Fortress Republic, page 5
part #18 of BattleTech : Mechwarrior Dark Age Series
“He’ll be happy to see you, Julian.”
Nodding, he leaned forward to embrace the duchess. No matter that six months before Prince Davion had considered this woman—his sister by marriage—a potential threat to the stability of the Federated Suns. Now, in such a tragedy, kinship mattered more. And for the first time he could recall, she felt fragile in his arms.
Julian stepped back, smoothed down his pale red uniform dress shirt. “I don’t come by often enough.”
“Nonsense.” She tapped him hard on the chest, briefly showing a measure of her old strength. “You have military operations to see to, just as Caleb must handle the political fallout of such a disaster. If you shirked your duties for one minute, Harrison would have your hide later.”
Perhaps he would at that. Harrison Davion might be beloved by his people—“old bluff and gruff,” the gentle giant who’d inspired an entire line of “Harry Bears” often modeling the latest fashion travesty he had (willfully) engendered—but those closest to the prince knew he had a ferrosteel spine and a warm temper. And zero patience when it involved matters of duty.
“He’s a strong man.” Julian embraced the duchess again in comfort. “He’ll pull through.”
“Yes. Well. I’m back to the château.” Amanda stiffened her spine. A cagey look flared behind her eyes. “Trillian Steiner will pay a call today. I’d like to be there to sit in on any discussion.” She shrugged. Politics as usual. “She might even offer true condolences.”
More than a little catty. And not without cause, Julian knew. For two states which had once worked together hand-in-glove, formal relations between Houses Davion and Steiner were currently cool. At best.
“Would you like me there?” Julian asked.
Amanda glanced at him sharply. “Caleb has it.” But she softened again at once. “You’ve been busy enough, dear boy. Don’t borrow extra troubles.”
Julian hesitated, then nodded. He could not say why, exactly, but he felt that Harrison would have wanted him there. Perhaps it was a holdover of the prince going out of his way to involve Julian in so many political meetings those last months before the terrible accident. Perhaps it was . . . something else. That sensation of shifting sands beneath his feet. The uncertain political landscape.
Regardless, he would not press the issue. Not here, especially. The door loomed very large in Julian’s peripheral vision. “Then I’ll be staying in the city this night. Tell Caleb I look forward to seeing him tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Ariana Zou has completed her formal testing. She ascends to her paladinship. I know Caleb received an invitation.”
Amanda frowned. “And you have already accepted yours?”
“For Sandra and myself. Yes.” Ariana was a comrade-in-arms. They had fought together on the Siberian tundra. Soldiers beneath them both had died together. Of course he’d be there to see her promoted. As would many of the visiting dignitaries, he imagined.
It had never occurred to him that Caleb might deign to refuse.
“I will tell Caleb,” Amanda said. Stiff and formal.
Julian and Sandra exchanged goodbyes with Duchess Hasek, then watched her down the corridor. Sandra stepped in close to Julian, keeping up pretenses. Amanda glanced back once from the security station, and she did seem pleased to see them together.
Once she was past the heavy doors and behind the watchful guard of the two Republic knights, Julian turned Sandra through the nearby door before he lost his nerve.
Another guard stood watch inside the room, as he’d expected, this one wearing a similar uniform to Julian’s. Dark green stirrup trousers and dress boots. A pale green shirt instead of red—the difference between infantry and MechWarrior. He had lieutenant’s bars and wore a shoulder patch for the Davion Heavy Guards. Part of the same combat command in which Julian served as a regimental officer for the First Guards. He didn’t recognize the soldier right away, but knew him to be part of the prince’s security detail, which was one of the combat command’s many responsibilities.
For a hospital care room, this one was lavishly appointed. Gray and blue marble tile covered the floor, dotted with chocolate-brown throw rugs of synthetic, non-allergenic fibers. Faux-wood paneling decorated the walls in what appeared to be golden oak, coated with transparent aluminum-oxide to keep a sterile atmosphere. A holographic fireplace crackled softly against one wall, and large windows across the room let in plenty of natural light.
Only the scent remained the same. Antiseptic. Scrubbed. It reminded Julian a bit of the recycled air in a DropShip, though without the underlying smells of machinery and men working.
But the anticipation, that was there. A nervous tension. Julian felt it from Sandra, as well as from the soldier on guard.
“Oh, Julian.”
Sandra sagged against him, her light perfume warm and flowery and seeming much stronger than it should in the room’s antiseptic atmosphere. Her arms encircled his waist, and she lay her head against his shoulder as she looked at the large man resting in the double-wide hospital bed, draped with strong-bleached sheets and a warming, red-gold duvet. Julian walked them closer to the bedside, ignoring the I.V. standing its own silent sentinel and the bedside monitors that constantly checked pulse, breathing, and brain activity. Trying to look past the breathing tube stuck up into the patient’s nose and the electrodes taped to his temple and the shaved patches on his skull. Wanting to see a positive change—anything!—in the pale, wax-like skin.
Harrison Davion. Prince of the Federated Suns.
A large and active man in life, there was no mistaking the weight Prince Harrison had dropped in the last two weeks. The skin on his face was too loose. Arms too thin, and dark circles under sunken eyes. His hair had yet to grow back on the right side of his head where the doctors had shaved it away as they worked to repair the fractured skull. Nurses had also shaved away the thick, dark beard Harrison had worn most of his life, and the stubble was coming back with more gray than Julian would have thought. He had never considered Harrison vain enough to trouble with dying his beard, though why that should surprise him—or bother him—he did not know. It was like discovering your father had kept a secret from you. And while most fathers did, when one of them tripped into the light there was always that moment of disillusionment.
“Dammit,” Julian whispered. It was a shock, each and every time, to see his prince in such a condition. As if someone had taken a sledgehammer to the foundation for Julian’s world, smashing it anew.
What he had told Amanda Hasek had skirted the actual truth of the matter. He did visit as often as he could, though it wasn’t often given his workload coordinating military actions between the on-planet Guards and Exarch Levin’s regular line forces and leading forays such as the one that had run the Sverdlovsk loyalists to ground. But what truly bothered Julian were the shadows of doubt and helplessness parading through his mind on every visit. As if he should have been there, done something—anything!—to prevent this.
But there was no turning back the clock. Now, it felt as if he were drowning in military routine, tiredly treading water and trying to keep his head from going under for the last time. Living in the moment to prevent thinking about how they could have come to this, or where the future—any future without Prince Harrison—might lead.
This was one moment he could not escape, however. The nightmare from which he could not awake.
His duty.
Sandra stepped forward, moving up to the bedside to take one of the prince’s hands. She held it between both of her own. “We are here, my prince. Julian and I.” She seemed at a loss for what to say next. “We arrived together.”
Julian had moved to the foot of the bed, standing stiffly as if ready to deliver a formal report. There was that prickling sensation again, crawling with a clammy touch along the back of his neck, over his scalp. A bitter taste dried out his mouth, and he swallowed roughly past the knot in his throat.
“That’s right,” he finally said as Sandra nodded encouragement. “We’re still faking it.”
“Julian!” Her whisper was full of embarrassment.
“He knew, Sandra. Knows!” Cursed his awkward tongue. “That we play it up for the duchess. Called me on it over a month ago.” Right about the time they were making planetfall over Terra, if he recalled correctly.
“Did he?”
It had been their private little drama, letting Amanda Hasek play at matching them together to prevent more disastrous pairings the duchess might have made. Amanda saw what she wanted to see. Harrison was not so easily fooled.
“And I suppose he approves of Callandre Kell?”
That nearly made Julian laugh. Nearly. “Faith defend! He does not.” He glanced down, thinking to find Harrison ready to leap up for a new lecture. Nothing. Not so much as an abnormal blip on the nearby monitor. But at last Julian had found his distraction. “No one can fault Callandre’s skills as a warrior, but given our . . . awkward history together—”
“You were expelled from the Lyran Commonwealth, you mean.”
“It’s enough of a black mark against me that Calamity and I are still friends,” Julian said as if she’d never interrupted. He saw Sandra’s appraising gaze. “Friends, Sandra. Nothing more.”
“I believe the charges against you at the Nagelring’s honor board called you co-conspirators.”
Callandre had been telling tales again. Julian winced. “Water over the dam,” he said. And smashing down among the rocks.
Sandra shrugged. Leaned down at the prince’s bedside and kissed him lightly on the brow. Then whispered something in his ear that Julian could not hear. Her gray-blue eyes never left Julian.
Having smashed through the awkward moment, Julian relaxed. Slightly. He leaned forward, resting his hands on the bed’s footboard. Felt the warmth of hidden electronics beneath the thin veneer.
“I keep wondering.” He spoke directly to the man who had become his patron as well as his prince. “What you would tell me to do. Which direction we should lean . . . whose play we will back. Everything stands at the cusp now. The exarch’s move against his rogue senators. The tentative alliance you put into place with T. Even our own . . . troubles back home.”
Meaning the powerful March Lords. Duke Corwin Sandoval, who ruled the Combine border fist-in-glove with Victoria, the Duchess Woodbine. And Amanda Hasek, who managed the same task on the Capellan border, but alone. Amanda would shake off her own grief soon enough. And the throne had been weakened before Harrison’s tragedy.
“How do we do this without you?” he asked.
It was a question very similar to one he’d asked before, wanting to know the mind of his prince. Wanting to learn so badly the lessons being pushed at him. How do you do this, he’d asked.
He recalled the answer as fresh as if Harrison spoke the words now.
“You make it happen, Julian. You do it because there is no one else.”
Julian had braced up to attention. “I understand.” Turned to leave.
But Harrison had held fast to his arm. “Not yet, son. But you will. Get used to it. You need to learn how to make it happen. As . . . a leader.”
Harrison’s final words. They rang inside Julian’s mind like a tolling bell, echoing far, far back into the shadows of his thoughts. Stirring up dark whispers even as he worked hard to fulfill that last promise. But there was no road map and no clear direction. He ended up feeling his way through with Exarch Levin, with Amanda Hasek, with Caleb.
And he couldn’t help feeling that something important had eluded his grasp.
“How do we do this?” he asked again.
But Harrison Davion lay still, and silent.
5
Senator Lina Derius has called for all military and civilian assets uncomfortable with the recent direction of leadership from Terra to rally to a new alliance of Senators. “The nobles are not a simple cog to be yanked out of the great machine of government and cast aside by some fumble-handed mechanic. We are the very spark that turns the motor! Without us, The Republic will stall. The Republic must fail.”
—Covering the public motion to censure Exarch Jonah Levin, Action Newz, Liberty, 3 June 3135
Genève, Terra
Republic of the Sphere
19 June 3135
Julian’s questions did not give way with the short night’s sleep, though he managed to shove them into the back of his mind on the drive from Hotel Duquesne to Magnum Park.
He and Sandra Fenlon rode in the back of a chauffeured limousine sent to pick them up. Holding hands as they rested back against dark gray leather, staring out their own windows at Genève. Except for a few pre-dawn commuters, the city still slept beneath a black, storm-heavy sky.
“She’s been out all night?” Sandra asked. She sipped at a strawberry-flavored breakfast drink, having chosen to sleep in rather than awake for a 4:00 a.m. breakfast.
Julian nodded. He had also foregone an early meal, settling for a glass of juice and the promise of a large brunch with Sandra and Lars Magnusson and Callandre Kell. He watched as morning dew evaporated off the limousine’s warming windows. Checked the sky again as if he might divine the storm’s intentions. Not the most auspicious signs for the ascension of a new paladin.
“Her choice,” he said, speaking to Sandra’s question as well as his unvoiced thoughts.
Past the abandoned Senate and they were into Genève’s “political district.” A telling sign, that Julian counted two BattleMechs on guard near the gates to the Hall of Government—a Black Hawk and a Centurion—as well as a full armor column idling at the ready on one side street. And that was what he spotted without much of a search.
Magnum Park stretched out next to the Hall of Government. A huge spread of cultivated grounds, it included some of the nation’s most respected monuments as well as the display of Trees from Every World. Julian recognized a Caselton red cedar, and the nearly extinct flowering acacia of Outreach. The limo slowed to a crawl as it entered the line of cars pulling up to a small roundabout, which turned beneath the spreading branches of three different varieties of thick-boled oak.
No gala event, this morning. The press had been kept away, Julian knew, save for two veteran journalists who would be allowed to quietly observe the event to later write about it for posterity’s sake. The arrival of so many dignitaries was kept sedate as each car pulled forward to be screened by security and then allowed into the roundabout to drop off passengers.
The limousine swerved around a large, half-shell motorcycle that someone had jacked up onto its stand within the roundabout. A single guard was posted next to it, waving vehicles past.
Julian noticed the hound’s head crest on the cowling as he stepped from the limo. Shook his head.
A short walk, then, along a cobblestone path that meandered into a grove of silver aspen. The sky had lightened to a bruised purple. Thunderclouds massed heavily, though not one drop of rain had yet fallen. More than one anxious face turned to stare up into the storm-swollen sky. Julian recognized Nikol Marik, arriving on the arm of her mother, the Lady Jessica Marik and one of the so-called Captains-General of the shattered Free Worlds League. Also Jasek Kelswa-Steiner, who prowled the gathering crowd like a stalking cat in search of prey. Looking for Tara Campbell, no doubt.
And there was Callandre Kell. Waiting for his arrival and having already collected Lars Magnusson as well as Yori Kurita.
Callandre had dressed down for the occasion, separating herself from the nobility by keeping to her riding leathers. Matte-black pants and jacket, with a red “V” plunging deep from shoulders to navel. A red scarf knotted about her neck and cherry-red highlights dyed in her hazelnut hair. She held her riding helmet by the chin strap, swinging it back and forth, back and forth.
Just like her, Julian decided, to throw at least a small wrench into the arrival proceedings by riding up on her own.
“Couldn’t leave the helmet with the bike?” he asked, he and Sandra joining the small group. He eyed the swinging cap with distrust and ran fingers back through his reddish-gold hair. “Not going to start trouble today?”
“You never know, Jules.” Her smile was bright and cheerful, her doe-brown eyes far too innocent to be believed. “Personally, I’m just waiting for the next time Erik Sandoval mouths off.” She swung the helmet a bit higher. Lars laughed.
“You would not,” Yori said.
Some distant relation to the Draconis Combine’s ruling house—second? third cousin?—Yori Kurita wore a heavy red kimono with a golden obi overcoat wrapped about her. Julian was surprised, actually, to see her separated from the Kurita contingent. But then, she had already admitted among her peers that her name was not highly favored at court.
In fact, the other Combine samurai barely tolerated her.
“Don’t encourage her,” Julian said as Callandre smiled. There wasn’t much beyond the Nagelring’s “darling rogue,” he knew. And once upon a time, he’d risked everything his prince had invested in him just to try to match her. “And you,” he eyed Callandre, “not today. Not this morning.”
She huffed an exaggerated sigh. “I have the helmet with me because I forgot to lock it to the bike and don’t want to go back now. Okay? That, and I wanted to have something handy for when you start making my life miserable again. I don’t have a roll of kroner coin today.”
Making her life miserable? If that wasn’t the Atlas calling the Awesome large . . . And he still had not forgotten the welcoming smack she’d given him with the rolled kroner balled up in her hand.
“What have I done—recently!—to make your life miserable?”
Her smile blossomed full and bright. “You got up this morning, didn’t you?”
“Nice.” Walked into that one.
With a laughing Sandra in tow, Julian turned them all towards the lower path, leading the others through the aspen grove and into a wide, grassy clearing that had been trimmed close in anticipation of today’s event.
