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  Truth and Shadows

  ( Mechwarrior Dark Age - 5 , The Proving Grounds Trilogy - 2 )

  Martin Delrio

  Anastasia Kerensky and her Steel Wolves tried to take the planet Northwind once before and failed. Kerensky doesn't take defeat lightly and won't give up until she holds this pivotal world in her grasp. Now Countess Tara Campbell must marshall her Highlander troops for a new fight. She'll depend upon Paladin Ezekiel Crow for help, but what she discovers is that her greatest ally may yet prove to be her worst enemy.

  Book 2 in The Proving Grounds Trilogy, Truth and Shadows by Martin Delrio is the fifth novel set in the universe of MechWarrior: Dark Age.

  PART ONE

  Lurking

  November–December 3133

  1

  Balfour-Douglas Petrochemicals Offshore Drilling Station #47

  Oilfields Coast, Northwind

  Prefecture III, The Republic of the Sphere

  November 3133; dry season

  Ian Murchison, resident medic on Balfour-Douglas’s Station #47, leaned on the rail of the oil rig’s observation deck, watching the night sky and taking his ease after a long day. Here on Kearney’s Oilfields Coast, the low latitude made for warm weather despite the season. The continental landmass was a dark bulk away over the water to the east, and the memory of sunset lingered in a purple glow along the seaward horizon.

  There was no moon tonight to overpower the rest of the night sky. Murchison had seen a meteor shower the night before, out of the usual time for such—maybe, he’d speculated, bits of the tail of some minor and uncharted comet, making its long elliptical journey around Northwind system’s central star, only brushing atmosphere once out of centuries. Tonight, however, he saw nothing but the regular twinkling stars, their light refracted by the humid ocean air.

  Today had been a long day, but a dull one. Murchison hadn’t minded; in his opinion, a little dullness now and then was a good thing. Out on an oil rig, days that weren’t dull tended to involve nasty industrial accidents or sudden illnesses, and Balfour-Douglas #47 was a long way from a good hospital, on a long empty stretch of coastline. Even a VTOL craft summoned to evacuate someone seriously ill or injured had to come from more than three hours away—which meant that in most emergencies, Murchison’s patient was either dead or stable long before transport arrived. Balfour-Douglas #47 hadn’t had one of those emergencies since Barry O’Mara’s appendix went bad on him in the middle of a force 10 storm, and Murchison was in no hurry to experience another one soon.

  He pushed away from the rail. He’d dawdled out here enjoying the night air long enough. It was time to go back to his office cubby, write up the log of the day’s cuts and scrapes and bruises, lock up all the drawers and cabinets, and go to bed. If any pain or discomfort decided to manifest itself later, someone would wake him.

  A faint sound—the clink of metal against metal—broke the night. Murchison knew all the regular sounds of the oil rig, so that his mind erased them without thinking all day and night and let him read their steady underbeat as silence, but this sound had not been one of the regular noises. He paused, listening, but heard no repetition of the metallic clink.

  He shrugged. Maybe somebody on another of the platform’s several decks had dropped something; sounds carried out here on the water, and the clinking noise could have come from anywhere on the rig. Or maybe the sound had been the metallic structure of the platform itself flexing and creaking, which meant that in a day or two something on the rig would break, probably without warning, and Murchison would have to patch up whoever was in the way when it went.

  Whatever, he thought. There was nothing he could do about any of it tonight. He continued on his way inside.

  Murchison’s office was a small windowless room on the platform’s upper admin level, with a one-cot examining room/sick bay immediately adjacent. Both rooms were empty as usual. The office didn’t hold much—a desk, computer, and datalink setup; what Murchison didn’t know how to treat already, he could look up or discuss with experts at need. He kept a small tri-vid box up on one metal shelf; he turned it to a satellite news channel and settled down to work. He listened with half an ear to the sports news—late rugby scores, mostly—as he pulled up the log page for the day on his computer screen.

  0745. Wilkie, Ted, foot fungus. Treated with topical ointment, released to return to work.

  The tri-vid news show cycled back to the start of the hour and the big events of the day. The main news story dealt with signs of local economic recovery after the Steel Wolves’ incursion during the early summer; the show had brought in an expert from the University of New Lanark to quote statistics.

  1156. Barton, Glynis, second-degree burn on right hand from hot oil in deep-fat fryer in galley. Applied sterile bandage, released to two days light duty.

  The tri-vid news moved on to the global weather, with a story about how early snowfalls in the Rockspires presaged a hard winter, then cut to the regional weather feeds for local details. In the case of Balfour-Douglas #47, the forecast called for a high tomorrow in the southern Oilfields Coast region of 36 degrees centigrade, and an overnight low of 22.

  1520. Calloway, Tim. Muscle aches and fever of unknown origin. Treated with acetaminophen, sent back to quarters with instructions to rest and drink plenty of water.

  In the entertainment news, local Northwind networks were planning new dramas to replace off-world programming lost in the collapse of the HPG communications network: “And now an interview with producer Brett—”

  The lights went out and the computer screen went blank. The office and sick bay were silent. Even the humming and ticking of the electronic equipment had suddenly ceased.

  Something’s happened to the power, Murchison thought.

  He heard noises now: the sound of heavy feet pounding on the steel plate decks of the platform. The alarm down on Deck C began to sound—a strident, metallic pulse beat. Once it started, it could go on for hours, powered by its own stored energy, until somebody hit the manual disconnect.

  Murchison kept a flashlight in his right-hand desk drawer—it had a red lens, so as not to destroy his night vision if he ever needed to use it in an emergency. He also kept a jump bag with basic medical supplies on the floor under the coatrack, to the right of the door. He checked the luminous dial of his watch. He’d wait five minutes to see if the power came back on its own, or if anyone showed up at his office with word of what was happening. Then he’d go look for himself.

  He heard noises again. A high-pitched whining sound, repeated several times; the rattle of metallic impact, a long series interrupted by duller, softer bits; shouts—words, but undistinguishable—and at the end a scream.

  Murchison knew that sound. Someone was in pain.

  He took the flashlight out of the desk drawer, grabbed his jump bag, and headed out.

  On this level, at least, no one was moving. The manager’s office would be empty at this time of night anyhow—the conference room was never used except for official visitors—the security office’s door was halfway open, but no one was inside. The banks of monitor screens that should have covered all the vital spaces and machinery on Balfour-Douglas #47 were off and blank.

  Murchison went on downstairs to the next level, his footsteps echoing off the metal treads. He kept alert for more noises as he went, and was no longer surprised to hear, somewhere below, the sound of a slug-pistol firing a series of single shots with spaces between. He realized that he was counting, matching the number of shots against the tally of the oil rig’s crew. His subconscious, at least, had already decided that something very bad was happening.

  Should he stay where he was, he wondered, or go on? If matters were as bad as he feared, there
was no point in cowering in his office. When they—whoever “they” were—found him, he would most likely be dead anyway. And if he was going to be dead, he might as well die doing his duty.

  He opened the door to the next level, which held the berthing spaces for the oil rig’s crew as well as individual quarters for staff and management. This time, the red light of his flash showed bodies, several of them.

  Multiple casualties, he thought. That meant he had to do some serious triage. He was the only medic on #47, and help was hours away if it ever came at all. If he hoped to do any good, he would have to begin his work with the grim task of sorting the casualties into those who could wait for attention, those who could be helped if they were tended immediately, and those who were going to die whether they were helped immediately or not.

  He had no idea what was going on, except that it was bad. All he could think of to do was what he had been trained to do, in the way he’d been trained to do it.

  He took a deep breath. “Anybody who’s not hurt,” he called out, “come over here.”

  There was no response. No walking wounded, then, at least not within sound of his voice. He moved on forward, and knelt by the first body. Entrance wounds from a firearm of some sort had chewed a bloody line across the torso. He gave the man two rescue breaths. No result. He attached a black tag from the supply of them in the side pocket of his jump bag, and moved on.

  The second body had half its skull fried away by what might have been a laser rifle. The body had a cooked smell, but was still breathing. A red tag, this time—marking the victim for immediate medical attention when help arrived. If help arrived. He put that thought out of his head, and moved on.

  The third body lay in a spreading puddle of blood. One arm, still wearing the sterile bandage he’d put on it earlier that day, twitched feebly. He reached out to check the carotid artery for a pulse, then froze at the sound of footsteps, and looked up—past a pair of high-top boots, past shapely legs in dark trousers, up to a hand grasping a heavy slug-pistol.

  The hand raised the slug-pistol and fired a single shot. The survivor Murchison had begun tending was a survivor no longer, and the medic realized that unless he was very lucky, he was himself already a dead man. He found the knowledge oddly calming. He sat back on his heels and looked all the way up.

  He saw a woman dressed in tight trousers and a snug leather jacket, her long dark hair pulled tightly back. She was looking down at him and smiling, and her body and face together were seductive enough to have fulfilled all the most lurid fantasies of his younger self… if she hadn’t just shot Glynis Barton in the head.

  But she hadn’t shot Ian Murchison, not yet. He took one breath, then another, the better to control his voice, and asked, “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

  “I am Anastasia Kerensky,” she said. “I own this platform now. And because it would be wasteful to kill a medic who has proved that he can carry out his duties even under the most trying circumstances—I also own you.”

  2

  Tourist-Class Passenger Lounge

  DropShip Pegasus

  en route from Addicks to Northwind

  November 3133

  On most nights after dinner, the tourist-class passenger lounge on the Monarch–class DropShip Pegasus was a lively place, in spite of the fact that after the collapse of the HPG network there was no more interstellar tourism to speak of. These days, anybody traveling from one star system to another was likely to have more important reasons than mere desire for an exotic holiday, but there remained plenty of people in The Republic of the Sphere who needed to get someplace and needed do it on a budget.

  The tourist-class lounge had a bar—but only one bartender, and passengers had to fetch their own drinks rather than have subservient waitstaff shuttling back and forth. The lighting in tourist class was bright and matter-of-fact, instead of being kept atmospheric and privacy-dim. The tables, upholstery and flooring were a touch on the shabby side, their repair and replacement cycle stretched a little bit too long in favor of polishing up first class one more time.

  The food in the tourist lounge, though, came out of the same galley as the food in first class. The cutlery here was stainless steel and not silver, and the napkins were plain paper rather than linen folded into the shapes of swans and starbursts, but the meals were every bit as good.

  After long months spent fighting on Addicks, Captain Tara Bishop wasn’t in the mood to care about silverware and fine linen. Good food served hot instead of field rations, and drinks mixed sufficiently cold and strong, were enough to keep her satisfied. The Northwind Regiments had called her home, and they wanted her there badly enough to pay for her ticket… but only tourist class. Northwind, after all, wasn’t made of money. Captain Bishop could have paid to upgrade the ticket—she had most of her unspent back pay from Addicks burning a hole in her pocket—but she didn’t care enough to bother.

  Besides, first class was too quiet and well behaved. Tourist was a lot more fun. She could play poker every night until the bartender closed down the lounge to clean the tables and wash the glasses. Captain Bishop liked poker, and was good enough at it to win a respectable amount of the time. There hadn’t been that much else to do on Addicks, in between clashes with the forces of Katana Tormark’s Dragon’s Fury—and, later, with Kev Rosse’s Spirit Cats—except hone her natural talent for bluff to a keener edge.

  Her meals and bed on board Pegasus were covered by her ticket, and she had a new post waiting for her on Northwind. She could gamble using all of her back pay and not worry if she lost. For Captain Bishop, in any case, the pleasure of the game lay in the exercise of skill. She got no gambler’s buzz from the prospect of winning big or losing it all.

  Two of the other three players tonight were the same as she. Captain Bishop had seen them in action for the first time last night; she’d quit the game while she was a few stones ahead, but she’d been more or less sober at the time and some of the others at the table weren’t. On the other hand, the man with the eye patch and the woman with the knife up her sleeve—she probably thought it was concealed, but Captain Bishop had experience in spotting such things—had kept on nursing the same drinks all evening long.

  Captain Bishop had become curious. Moved by that curiosity, she had stayed up late that night, accessing the ship’s passenger records from her cabin’s data console. She shouldn’t have been able to do that, but life in the Northwind Regiments had taught Captain Bishop any number of useful skills, and computerized breaking and entering came high on the list.

  The man with the eye patch and the woman with the knife—Farrell and Jones, names so bland and ordinary they had to be assumed—had come aboard separately, with paper trails pointing back to different planets. There was no reason that they should be viewed as confederates, working the crowd together. But her gut said they were, and for the same reason that she played poker herself on shipboard—sheer, complete boredom.

  Captain Bishop had resolved at that moment to spend the next night having fun.

  Now the players at the poker table were Bishop, the man and the woman, and the weedy-looking young gentleman whom the man and the woman appeared to be in the process of cleaning out. Bishop and the two card sharps were sober; the evening’s destined victim, unsurprisingly, was not.

  The victim—Thatcher Wilberforce or Wilberforce Thatcher, Captain Bishop wasn’t certain which—was also running well ahead of Jones and Farrell at the moment. By design, Bishop suspected; the duo would find it amusing to let him get flushed with success, with his judgment clouded by celebratory drinks, then descend like crows on carrion.

  Hah, she thought, masking her contempt with an expression of vacuous amiability. Move along, there’s no dead meat for you here. I’ll give you two something to think about, I will.

  First, though, she had to get rid of Thatcher, or Wilberforce, or whatever his name was. Captain Bishop suppressed a pre-battle grin and set her plan into motion by turning to the young man.
>
  “You have all the luck tonight,” she told him, doing her best to sound aggrieved. “I can barely keep up, and they”—she waved a hand at Jones and Farrell in an expansive gesture—“are floundering.”

  Thatcher blinked. “Luck has to change sometimes. Not their turn to win, I suppose.”

  Captain Bishop kept her face straight with some difficulty. Lord, this one was not only drunk, but none too bright. Fleecing the likes of him should be illegal, like shooting a protected species, she thought.

  “Maybe it is their turn to lose,” she said. “But whose turn it is to win—that’s the question.”

  Thatcher smiled the happy smile of the naive and stupid. “Looks like mine, doesn’t it?”

  Bishop put on a thoughtful expression. “Oh, I don’t know.” She waved a hand at her own pile of chips. “I’m not doing so bad myself tonight.”

  “Not so good as me.”

  “Exactly the point I was about to make,” she said. “Your good luck is getting in the way of my good luck, and it’s going to cut me out of the action when they”—she gave yet another wave, at Jones and Farrell this time—“go down.”

  The woman with the hidden knife looked up suddenly. “Hey, wait a—”

  Bishop rounded on Jones with an air of sudden belligerence. “Hush. Thatcher and I are discussing who gets to take you to the cleaners later.”

  She could see Jones itching to make a quarrel of it—here was another one, she thought, who’d learned the game somewhere that wasn’t well lit and well behaved—but saw her swallow the intended retort and back down. The hunt was still on, after all, and nobody wanted to startle the prey.

  Bishop turned back to Thatcher and said, “The way I see it, somebody’s going to take their money tonight, and it’s going to be either you or me.” She gave the young man a confiding, semi-tipsy smile. “I’ve got a proposal for you.”