Fortress Republic, page 31
part #18 of BattleTech : Mechwarrior Dark Age Series
Especially once Caleb delivered on his end.
“Time,” a nearby officer in the Syrtis Fusiliers called out. “Advance teams, move forward. Flankers are set. My prince?” He gestured forward, and stepped aside to fall in right at Caleb’s elbow.
It was a short walk. Along the mirrored glass wall and then out through an entrance way with the regular doors removed for ease of access. Out into the courtyard of the Dao Xi complex, where a large, red-and-gold awning had been erected to shade the building’s entire front as well as the ferrocrete steps. And for the added protection it afforded against snipers. On his last day in Kai Lampur, and on Tikonov, Caleb (or his security, at least) was allowing for no mistakes. Not after New Hessen. The crowd gathered within the courtyard had been carefully screened (and well paid), and only two video crews were allowed to record. Their raw feed would be fairly split off to all the major news agencies.
“Coming back live,” a nearby production manager said. “In five, four . . .” He counted the last three seconds down silently, showing fingers only.
“What you have watched, and witnessed,” Caleb said, “was Exarch Jonah Levin’s final words to you, the former citizens and residents of The Republic of the Sphere. I cannot begin to understand how they must have affected you. I will not try to offer any explanations of the minds or machinations of the men and women who chose to abandon their responsibility, and leave rudderless this vital, important region.”
Perfectly in character, Erik was relieved to see. He stood off to one side, waiting. Wearing his new uniform. He tugged the hem of his green jacket straight. Shined a few of the gleaming brass buttons with a cuff. Then clasped hands behind his back in the semblance of a military parade-rest posture.
Caleb continued:
“I do know that extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. Certainly we have seen little more extreme in circumstance than the past few years, as the Inner Sphere entire suffers under the cold and merciless grip of the Blackout. Trade disrupted. Alliances sundered. Violence.” He paused. “War.”
War. The word hung alone for a long count, letting the listeners think back on the recent events that had all but shattered The Republic. The rise of factional militias. The invasion of the Capellan Confederation, the Jade Falcons, House Kurita’s Draconis Combine.
Every disruption and challenge to the status quo, brought about by an unprecedented level of isolation.
Not even Erik was immune. The weight of such solitude had already bent and broken many men. He had certainly felt it as well.
“My father and I visited Terra in the spirit of peace and goodwill and the idea of cooperation between men and nations. It is sorrowful to see such an opportunity wasted, but wasted it has been until these last few weeks when a leader stepped forward to do what was dangerous, what was needed, and what was right. His example has since been multiplied a dozen times over, with offers of aid and pledges of alliance. And it has pressed me to accept his hand of friendship, to consider his counsel, and to raise him up yet again as a leader who deserves your support.
“Which is why, in the absence of any true lasting leadership on Terra, I accept the pledge of the Swordsworn, of Tikonov, and of so many other worlds besides, and declare this region a Davion protectorate.” And here some in the crowd began to clap and cheer. Right on cue.
“A protectorate that I will bring the full power of my realm to safeguard and maintain.”
More enthusiasm. The stage was set. Erik came to attention, and tugged into perfect order his uniform of the Armed Forces of the Federated Suns.
“A protectorate I gladly place under the aegis of your own forward-thinking leader. My rescuer. My friend. And here, I declare, my Prince’s Champion.
“Lord Erik Sandoval-Groell!”
Epilogue
There is nothing more to say, nothing more to endeavor, that we have not said or attempted in the last ten months. And so it is with great sorrow but firm resolve that we put this to you, the people of The Republic of the Sphere, that the time has come for drastic and irrevocable action. To save what we can for the future.
—Opening, Exarch Levin’s “Final Address,” released among the Territories beginning 1 October 3135
Richmond DropPort, Ronel
Republic of the Sphere
12 October 3135
For Julian Davion, it was a day for good-byes.
Aaron Sandoval was first to gather his people together and bid Julian a curt farewell. He left a short company of Swordsworn armor behind to assist in the garrison of Ronel, though their loyalty would be suspect for some time given the news coming out of Tikonov and the call hitting many worlds for all Swordsworn to “come home to the Federated Suns.”
“Too soon!” Aaron had complained, raging at his nephew’s treachery. And just a touch of admiration as well? “As usual, Erik has done the wrong thing for the right reasons. And he’s accomplished it beautifully this time.”
Aaron was going back to Tikonov. He promised “to beat some sense back into that nephew of mine.”
Given Aaron’s flushed face and the obvious effect to which Erik Sandoval-Groell had stolen a march against him, Julian doubted the trip would produce more than a few new ulcers. Or, worse, a Swordsworn schism he was determined not to fall in with.
Lars Magnusson then decided at the last moment to hitch a ride on Ariana Zou’s DropShip, lifting off that afternoon, catching up to an outbound cargo vessel bound for Ozawa, then Towne and beyond.
“It’s time I returned to the Dominion,” he said. “My report will certainly shake things up.” Then he frowned, dark and heavy. “When I start using Inner Sphere slang, and contractions, it is time to be home.”
They had traded grips. Then again, Julian with Ariana. “You will both be missed,” he said.
Ariana nodded. But, “I will not be far, Julian. Only on Sheratan. Tara Campbell may still be there, in seclusion. And I do have my orders.” She had paused then. “If you have need of me, call. I will come back.”
Her Seeker-class vessel had rocketed away from Ronel with Julian watching from the main concourse, where he then checked on the two inbound vessels and saw them both still slated for afternoon arrivals on the following day. Sandra Fenlon would be aboard one of those incoming DropShips, having been sent away from Northwind before the final curtain fell across it and another half dozen or so worlds. And Prefecture X.
Sandra, heading back to the Federated Suns; to either Chesterton or New Syrtis. Heading home. Arriving with the last of some troops off Northwind: a few of Julian’s First Guard, and some Highlanders who had not taken well to the exarch’s final solution. Arriving tomorrow, for a short stay at best. Amanda Hasek would not leave her long in Julian’s company. With Julian out of favor—replaced as prince’s champion and all but forgotten—it seemed unlikely any more matchmaking would occur. Not until and unless Caleb called him home as well. Which appeared less likely every day.
So, no arrivals to welcome. Just good-byes. Julian had seen off all of his allies and friends now. All but Callandre, who had disappeared this morning and had yet to turn up.
For a moment, on the drive back out to the Markeson Pride where he would remain for now, he considered the idea that Callandre would leave without saying good-bye at all. It would be just like her, he knew, to hold a grudge for the seven years they dropped out of contact, and get some payback by walking out on him without a word or a note.
But no, he finally decided, pulling up into the DropShip bay, welcomed by its cool shade and spit-and-polish care. No. She was still around. He felt it.
If for no other reason than to finish fixing up her injured Destroyer, currently in a state of disassembly in the Pride’s third maintenance bay. And then likely she would try to steal it on her way out the door.
The DropShip had an air of exhaustion about it now that the heavy fighting was over with and repairs and maintenance protocols were once again the order of the day. The injured were being cared for at Richmond’s best hospitals. Salvage crews had taken over a large warehouse on the DropPort’s tarmac. What was left was a chance to rest and refit, and add a bit more bright polish to their home away from home. Julian passed two painting crews and a trio of mechanics tearing into one of the ship’s high pressure air stations as he made his way up to officer’s country and his stateroom. He stopped long enough to see how far along the mechanics were, then promised to pull some dungarees and join them.
A task he would never get to. Not today.
The man waited for Julian inside his stateroom, behind a locked door that only three people had a code and the clearance to open. The room itself was nothing special. Four metal bulkheads painted sky blue, decorated with photographs of family and a watercolor painting of an ocean scene off Markeson slid into metal frames permanently welded in place. A desk of dark steel and crushed chrome, with the corners and edges padded by leather wraps. A double-wide rack penned in with safety netting and using a civilian mattress—Julian’s one nod to creature comforts while traveling.
“You have good security,” the man said as Julian reached for the panel that controlled the room’s main light. Giving him a start.
The man sat at Julian’s desk, in a chair bolted into the floor to prevent trouble during zero-gravity conditions. The desk lamp was currently the room’s only illumination. The light soaked into his dark outfit, tight-fitted shirt worn beneath a leather vest, showed his empty hands splayed against the desk’s ferroglass-inset top. No hidden weapons. None within easy reach, anyway. He had square shoulders, a strong chin. The shadows crept in to give him a dark mask from the nose up.
Julian did not step fully into the room. Not then. He let his eyes adjust, checking the room for companions to this man. Breaking and entering was not conducive to trust.
“Not good enough, apparently.”
“Could be better.”
Something familiar about him. Still, in the low light it took an extra moment. Then he had it. Gavin! Aaron Sandoval’s advisor and intelligence aide. “Didn’t you miss your flight?”
“I’m not bound back for Tikonov. Everything that could be done there, has been. Now we wait.”
“For what?” Julian asked. He tensed, expecting an attack at any moment.
But the other man simply shrugged. He stood up and gestured Julian to his desk. “Maybe to see what you will do, Julian Davion. Riccard Streng believes you to be worth watching.”
He knew better (he did!) than to respond so easily to a familiar name. But it was the right name. Streng was—had been—Harrison Davion’s spy master and counsel. A man of many secrets, he was one of few people Julian knew who likely knew more about the darker side of the Federated Suns’ history than himself. And future plans.
“Riccard sent you?” He moved into the room. Heard the door whisk shut behind him, and paused. “No. You don’t work for him.” Except for the deepest of cover agents, Julian had a feel for the kind of men Riccard Streng preferred to use as intermediaries and day-to-day operatives. Even then, something about this man said he was . . . other.
Still, Julian accepted the chair to his own desk as Gavin stood nearby. Mainly because, with the door closed, his best access to comms and alarms was there. Should he need them.
“I work for myself, mostly,” Gavin said. He had a strong voice and an older man’s confidence, but put a uniform on him and he might have passed for a green lieutenant as well. His fresh-faced smile. The chestnut-brown hair clipped into a simple Caesar cut. Only his eyes, a stormy gray-blue, hard as steel, went with the voice. “I work for . . . let’s call it a ‘local concern.” ’
“Local to Ronel, or Tikonov?”
“Yes.”
O-kay.
“We did a favor for Erik Sandoval-Groell. And he employed me for a time after that. I left when my work was finished. Aaron Sandoval approached me, but he has proven . . . too inflexible in his thinking to appreciate what we could do for him.”
We . . . Me . . . Julian did not miss the implications of when this man changed pronouns. He had an idea that very little was left up to interpretation.
“So you hope I’ll hire you?” Which worked well no matter if they were talking about the man in front of him, or something larger. “I don’t know you.”
“True.” The man thought for just a moment, then stuck out a hand. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Gavin Marik.”
Again it was the name. The name and the resemblance. It startled Julian enough to begin to reach for the offered hand before he froze, forcing Gavin Marik to reach forward and give Julian’s hand a perfunctory shake. “Victor’s grandson?” The family traits were there, some so strong that Julian couldn’t believe he hadn’t recognized them before, from years of looking into a mirror. “Gavin Marik-Davion?”
“Gavin. Just keep it to Gavin.”
He wasn’t certain what else to say. “You weren’t at the funeral.”
“That’s family. This is business.” He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a pair of thin wafers about the size of a small coin. Data-storage devices. He set them both on the desk in front of Julian. “Caleb is not fit to sit the throne of the Federated Suns,” he said. “And this documentation will convince you.”
Julian scoffed. “Because he is not a MechWarrior?”
“Because he is insane. By the most clinical definition. Paranoid schizophrenia, Julian. And it has started to get worse. That bottom wafer contains all the evidence Prince Harrison planned to hand you himself, eventually. All of Caleb’s records, from the time he was diagnosed.”
“In MechWarrior training,” Julian said quietly. Nodded. A few odd-shaped pieces in the pattern of his life suddenly fit together. “Testing him for neurological suitability. They would have discovered it.” He looked up. “No. Harrison would never have . . .” He stopped.
“You had to wonder, at times.” Gavin stepped back from the desk. Leaving Julian to the pool of light, dividing his gaze between the two innocent wafers and the man who had dropped such news on him. “Why you? What was Harrison’s interest? Why show such favor to a distant cousin? It’s on the wafers as well. Your records. You were being groomed, Julian, as a warrior and—”
“As a leader,” he interrupted softly, recalling Harrison’s final words to him.
“Yes.”
“I don’t want this.” That was Julian’s first reaction. Give it all back. He’d never asked for the responsibility, and he damn sure hadn’t asked to be drawn into such trouble after the fact.
“Trust me, Julian, you will want those files. What you do with them is up to you. The second wafer contains a sample of reports we’ve collected from Terra. From New Hessen and Tikonov. From worlds under attack by House Kurita. You may find the first one of particular and immediate attention.”
Then he stepped forward, reached into his vest pocket and plucked from it a black business card. He laid it on the desk in front of Julian. There was nothing on it except an exchange number. Printed in silver, and centered.
It didn’t even say what worlds it would work for. Somehow, Julian doubted that mattered.
“The first taste is always free,” Gavin promised from the door. He’d moved away stealthy as a cat. “After this, it costs.”
The door whisked shut behind him.
Julian sat there for the better part of an hour, staring at the data wafers. At the shut door, after the man who had left him such a terrible gift. He replayed several important moments from his life, reviewing them from the different angles opened up by what he now knew. And once he knew more? Once he had reviewed all the information? What then?
What more might he discover about his family, and himself, that he did not want to know?
He pushed the wafers back and forth on the desk, thinking about that. The first taste was free. Always a danger. That was how madness started so very, very often. And yet. . .
He picked up the bottom wafer, thumbed it into a tiny slot on the side of his desk and waited as it fired his computer to life. The inset ferroglass glowed with sudden resolution, projecting a screen filled with data above the desk’s steel and glass surface. The first file. That’s what Gavin had said. There it was.
SISTERS OF MERCY.
The hospital to which Harrison had been admitted.
Always a danger.
He stared at the blinking file name.
Which was where Callandre Kell eventually found Julian. Sitting at his desk, leaning far back in his chair to stare up into the shadow-cloaked overhead. His holographic screen was still aglow with letters and numbers, all awash in multiple files opened and then tucked away behind different tabs.
“Missed you at the DropPort today,” he said after she’d keyed her way into his quarters. He hadn’t bothered to lock the door. Wouldn’t have mattered if he did. She had the code.
“I was there. Making arrangements for . . . what is it?”
Callandre moved into the darkened room. She came up to the desk. The desk lamp’s reflected glow played off the red highlights currently streaked into her hair and spiked a terrible glow into her doe-brown eyes. “Something happened.” She looked ready to go jump into . . . well, someone’s tank and head off.
“What arrangements?” he asked. He leaned back to stare up into the ceiling again.
“Sandra. She’s coming in this evening. I got the captain to pour on some extra burn. Thought after this morning, you might need a little pick-me up from your girl.”
“She’s a friend, Calamity.”
“Uh-huh. Anyway, you can meet her DropShip on pad seven and head off to a late meal.”
“What about you?”
“Sure, I’m hungry. But three’s a crowd.”
He kicked at one corner of his desk, turning his swivel chair back and forth, back and forth. “You aren’t leaving soon? Back to Lyran space? The Hounds have got to be missing you.”
“Let ’em get off their duffs and come looking. I’ve got better things to do than sit on Arc-Royal and run training exercises the next two years. Besides, someone has to be here to watch your back when you run off to find more trouble.”
