Sword of Sedition

by Loren L. Coleman

  “I appreciate the heads-up,” Harrison told the exarch. “Have Gavin and Simone been told?” he asked, naming Victor’s two surviving grandchildren.

  “Simone, yes. Gavin has dropped out of sight—hopefully, just as a protest over our political use of his grandfather.” Jonah shrugged. “Kitsune has also lodged a formal protest”—naming Victor’s son from a previous relationship—“but he’s keeping it low key.”

  “I assume none of this will impact plans for Victor’s state funeral?”

  “No. We will move forward as outlined in the calendar we sent. But I wanted you to be forewarned, in case this will cause you any difficulty back home.”

  Harrison combed his fingers through his black beard. “Not nearly what it is causing you here,” he said. “Your senators will use any handle they can get on Victor to smear the rest of the paladins.”

  “Which is why most of them are off-planet at the moment.” Levin held up four fingers. “I’ve kept only a handful of my best on Terra. The others are tending the desperate situations with Clan Jade Falcon and the Capellan incursions, or running down senators with delusions of their own nation-state.”

  Julian had his own opinion on that subject. But he remained quiet, feeling far out of his depth. Harrison, though, seemed determined to drag him under the exarch’s nose.

  “Julian and I talked about that on the way in-system. You have bitten off quite a large problem, Jonah. What was it you called it, my boy? ‘Brute force politics?” ’ He chuckled, a laugh that rumbled deep in his chest.

  “What I meant by that—”

  But Levin waved him down. “Don’t start apologizing for speaking the truth, Lord Davion. It is a rare and precious thing at the higher levels.”

  “Personal experience, Exarch?” Harrison sat forward, placing large hands on his knees. “Have your teat caught in the wringer already?”

  “I’ve discussed things,” Levin said slowly, choosing his words with obvious care, “given orders and solicited advice that I would not care to repeat in front of a recorder. And I’ve smiled into the faces of people I knew I’d have to send to their death in battle, or ruin politically as soon as they were no longer useful to The Republic. Honestly, Harrison, I don’t see how anyone can live with this job for as long as you, or Vincent Kurita, have done.”

  “It needs doing. And if you have those kinds of questions, Jonah, then you might be the right man for the job after all.” Harrison glanced meaningfully at Julian, but if there was a silent message behind it, the prince’s champion did not catch it. “You’ve been thrown into the deep end on your first time out,” he continued. “Redburn left you with a right foul cock-up. And in your position, given the relative youth of The Republic and the forces you have pressing against you . . .”

  He trailed off, and Julian suspected that his prince had begun to regret going so far with the praise. But then Harrison Davion often surprised his champion.

  “I’d have done just the same thing,” the prince said, nodding.

  Levin smiled, but quite obviously didn’t believe it. “You would have, eh?”

  “The Lyran Commonwealth radically altered their government once . . . Julian?”

  Julian leaned forward, rubbing a finger alongside his jaw. “2375,” he answered, digging back into his history classes. “Before Steiner rule. That was when Archon Robert Marsden deposed the other eight ruling Archons and turned the Commonwealth into a single-monarch nation. Also, House Liao formed the Capellan Confederation, they say, in a single day when Franco Liao put up his own life as collateral and wrested power from a small group of allied worlds.”

  “Actually,” Levin said, “I believe that was his wife who bargained on Franco’s life, but your point is well taken.” He nodded. “I can cite dozens more such circumstances, in fact, even dating back to ancient Terra when the New America scrapped its Articles of Confederation after one year and drafted instead a new Constitution.”

  “It was a tough decision,” Harrison agreed, “choosing to disband the Senate. In effect, you are looking to reform your entire system of government. That takes brass ones. The kind of scrotal strength that might actually be able to handle such a task. And it was a task that needed doing. Your senators have proven that with their actions.”

  The exarch shrugged, still uncomfortable. And Julian suddenly saw two sides at war within The Republic’s leader. The warrior who wished to cling doggedly to his orders, and the status quo. And the visionary who was being forced to deal with a government and a realm in a state of flux. With only the barest appreciation for what Jonah Levin must be going through, Julian also felt a strong measure of pride in Harrison for coming out and speaking the cold, hard facts as the prince saw them.

  Levin certainly seemed to appreciate the support. Though, “I don’t suppose you’d go on the public record with such comments?” he asked. But it was hardly a serious request. It sounded more like the exarch making a joke.

  And Harrison answered it in the same vein. “Not a chance in hell,” he promised. “In public, I have to denounce you. You understand.”

  Meaning, Julian assumed, politics.

  The exarch as well. “What isn’t political these days?” he asked.

  Obviously a rhetorical question, though Julian noticed Levin’s gaze slip to him for the measure of a quick heartbeat.

  “So what will it be?” he asked the prince. “Suppressing the public’s rights with dictatorial force?”

  Harrison grinned, strong and savage. “I was thinking more something like . . . denying representation to so many people once accustomed to free voice under Davion rule.” He paused a moment, tasting the sound bite. “Yes. I think I like that.”

  “It’s good. It will get good play at home too. Your March Lords will eat it up.”

  “We’ll keep the Sandovals off your back,” Harrison said, making Julian a party to the promise. “But you do not have a great deal of time. If history is any judge, when you reach this kind of cusp your action is best done quickly.”

  “Then I should get back to work.” Levin rose. Harrison and Julian followed the exarch back to their feet. “First Prince.” He shook hands with Harrison, and then Julian. “Lord Davion. Again, welcome to Terra, and The Republic.

  “And with a bit of luck,” he added, “both will still be around when you leave.”

  16

  There is also every indication that more fighting has spilled outside of Republic borders, with evidence of skirmishes being fought on New Hessen and now Demeter as well. With the First Prince on Terra, such happenings cannot go unnoticed, or unremarked.

  —Terra Today, Terra, 16 April 3135

  Terra

  Republic of the Sphere

  17 April 3135

  Tara climbed her new Hatchetman out of the wreckage of a collapsed shop, using the ’Mech’s titanium hatchet to sweep aside the torn sheet metal, the mangled beams. Gray-green coolant leaked out of the gaping wound in her machine’s left side, spilling from a ruptured heat sink. It splashed over the Hatchetman’s shovel-blade feet.

  Leaning forward, Tara waited for a new bout of dizziness to pass. She tasted blood from where she’d bitten her tongue.

  Spots swam before her eyes. Dark. Fuzzy. Her vision cleared quickly, though, as lasers sizzled in around her, burning wood and scoring the flimsy sheet metal that had once been part of the dealership’s wall. A scarlet lance sliced along her right arm, burning an angry wound through armor composite.

  Nothing like a hot combat zone to sharpen the senses.

  “Tango-one, back on the grid.”

  The neurohelmet’s voice-activated mic gave her hands-free communication. A good thing, as she was busy enough on her control sticks lining up a shot against the attacking Griffin. The heavy autocannon riding over her Hatchetman’s left shoulder let out a long, tearing blast, hammering rounds into the Griffin’s right shoulder. A second blast in the rapid-fire assault struck the enemy machine centerline. Both dangerously close to the head,
and cockpit.

  Close enough to back off Sir Cray Stansill, The Republic’s newest “black knight.” She’d make sure to christen him with the title at her next media event. If she survived.

  Now the Griffin raced back toward the highway, pursued by an SM1 Tank Destroyer pulled in to safeguard Tara’s recovery.

  “Glad to have you back, Prefect.” Heavy accent. Her new adjutant, Lieutenant Spiritos Demos. “We began to wonder if that Condor had picked your bones clean.”

  The Condor in question was little more than a mangled wreck, sitting at the edge of the tractor dealership lot, crew cockpit hammered in under repeated blows from her hatchet. She had chased it down after its high-speed run at the civilian convoy.

  “No, but that Catapult nearly had me for lunch. Where the hell did it come from?”

  “Behind us. From the railway depot we passed a kilometer back.”

  She nodded, kicking her way through the wooden wall of a low billboard. Watkins Tractors it read—plus messages in French, Swiss and English trumpeting the high quality and long life of their machines.

  About half of which she’d already destroyed, wading through the lot under repeated fire from the Catapult and then the Griffin.

  “Not in an Atlas anymore, T.” Her voice was barely more than a whisper, to avoid transmitting on open channels. “Move first. Fire second.”

  Good advice. If she found time to use it.

  The firefight had run over her crew with blitzkrieg assault tactics. One moment, she was nothing more than a glorified escort for a trio of armored sedans, parading them along the highway between Annemasse’s DropPort and Geneva. Two SM1 Destroyers leading, followed by a short column of hoverbikes and Demon wheeled support tanks, her brand-new, fresh-from-the-factory Hatchetman trailing the car designated with the flag of the Draconis Combine.

  Then, suddenly, the Swiss countryside was hot with weapons fire, her cockpit alive with warning alarms and confused comms chatter.

  It had taken her only a moment to pull down intelligence on who it was they faced. Forces out of the military depot at Annecy. A short lance of fast ’Mechs with better-than-average ground and VTOL support.

  Throwing their strength behind the disgraced Senate.

  Making a grab for a political hostage.

  “Demos. Take Sierra-two and double back with a couple of those bikes. Do not overextend.”

  “Sierra-two is burning on the other side of the highway, Prefect. We need to drop one of these ’Mechs, and soon!”

  A pair of Cavalry attack helicopters made low strafing runs from the east, striking at her with their light cannon.

  “We need a lot of things,” Tara said, chasing after one VTOL with her auotcannon. It missed low and wide. Throttling up into a half-speed walk, she kicked her way past overturned tractors and backhoes, back toward the highway. “Air support. Reinforcements.”

  “Fifteen minutes,” Demos told her.

  Nice. This battle would be over in five.

  Not that her small crew hadn’t given a good accounting of themselves. Her ground forces had corralled the dignitaries’ vehicles beneath a wide overpass and taken up station on either side to challenge any enemy approach. A second Condor and two VV1 Rangers rolled dark, oily smoke into the sky, all three burning on the highway, which was now completely devoid of any civilian vehicles. In a furious display of defensive driving techniques, the light morning traffic had hit off-ramps, soft shoulders and ditches to clear the battlefield. Two tractor-trailer rigs that had tried bluffing their way through were now overturned half a kilometer back, forming a roadblock from the Annemasse side at least.

  But Cray Stansill still had two ’Mechs under his command, and those damned VTOLs Tara could not counter. He’d also pulled a couple of Anat APCs out of his hat when she wasn’t looking. Her HUD painted their icons against a dark band, showing them as they sped down from the direction of Geneva.

  Tara was willing to bet she’d spoiled a trap laid out further ahead by hunkering down rather than sending the sedans racing forward.

  “Last chance, Countess.” Stansill made her title a curse. By his way of thinking, no doubt, the nobles were either pro-Senate or traitors to their birthrights. “Give the Dracs up. We’ll have them one way or another.”

  They could do it. Stansill’s Griffin was barely hurting, and the Catapult marching around behind his position lent serious weight to his argument. They could engage her small crew and keep them tied up while the Anat APCs rolled in to seize prisoners.

  The rogue nobles had thought through their choice very carefully. With the coordinator of the Draconis Combine in their grasp, they could control two, three Prefectures easily. And there was always Katana Tormark to consider. How the ex-prefect would jump was anyone’s guess, either in support, or simply to get her own hands on Vincent Kurita.

  “Demos?” Tara asked, toggled for private comms only.

  “Twelve minutes,” the wiry little Greek told her. He slipped his Destroyer back around, pinning it at her side as the Hatchetman finally returned to the four-lane highway.

  So be it. She cut away from the Senate loyalists, racing back for her besieged crew. “One way or another” was exactly what they’d get.

  “Spoilsport,” Tara said, throttling up to a flat-out run as long-range fire sniped at her back. “I’ve got the high road.”

  “Copy,” Demos said, racing ahead of her. “I’ve got the low.”

  Stomping along the highway’s shoulder, the forty-five-ton Hatchetman pounded footprints into the soft edge. Where Tara steered too close to the pavement, the hard footfalls cracked ferrocrete in long, radiating webs. Nearer the overpass, Tara veered aside and took the quick dogleg up onto the raised off-ramp.

  Standing astride the overpass.

  Ready for Cray Stansill’s charge.

  Demos’ Destroyer rallied a trio of hoverbikes and a single Demon wheeled tank, the dedicated escort standing its line as the Griffin and Catapult bore straight down at them along the highway. The Anats swept wide and the pair of Cavalry attack VTOLs raced up from further back afield to take leading positions.

  Tara Campbell adjusted her grip on sweat-slick control sticks, holding her fire as the Griffin sniped from long range and the Catapult dumped a score of missiles into the air, which arced overhead on gray contrails and fell around her in a scattering of red fireballs and a hail of broken ferrocrete.

  Two warheads slammed into the side of her Hatchetman’s head, shaking her hard against the restraint harness. A muscle in her neck twinged. Sparks blew out of a short-circuited power conduit, stinging her right arm and choking her with the acrid scent of burned insulation.

  “So much for that new ’Mech smell.”

  Having rode it out long enough, Tara pulled crosshairs over the boxlike shoulder launcher on the Catapult, blasting away armor. A second, carefully aimed shot hammered deep into its flank. Gray smoke rolled out of this new wound. Enough to make the other MechWarrior think twice.

  “Now!” Tara called as the assault force closed.

  She slammed down on her pedals, lighting off the Hatchetman’s jump jets, which lifted the forty-five-ton machine on streams of bright white plasma. Leaning into the forward thrust, hatchet raised, she flew into the teeth of Stansill’s attack with her ground support running hot right after her, weapons blazing again, and again.

  But while the SM1 and the faster attack vehicles concentrated on Stansill’s Griffin, Tara had a “higher purpose.” Getting on top of the overpass had added ten, maybe fifteen meters to the top of her arc. She was now high enough to threaten the VTOLs that had raced on ahead of the ’Mechs, usually so unconcerned for ground-bound machines.

  Tara’s hatchet swatted sideways at the lead Cavalry. Rotor vanes sheared off against the titanium head, and the tail of the craft broke completely free as the VTOL fell away in two large pieces and a storm of high-velocity metal shards.

  She landed in a crouch among the wreckage, right between the Griffin and Ca
tapult.

  It all happened so fast after that, Tara wouldn’t be one hundred percent on the events until later review of her battlerom footage.

  Both enemy ’Mechs turned their weapons on her at the same time, though the Catapult was too close to successfully arm its long-range missile warheads and so only added in a pair of medium lasers to the Griffin’s savage assault. Ruby-bright energy flared between Tara and Cray Stansill, connecting the machines in a blistering salvo of lances and sharp, stabbing knives of light.

  Spiritos Demos, at roughly the same time, charged his makeshift lance along the left side of the firestorm. Every vehicle targeted the wounded Catapult, which staggered back under the Destroyer’s assault autocannon and then went down as the Demon and hoverbikes added in lasers and heavy machine guns. It collapsed heavily onto its left side, driving its shoulder down into the chest cavity and crushing the reactor’s physical shielding.

  Smoke roiled out thick and black, but the MechWarrior brought down his dampening fields in time to smother the fusion reaction before it unleashed its full fury, saving his life and his machine.

  And then Tara was through the worst of it, staggering out the far side with molten composite bleeding from every limb and several deep rents in her right side. She chopped once at Stansill’s Griffin as she passed, wedging the blade into the ’Mech’s knee joint, caving it inward.

  Staggering the fifty-five tonner just as the black sedans blew apart beneath the overpass, right in the face of the Anat APCs.

  Two of the luxury sedans erupted in bright fury a full second before the third, sending the mangled vehicle rolling out from beneath the overpass to detonate alongside the lead APC. The explosion tore through the side of the Anat, ripping through the infantry carrier compartment even as it flipped the APC into a violent roll. It tumbled side-over, flinging the broken bodies of armored infantry out on wild trajectories.

  The following Anat swerved violently aside, escaping serious injury though it plowed headfirst into a deep drainage ditch alongside the highway.