra Wolf’s chest wound as the reactor vented spilled plasma through the cleft. Dark smoke roiled up and around the ax head. With the last of his strength, Evan Kurst wrenched the weapon free. No time to do anything more, except stand there.

  The explosion ripped apart Daniel Peterson’s BattleMech with a savage fury Evan had never experienced quite so close. Golden fire splashed across his ferroglass shield, running molten fingers of melted composite down both sides. An acrid s
tench filled the cockpit, pulled down into Evan’s lungs where it burned like live coals. For an instant, it felt like every last molecule of oxygen had been sucked out of the cockpit, and a silence descended.

  Then a magnificent roar screamed in Evan’s ears, pressed around his skull. His entire BattleMech was lifted up and hurled through the air. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see. He felt the Ti Ts’ang hit, laid out onto its back. His helmet smacked the back of his command chair with whiplash force, and pain exploded at the back of his head.

  All was quiet.

  Evan thought he was dead, pulled down into the abyss after Daniel Peterson. The man had warned him, after all. They were so very much alike, of course they would meet the same fate. Except that Evan remembered . . . he was under orders. Not to die until Mai told him to. He forced open his eyes, and worked carefully on focusing them.

  He stared up through a cracked, half-melted ferroglass shield. Blue. White cloud. A Purifier infantryman stood on the bridge of the Ti Ts’ang’s brow, looking in to see if the MechWarrior was all right.

  It was all Evan needed to see. With Ruskoff captured or killed, Peterson gone, the Dynasty Guard chasing down from the north—there could only be one final conclusion to the day’s fighting. The week’s campaign. The month’s struggle.

  Evan rested back into his command couch, and stared up into a free Liao sky.

  37

  Homecoming

  As Republic troops march into DropShips, departing Liao under an amnesty granted by Sang-shao Carson Rieves, the crowd’s mood remains mixed. There is a feeling of wonder, and one of apprehension, as port workers and cheering crowds and even a few well-guarded protestors stand in the shadow of the main administration building and glance up at the green ensign waving overhead with its gauntlet and sword. The flag of the Capellan Confederation flies once more over Liao.

  —ComStar Interstellar Associated, Liao, 22 August 3134

  Chang-an

  Qinghai Province, Liao

  25 August 3134

  Mai Uhn Wa stood at an open library window in the Governor’s mansion, drinking in the afternoon breeze. He accepted a small glass of plum wine from Gerald Tsung, but did not sip. The view out the third-floor window was intoxicating enough.

  Outside the White Towers District, strings of firecrackers rattled inside garbage cans. People paraded through the streets with caricature heads of Daoshen Liao, Anna Lu Pohl, Confederation soldiers with their Han-influenced helmets and papier-mâché BattleMechs raised up on poles. A long, serpentine dragon jumped and twisted through an intersection, running along on a hundred human legs. It was like an extended New Year’s celebration. Only instead of riots, the Capellan people were truly reveling.

  Michael Yung-Te slipped up beside him, the Maskirovka agent as unassuming and dangerous as ever. “Carson Rieves is in the palace, Shiao-zhang Mai. Perhaps you should rejoin us?”

  Shiao-zhang. The title sounded better forced from the lips of the Mask agent. Mai Wa looked outside once more. It felt only right to sample the true New Year. But Sang-shao Rieves would not be in a forgiving mood, and it served no purpose to anger the man further without great need.

  House Ijori was still in its infancy. Infants were vulnerable.

  He set his wine glass on the window ledge, trading the celebration for the awkward attempts at small talk as Governor (pro tem) Lu Pohl and Gerald Tsung danced awkwardly around the room’s white elephant. Viktor Ruskoff stood at full attention, holding himself stiffly apart from the others. Sang-shao Rieves kept the Legate available, although soon Ruskoff would be allowed to follow Lord Governor Hidic to Genoa. A good place to reestablish The Republic government for Prefecture V. The tunnels and warrens of Genoa would be a tough nut to crack.

  Taking Liao, for all of The Republic’s efforts and five decades of social engineering, had really been quite easy. The people, after all, were always the true power.

  The people had wanted—and waited—to be freed.

  The door banged back against a protective stop and the Dynasty Guard’s commander barged into the room as if storming a battlefield. Two large infantrymen followed him in. One kept a hand on the butt of a very large pistol.

  “Mai Wa!” Rieves nearly rushed the House Master. “You have ten seconds to explain yourself or be shot as a traitor.”

  The elder man stroked his long, wiry mustaches and the wispy beard he still refused to shave. “I am a traitor,” he reminded the other officer. Daoshen Liao’s denouncement still stood. “I serve the Confederation.”

  “And that includes conducting more crimes against the State?”

  “I am not sure which crime you refer to, Sang-shao Carson Rieves.” Mai remained properly deferential to the true power on Liao. Governor Lu Pohl would administer the world only so long as it suited the senior officer’s needs.

  “Tā mā dè you’re not!” The crude insult, thrown out so freely and with real ire behind it, startled even the Maskirovka agent. But Rieves did not miss the implied warning, and restrained from barking out anything revealing in front of Ruskoff or the others. “The . . . the artifact. Your cultists raided the vault.”

  This time Michael Yung-Te was startled for another reason. So Carson Rieves had informed the local Maskirovka agent of Sun-Tzu Liao’s survival.

  “I have no cultists in my House,” Mai said evenly. The distant echoes of more firecrackers drifted into the room.

  Rieves’s hands were opening and closing, as if wanting to fasten themselves around the neck of Mai Uhn Wa to wring the answers from him. “Where is the body, Mai?”

  “Ah, the statue.” Mai nodded. “Yes, I heard about your discovery. I have to say, the rumors of Sun-Tzu Liao’s return certainly fueled a great deal of local fervor. And inspired our troops. Soon, I imagine, word will even reach Chancellor Liao that his Illustrious Father, the Ascendant, favored us with a brief visit.”

  Mai frowned. “But you lost it, you say? That might be . . . unfortunate.”

  Realization was replaced by dawning horror as Carson Rieves ran through several possibilities in his own mind. Mai watched him shift rapidly from prosecutor to protector of the faith. He covered his earlier gaffe with a lightning strike in a new direction, turning on Ruskoff. “Then I should assume the militia destroyed our . . . archeological find? You promised a peaceful withdrawal once Hidic fled.”

  Ruskoff braced up under the assault. “We have met every term thrust upon us,” he said, biting off every word. “If you have partisan troubles, you are welcome to them, Rieves.” He shrugged, smiled. “Maybe in a few months, the local population will help throw you off planet.”

  Rieves smirked, but it was forced. “I doubt the people of Liao will much complain about the return of Confederation rule.” His gaze did not shift to the Maskirovka agent. It did not need to. “Whatever they give up, it will be a small price to pay for what they gain. The return of their heritage. Liao is Capellan once more.”

  Another shrug. “If you say so.”

  Seeing the two of them warming to an argument, Mai Uhn Wa drifted toward the still open door. Michael Yung-Te caught him by the elbow and pulled him aside.

  “Are you mad?” the Mask agent whispered harshly. “You have rehidden the body of the Chancellor’s father, and you expect to get away with this?”

  Mai spent a level gaze on his keeper. “You should speak with Sang-shao Rieves again. He will admit that the statue really is of no importance. In fact, it might be best for all that the visitation is left to rumor, not a report. Or would you like to tell Daoshen Liao that his father’s body was recovered, and lost again?”

  The agent recoiled. “You ask me to involve myself—”

  “I think you already know that you do not want to involve yourself. Not in this, Michael Yung-Te.” Mai let a spark of strength show in his dark, dark eyes. He was perfectly ready to answer for his decisions, and he would drag several of the ranking men and women on Liao down with him if he needed to.

  Yung-Te’s expression was
a mixture of anger and disgust. “What gives you this right?” he asked.

  “I am a traitor,” Mai Uhn Wa said again. “And I serve the Confederation.” And then he quietly left the room.

  Evan Kurst found himself once again outside Lianyungang, standing at the edge of the Cavalry River scarp. He stared out over the forest, which stretched for hundreds of kilometers on all points south and west. He had stood here the night Mai Uhn Wa had abandoned the Ijori Dè Guāng.

  So much had changed. It was not night, and Evan waited for no DropShip to come. In the timber below, several ForestryMechs began clear-cutting from the cliff base. He couldn’t see them, but he could hear their diamond-edged saws and smell the wood smoke from a hidden slash burn.

  Behind him growled heavy machinery and the beep-beep of back-stepping Construction machines.

  And at the cliff edge, fifty meters off to his right, spotters worked carefully, checking the mounts and tackle that supported the engineers lowered halfway down the escarpment face. Soon another blast echoed out over the lower flatlands as natural crevices were widened and hollowed out into deep, stable caverns.

  Footsteps behind him. Evan stepped back from the cliff edge, but did not turn as Jen Lynn Tang walked up to him with a noteputer listing the day’s plans and checklist.

  Evan had to sign off on each team’s progress for the day with Mai Uhn Wa not yet back from Chang-an. He thumbed open the file and recorded the progress of the ForestryMechs and blasting teams and the earthmovers that were still working to level the grounds on top of the plateau for House Ijori’s planned stronghold. It looked like any construction site he’d ever seen. But in his mind’s eye he saw heavy, reinforced walls and a compound of simple buildings serving the House mansion.

  Below the cliff would be BattleMech hangars and the motor pool. The business side of a Warrior House.

  “It will be good.” Good to have a place to feel secure. The Conservatory would never be that again, not for any cadet of the last year. Maybe the Confederation could revitalize it again. Maybe not.