Fortress Republic, page 23
part #18 of BattleTech : Mechwarrior Dark Age Series
“Ankaa has the potential for massive industrial strength,” Erik said. “Hoan, for its medicinal resources. These two worlds beg for strong military exploitation.” Plus, for some reason, Clan Sea Fox traders were snooping around the world. And anything that attracted the attention of the Sea Foxes was worth securing for themselves. As a bargaining chip.
Not that Aaron needed to know the specifics.
Or care, likely. He simply said, “I made a tentative agreement to support the strengthening of a garrison on Addicks.”
“Pull your Bright Guards Battalion off of Sheratan, then. I can cover their replacement.”
He didn’t say from where. And Aaron did not ask. “You can?” was all he wanted to know. It was a question that actually asked why?
Erik hesitated, then: “When The Republic makes a large push at us,” not if, “Sheratan will be the first battlefield. I’d like to have the advantage of the high ground. Troops comfortable with the local territories. An on-site commander creating some kind of relationship with the local legate, the world governor.”
His “uncle” nodded, blue eyes taking on a hard gleam. “And you will move quickly to secure Achernar because Raul Ortega and Anastasia Kerensky won the world away from you two years ago.”
“And it has a working HPG,” Erik reminded him, fuming. He used his stylus to draw a quick circle around that system, near the exact center of the prefecture.
“Partially working. According to the most recent reports.”
“Which is better than anything we have on Tikonov, or Tigress. Yes?” To which Aaron could only shrug, then nod. “Achernar will be the key to securing the center of Prefecture IV. You knew this when you sent me to hold our claim there. And you shorted me the forces I needed to hold it. Because—!” he held up a hand, forestalling Aaron’s explanation. “Because the Steel Wolves were too strong, and we could not afford a true struggle with them. So you planned to hand them Achernar, knowing that the Wolves would never be content to hold on to Prefecture IV. With a few victories to encourage them, they would turn their attention against stronger worlds. Toward Terra itself, eventually.”
Aaron smiled. “Which they did, after losing Achernar to a Republic force. Either way, we fell off their radar as an opponent unworthy of their attention. Kerensky’s disdain for you personally was our greatest asset, and her greatest mistake.”
“Achernar is the key to the center of Prefecture IV.”
“Yes.”
“Then I will be the one to turn it.”
Only a brief hesitation. Then: “Yes.”
“As to the rest, we do not have the forces to divide our strength between Ronel and Mallory’s World.”
“What of the heavy forces released to you by Brisham Vicore on Caselton?” Aaron asked, spearing home with a sharp thrust.
Intelligence provided by Aaron’s own spies? Or through The Republic’s interests in all of its wayward Senators? “What does not shift towards Achernar and Sheratan I will need to secure Tikonov once and for all.”
This got Aaron’s attention. “You have found the Capellan staging world?”
“I have a report from a Capellan double agent working for me—for us—off of Halloran V.” Where she was at the moment, anyway. That would change soon enough that Aaron could not have time to get his hands on her.
Or so Erik thought.
“South Wind?” Aaron asked.
“How did—”
He stopped himself. Cursed his startled reaction. Aaron had used the code name Erik had shared with only one other person. Though it was far more likely his uncle had broken Erik’s personal file security than that Gavin had let slip the secret, it was still a revealing fact.
“I’ve known of her for some time,” Aaron admitted. He shrugged it aside. “So long as you keep your head down and she is not in position to betray us, your affairs are your affairs.” Lending extra weight and an obvious double-entendre.
“She has provided critical information regarding Capellan interests. Enough for me to act.”
Aaron shrugged. “That is your choice. However, I’ll be taking two companies of troops with me back to Ronel. And shifting a third company over to Schedar.”
A full battalion! That left Tikonov woefully unprotected, and cut drastically into any forces Erik might be able to send after the Capellan staging base. He’d have to give up Achernar, for now. Possibly roll back some of the strength marked for Ankaa as well.
“Two companies to Ronel?” he asked. Shook his head. “That is a mistake, Aaron. Ronel is a disaster looming on our border.”
“It also has a working HPG. Which is a large part of your argument for going back after Achernar.”
“And Dragon’s Fury troops. And Senate loyalists. A Republic paladin and wayward Davion Guards. Who knows what other splinter factions? By your own report, Ronel is a military meat grinder that might rip apart a great deal of our strength. We won’t be able to trust anyone! And we certainly can’t take and hold the planet for ourselves.”
“I trust Julian Davion.”
There it was! Said flat out.
“I do not trust any man passed over by his own prince! Why do you?”
“You mean as much as I might trust a young officer set aside by his own family?” Aaron asked, clearly referring to Erik’s status within The Republic, away from the main Sandoval dynasty.
Erik could not help his sidelong glances, to see if anyone else had overheard. “That was uncalled for. At least let me hold back the company being sent to Schedar.”
“I do not like how open you’ve left our border with the Federated Suns.”
“Only against the Draconis March. Viscount Elbar. Count Cartago. They are family. And if you can’t trust family . . .” Erik smiled, and not with much humor.
Aaron nodded back, Erik having made the point for him.
“All right. Take a company off Ankaa, damn you.” Erik raised a hand in surrender. Used the stylus gripped with white-knuckle strength in his other hand to sketch a line between Ankaa and Ronel. “I’ll pass the orders today! And I’ll hold back on Achernar until Ronel is secured or I find other forces. But you will leave me one of those companies.”
“Or else?” Aaron asked, rightly reading the warning into Erik’s tone.
He threw the light-tipped stylus onto the holographic table, the pen lost amid the light blue haze riding over emitter glass. Folded arms across his chest. “Or else you might find out what happens when you pull every last soldier loyal to you and you alone away from your own capital.”
Right then Erik knew he’d gone too far, surrendering the high ground back to Aaron. Saw it in the way Aaron’s eyes glinted cold and vicious with his sudden victory. The ghost of a smile turning up the left corner if his mouth. The sigh of contentment. The lord governor had marshaled his forces with better acumen, applied pressure in the right place, and—most important!—had outlasted Erik in a simple game of patience.
A strategy for victory that Aaron Sandoval had leveraged again, and again, and now again.
“Send your troops off Ankaa,” Aaron said with an easy grace. He handed Erik his own stylus. “I’ll consider what to leave behind. Given the troubles you’ve had with Capellan insurgents, a company would not be remiss.”
He made it sound like a gift. And Erik, swallowing the hard knot lumped in his throat, nodded curt appreciation. “Thank you. Uncle.”
Aaron’s cold voice cut like a scalpel’s edge. “You. Are. Quite. Welcome.” Each word cut deep, deep. And Aaron certainly knew it. With a nod, he turned for the room’s distant door. He paced off several long strides before stopping to look back.
“And Erik?”
“Yes?” A pause. “Yes, Lord Governor?”
“Would you ever be completely certain?” he asked. “That I had removed all the troops loyal to me. And me alone?”
Loud enough for several nearby officers to hear, Aaron left the entire room to think over that question. He turned smartly on his heel and left the room with a bold swagger and not another backward glance. Picked up his security contingent at the wide open doors, who clustered around Aaron as if preparing to run a gauntlet of enemy infantry.
Not a totally lost gesture, as a uniformed captain stepped up next to Erik the moment Aaron had cleared the room. “Do we take them at the elevator? Or the main door?” The two contingency plans Erik had put into place, should the meeting not go his way.
And it hadn’t. No mistake. But enough had come down on his side of the line to still his hand. And his uncle had been right about that last—would Erik know for certain who was loyal to whom?
“Let him go,” Erik said. “Our lord governor has tipped his hand, if nothing else. And if he believes that does not confer some advantage, he’s going to be sorely surprised.”
Because with all the back-and-forth, the shared data and the plans laid out from either side, Erik still had not given his uncle a look at everything he knew. Like Brisham Vicore’s complete force strength.
Like the very close proximity of Caleb Hasek Sandoval Davion.
“New Hessen,” Erik whispered. That was what South Wind had brought him. New Hessen and Caleb. Both within easy reach. And if Erik managed to secure one or the other—or both!—then he would certainly find a way to seize the high ground again.
He would!
24
With Liao forces scattered throughout the southern hills and valleys, Republic troops have established a firebase near Weldon Port, denying access by local garrison commanders, and aerospace forces belonging to the New Syrtis Fusiliers (and commanded by Khan Sterling McKenna) have made several threatening overflights in direct challenge to Brevet-Colonel Hedges’ no-fly request. Whatever tentative peace once existed appears lost. Perhaps for good.
—New Hessen Explorer, Military Matters Page, 4 September 3135
New Hessen
Federated Suns
5 September 3135
Submerged, like a black coral reef under high tide, the ebb and flow of sleeping memories and the swirling eddies of pain-filled semi-consciousness washed over him in a blur of dark, timeless waters.
There was never a here or now. And no future. Only brief glimpses of then. The before-times. When his head had risen above the waters and a pale, distant sun had driven hot spikes through his eyes and into the fore of his brain. That’s what he remembered first. New Hessen’s pale, white sun.
And the stench. That too. A rotten, warm, ragweed smell, like (black creeper) composted dandelions. Choking him with the spoiled odor. Clawing at the back of his throat, with each coughing spasm lighting his body afire. A new bolt of pain that reminded him of a time when he’d been younger . . . thirteen? . . . fourteen? . . . and Mason had dared him to climb high into the top of an ironwood oak. Springtime on New Avalon, the tree’s lush growth like a canopy overhead, but if he could just stretch a little further, reach for that next branch and hoist himself up, he could touch the sun and Mason would have to go away and be quiet be quiet (be quiet!) for the first time in years.
No more dares.
No long falls waiting for him, with branches scratching up the sides of his arms and legs, and that thick limb catching him right across the midsection, hanging him twenty feet over the ground (where his mother would find him half an hour later, shouting up at him to hang on, just hang on, and someone was coming to bring him down.)
Mason! Where the hell was Mason?
Another cough. Another lance of fire ripping through him as he lay over that thick branch . . . no, that stone railing of the château. At Thonon-les-Bains. Leaning far out over the darkness and the three-story drop as his father plunged with his arms flailing and a short, sharp cry interrupted as his head cracked hard into the stone balustrade of a second balcony deck rail. He leaned over the rail, hands tightened into the same claws he had used to seize handfuls of Harrison’s silk shirt; dragging and twisting and shoving and throwing . . .
A yell of surprise. The sickening crunch of bone. The heavy fall and the long, tumbling slide down into the lower brush and trees.
Mason’s hand on Caleb’s shoulder. Comforting.
Bet you didn’t see that coming! Stick that in your third eye!
“Caleb . . .”
No! His father’s voice, calling to him from down inside the tangle of brush and trees. Still alive!
“Caleb . . .”
But not calling out to apologize to him. To take back his declaration that he would make Julian heir. Julian! And not him! Harrison called out not to him at all, but to Julian, whose headlamps illuminated the château’s lower slopes as his car climbed up the long, twisting drive. Accusing his son. Letting Julian know who had done this. Always back to fault. Who to blame. Who had to be sent away, far away, so no one would be any wiser.
Mason!
“Caleb!”
High tide rolled back, and the waves of memories receded as he startled back to consciousness on her urgent whisper. He blinked, and the crust of sleep around his eyes scratched at the corners. A blurry image hovering over him. He blinked, and he saw her almond-shaped eyes staring out of an elfin face. Her mouth (that mouth! Tasting like grapes and raw spearmint) a tight, disapproving line.
Danai Liao-Centrella.
He lay on the filthy wooden floor of an old hunting shack, the one-room dwelling (if he could call it that) smelling of mouse turds and the rotting scent of black creeper. She knelt above him, still in Mech Warrior togs and a heavy, tan windbreaker she had pulled from her own rescue kit. Still wore her cooling vest as well. For the ballistic cloth. The smooth, creamy skin of her bared legs showed several bloody scratches from fighting their way through the forest tangles.
“We have to move,” she said. Poured some cold water onto her fingers from the canteen she carried, flicked it into his face. The droplets stung like the kiss of cold razorblades.
She poured out some more and patted his forehead, rubbed the crust out of his eyes. “Are you awake? Caleb. We can’t stay here.”
“Why not?”
His tongue felt thick and rough. But at least his mouth no longer tasted of blood, like it had after she’d slapped him back to a temporary consciousness inside the Marksman. She’d looked just as angry then. For her being there at all, as much as for his being a party to it.
“Patrols. In the woods. They found our tracks by the lower stream. Can you walk?” She paused, shook her head. “Check that. Can you run? Are you awake yet?”
He was. It rushed back fast. Spitting blood and chips ground off his teeth as Danai pulled him through the warped and ruined hatch on the Marksman. His left side on fire from broken ribs. At least two. Stumble-running across the pockmarked and fire-scorched ground, leaning heavily into Danai’s arms as she helped him towards a distant stand of fire and pine.
He recalled stopping once when a large wall moved nearby, rising and then falling back with a ground-shaking stomp. Realizing it was a foot, not a wall, and the BattleMech it belonged to towered above them like a giant come to claim their bones to grind for bread. Then she’d dragged him on, while it was distracted by a retreating tank, away from what was left of the battlefield.
Seven days ago. Hiding out. Healing. Alone, the two of them, and hunted. Forced into a grave covenant of mutual assistance.
Though Caleb had done little so far by way of assisting.
“Yeah,” he finally said. Awake. Though barely. Darkness surged up from the back of his mind and threatened to swallow him back down again. “Yes. I’m awake.”
His voice was a weak croak, but stronger than it had been the day before, he thought. He’d managed to keep some food down in the last twenty-four hours. Something more than water and vitamin supplements from the survival pack she’d snagged from his tank. Freeze-dried apple. An ancient pack of peanut butter spread. And the gamey, wild taste of a rabbit she’d caught, skinned, and cooked on a small fire built just outside the ramshackle door.
“Come on, then.” She grabbed the front of his uniform and hauled.
And he flopped back down hard, coughing, vertigo shooting off dark fireworks behind his eyes and his taped ribs jolting him with new waves of pain on every hitching gasp. Nausea clenched at his stomach. The sickness and dizziness were aftereffects of the concussion he’d taken when the M1 rattled through its death throes.
“Wang ba dan,” she muttered beneath her breath. It did not sound complimentary. She hauled him up into a sitting position against the wall, and held him there until the worse of the dizziness had passed. Looked deep into his face.
“Not quite as polished as you were on the Stargazer.”
The luxuriously appointed JumpShip on which they’d met. He remembered. That’s where they had started their little game, two celebrities playing with their own temporary anonymity. Her, a champion gladiator from Solaris VII, the Game World. Him, the heir presumptive of the Federated Suns. A game of careful playacting that had come crashing down around both their heads at the Terran reception as each discovered the other to be a scion of a rival Great House.
He still couldn’t say who the ultimate loser had been. Certainly no one had come out the winner, though.
“Look who’s . . . talking,” he finally said, panting. Their faces close . . . so close. Eyes staring. “When was the last time . . . shaved your legs?”
Leaving him against the wall, she quickly gathered together their combined survival kit. “Just now I’d settle for—” She stopped mid-sentence.
“Settle for wha—” Caleb started to ask, and was shocked when she leaped at him to clamp a hand roughly over his mouth.
Her eyes were rabbit-wide, searching each tiny window in the hut, he suddenly realized, for a face, an outline. Listening. Every sense on high alert.
Then he heard it. The sharp cra-ack of a breaking twig outside. The rustle of dry grasses as someone walked carefully—and at a distance—around the outside of the abandoned shack.
Mason?
