BattleTech MechWarrior Dark Age 05 Truth and Shadows 2003 Read online

23

  The New Barracks

  Tara

  Northwind

  January 3134; local winter

  After greeting One-Eyed Jack Farrell at the DropPort, Ezekiel Crow and Tara Campbell returned to the New Barracks, first by official vehicle and then-after leaving the vehicle and its driver at the main gate-on foot. The winter afternoon by now was moving on toward dusk. The sun hung low near the crests of the distant Rockspires, and shadows stretched out long on the ground.

  As they walked, Crow pondered the fact that the Countess of Northwind had not liked Jack Farrell at all. She had been impeccably polite, of course, as only a cradle-trained diplomat could be- Farrell had probably never noticed the difference-but Crow had seen Tara Campbell's genuine warmth and could tell when it was missing.

  He noticed that he had been looking at her without speaking for several minutes, admiring how the dark gold of her eyebrows and eyelashes contrasted with her porcelain-fair complexion, and the way small tendrils of her close-cropped platinum hair curled against the nape of her neck. He looked away again quickly. It would not do to have her catch him gazing at her like an obsessed stalker or- even worse-a lovestruck adolescent.

  Maybe it was already too late. Tara Campbell darted him a quick sidelong glance and said, almost hesitantly, "Are you dining at the Officers' Club tonight?"

  "I hadn't decided yet."

  In actuality, he knew that he was going to follow his usual practice of heating up one of the assortment of packaged meals that he'd bought from the Barracks commissary and currently kept stored in his kitchen nook. But he did not say that. Instead, he waited to see what would happen next- because things had, undeniably, started to happen.

  "We could-if you like-dine in my quarters." Tara Campbell's cheeks were faintly red. "I'll cook."

  "I'd be honored," he said.

  She was still blushing-which was surprising, since he hadn't thought anything embarrassed her.

  "Don't expect anything spectacular," she warned him. "I know how to make exactly three company dinners, and the kitchen staff at home would laugh at every single one of them."

  He went with her to her quarters, where she at once began pulling meat and assorted vegetables out of the kitchen's tiny refrigerator, rice and oil and spices out of the overhead cabinet, and cooking

  utensils out of the storage space beneath. With a bit of amusement, he realized that she'd actually had her spur-of-the-moment invitation planned out well in advance-like a general planning out a military campaign.

  The kitchen nook wasn't big enough for him to offer assistance and do anything except get in the way. He contented himself with leaning against the edge of the doorway and watching her at work.

  She had a chopping board and a heavy knife, and was busy cutting up the meat-he wasn't certain what kind it was, except that he didn't think the flesh had come from any of the usual Terran stock meat animals. Something indigenous and probably reptilian, at a guess. He wasn't going to pursue the matter; he'd eaten stranger things than lizard in the course of his diplomatic and military career.

  With the cubes of whatever it was set aside in a bowl, she moved on to the vegetables: onions, garlic, squash, and peppers that Crow recognized, and something purple and tuberous that he didn't.

  When all of those were chopped, she began heating the cooking oil in a big sauti pan, and set the rice to steaming in a separate pot.

  "It's a Sadalbari mixed curry," she said in response to his question, after a desultory conversation on military matters had flagged and left him casting about for another subject. "I had it so many times while I was posted there that I thought I was sick of it, and then I missed it after I got home. So I found some recipes and worked at it until I got it almost right."

  She paused long enough to add the cubed meat to the now hot oil, filling the kitchen nook with the sound of furious sizzling. "Or as close to right as I'm ever going to get it, anyhow. It's kind of like politics that way."

  It was, he thought, an interesting comparison, as well as a telling character note. Aloud, he asked, "How's that?"

  "Never having anything be all the way right. Just as close to right as you can manage with the ingredients that you've got." She shifted the cooking meat around in the sauti pan with a wooden spoon, frowning a little as she did so. "There's a reason why I'm a soldier first and a politician a long way second."

  "Some people," he commented, "would say that there isn't that much difference between politics and warfare."

  "That's because they don't have jobs that make them do both." She added seasonings to the cooking meat-salt and coarse black pepper and a generous pinch of a pinkish-brown powder that smelled like a combination of star anise and sandalwood. The air in the kitchen bloomed with sudden flavor. "I do, and I tell you truly, Paladin, I'd sooner fight a pitched field battle any day than try to negotiate a peacetime budget with the Council."

  She tossed in the chopped vegetables-more loud sizzling resulted, and a cloud of steam-and covered the sauti pan with a lid. Then she turned down the heat. "Now we let it alone for a while."

  The Countess of Northwind put her used cooking utensils into the dishwasher and wandered off into the living room area. Crow followed her. She sat down at one end of the wide, leather-upholstered couch, and gestured to Crow that he should take a seat next to her. He was more than willing to comply.

  "The last thing in the universe I'd ever want," Tara continued, "would be your job. All politics all the time, even when you're fighting."

  "A Prefect who hates politics," he said with mild-almost fond-amusement. "Such hardship."

  She scowled at him. "I do this job because it's my duty, and because there isn't anybody else.

  What's your excuse?"

  "It's something that I can do, and do well." There was nothing to be served here by false modesty, not when his statement was demonstrably true, so he didn't bother. "And it needs to be done- and done again, over and over-to keep The Republic of the Sphere from falling into complete disorder."

  "I understand."

  Tara's voice was full of a multitude of unasked questions and unstated acceptances, and he knew that she must be thinking of Chang-An burning, and of everything that he would have lost in its destruction. Her blue eyes, bright with sympathetic tears, spoke of kindness, and perhaps of something more. Moved by a sudden impulse-it had been a long time since anyone had offered him a moment of fellow feeling-he moved closer on the couch, then bent his head and kissed her.

  She kissed him back.

  She was not hesitant at all now, but firm and decisive, like a general seizing a battlefield advantage. He wondered, in a moment of blurry reflection, if such an exchange of mutual comfort had been as long ago for her as for him; then he gave up on analytical thought altogether. His hands were unbuttoning her uniform tunic almost on autopilot; her hands were equally busy undressing him.

  The curry burned, and they ended up dining some hours later on flash-heated meals-in-a-box from the Barracks commissary, but they didn't care.

  24

  Benderville

  Oilfields Coast

  Northwind

  February 3134; dry season

  The narrow road wound southward along the coast from Fort Barrett. At first the task force passed through small towns built up around inexpensive retirement communities for Kearney's senior citizens and beach houses for vacationers from the continent's interior. These thinned out as the city fell more than a couple of days' civilian travel behind. Instead, the road ran between fishing villages next to canning and freezing plants, where rusty trawlers unloaded their catch at the long wharves.

  Those, too, became further and further apart, until even the paved road gave out, replaced by a one- lane track of sandy clay, graded-it looked to Will Elliot-once or twice a year.

  The progress of the task force slowed as the road got worse. Will and his fellow scout/snipers spent most of their time showing around pictures of Anastasia Kerensky to shopkeepers, local
law enforcement officers, and (at the suggestion of Will, who was small-town born himself) old people on front porches and small children at play. So far, their inquiries had not produced any useful results- although the children and the elderly, at least, had proved full of acute observations about the doings of their friends and neighbors.

  "It's because they're the ones who don't have most of their minds taken up with work and all," he said to Jock Gordon and Lexa McIntosh over field rations at the noonday break. The rations today featured barley-and-mutton soup from a self-heating can, just the thing for the dry-season heat. "They see things that most people miss."

  "If you can get them to talk," said Lexa. A reminiscent expression played over her face. "Half the stuff that went on in Barra Station when I was a kid, none of us ever talked to the grown-ups about."

  "That's because you were a menace to society," Jock said.

  "Still am," she said. "Only difference is, the regiment gave me a pretty new laser rifle to menace with."

  "I suppose that makes you the expert," Will said. "So how do we get the kids to open up about things they aren't mentioning to the grown-ups?"

  "Have you considered bribery?"

  "In case you hadn't noticed, we're not exactly millionaires here," Jock pointed out.

  Lexa gave a scornful snort. "There's other things besides money." After a thoughtful pause, she added, "Of course, money almost always works."

  In the event, bribery turned out not to be needed after all. They came that evening to the smallest town yet. Benderville was nothing more than a scattering of decrepit houses plus a combined fuel station and general store. Half a dozen children rode the district hoverbus every day to and from a consolidated school five towns back up the road. The task force halted there for its evening meal at the same time as the school bus dropped off its passengers and turned around to head back north.

  Dinner this evening was more self-heating soup, this time chicken and rice. As they had at noon, Will, Jock and Lexa hunkered together in the lee of the Joust tank. After a few minutes, Will became aware of a skinny towheaded kid with his textbooks done up in a string backpack, standing a few feet away and shifting his weight from one foot to the other as he watched the soldiers eat.

  When Will caught his eye, the boy turned red and visibly worked up the nerve to speak. "You from Fort Barrett?"

  "Aye," said Will.

  "Whatcha doin' way out here?"

  Will glanced at Jock and Lexa. Lexa nodded-go for it, her expression said; this one's a talker.

  "Looking for someone."

  "Are they lost?"

  Will shook his head. "They know exactly where they are. But we don't know where to find them."

  The towheaded kid's eyes got bigger. "Are they bad people?"

  "Nasty as they come," Lexa said, with an evil grin that suggested she knew all about nastiness.

  "Oh," the boy said, in a more subdued tone.

  "Don't worry," she said. "We kicked them hard the last time. Right, Sergeant Elliot?"

  "That's right, Sergeant McIntosh," said Will.

  To the boy, he said, "We need to know if they've come back, so that we can kick them again."

  He took out the sheet of paper with the artist's photorealization of Anastasia Kerensky's current appearance, unfolded it, and showed it to the boy. "One of the people we're hunting for looks like this- have you seen her anywhere?"

  The boy shook his head.

  "You may not have seen her at all, just her vehicle."

  The boy shook his head again. "Nobody's come this way except you guys." He paused, and his brow wrinkled. Will could almost hear him thinking. "Does an aircraft count as a vehicle? Because I've seen one of those a couple of times."

  Will put aside his can of soup and stood up. "I think the General wants to talk with you."

  "I don't know-maybe I'd better-" Lexa snaked out an arm and grabbed the boy before he could run. "Oh, no you don't."

  "Hey!" "Don't worry," Jock said. "She isn't going to hurt you."

  "He's right," said Will. "Let him go, Lexa."

  Will turned back to the boy. "Nobody's angry with you, and General Griffin is a nice man."

  Moved by inspiration, he added, "He pilots the Koshi."

  The boy's eyes went to the BattleMech, looming nine meters tall at the center of the task force's small encampment. "Can I see it if I go with you and talk to him?"

  "It'll be hard to miss it. Come along."

  The boy followed Will over to where General Griffin, his aide Lieutenant Jones, and the company commanders were eating their own cans of self-heating soup conveniently next to the foot of the Koshi. Saluting, Will said, "General Griffin, sir. This young man says he's seen aircraft."

  Griffin got an eager gleam in his eye distinctly at odds with his spit-and-polish soldierly appearance. "How many?"

  The boy swallowed nervously and said, "Only one, both times."

  Griffin said to his aide, "Jones . . . your data pad." He took the pad, then tapped and wrote on it with the attached stylus until he had called up pictures of several different aircraft. Will recognized all of them as known Steel Wolf configurations.

  "Did they look like any of these?" Griffin asked the boy.

  "It's hard to tell. They were a long way off." He pointed. "But I think it was that one."

  Griffin, half to himself and half to the boy, said, "Excellent. Now we know we're on the right track. If there's anything you'd like-" The boy's eyes grew very bright. "Can I see inside your BattleMech?"

  The General suppressed a smile. "I think we can manage that."

  25

  Benderville

  Oilfields Coast

  Northwind

  February 3134; dry season

  The recon force set out the next morning from Benderville. The encampment began stirring into motion a couple of hours before the usual time, while the sky was dark, with only a pearly glow of coming sunrise along the inland horizon. As Sergeants, Will, Jock, and Lexa were all awake in the early-early. They stood by the supply truck drinking flash-heated tea-strong and sweet with sugar and condensed milk-from their mess cups prior to waking the rest of the infantry.

  "Responsibility," said Lexa, yawning widely, "is a bitch. Last to bed and first awake and behaving myself all the time to set a good example . . . why did I let you talk me into letting them promote me like this?"

  "Because you trust me to have your best interests at heart?"

  "Lemme think about it." She paused for a moment, then shook her head. "Nah. Can't be."

  Jock said, "It was the uniform-you couldn't resist him in it. I could see you looking at him and drooling."

  "Go on. As if I'd take a chance on losing a perfectly good buddy that way." She finished the last of her tea. "Must have done it out of the kindness of my heart. Somebody has to teach the new kids which end of the laser rifle the pretty red light comes out of."

  "That'd be you, all right," said Will. He looked at his watch. "Time to wake the children up for breakfast."

  He and his fellow Sergeants began moving among the soldiers huddled in their sleeping bags.

  "Wakey wakey," he chanted as he passed from one drowsing bundle to the next. "We're burning daylight."

  The harangue was a familiar one from his days in Basic Training, though he'd never expected to find himself on the delivering end of it. Jock's voice, coming from further off, provided a rumbling echo, punctuated by Lexa's cheerfully obscene exhortations from over on the other side of the camp: ". . . and pull on your socks! Save it for Fort Barrett, boys, we've got work to do."

  After a hurried breakfast of hot tea and cold rations, the task force began to move out. The Balac Strike VTOLs went first, rising from the ground in swirls of dust to head out in the day's search pattern, one VTOL covering inland, and one the seaward sector. As they climbed they dwindled to bright dots against the pink sky of dawn, catching the light of the rising sun like a pair of fast-moving morning stars.

  The aircra
ft would be ranging ahead of the column, on the track suggested by last night's encounter. Will hoped that the boy had given a fair representation of the truth. He hadn't acted like a liar, but even the most truthful of youngsters wasn't above shading or coloring a tale, sometimes not even on purpose.

  The noise of the lifting VTOLs faded, and was replaced with the sound of other engines stirring to life: the troop trucks, the scout cars, the Joust tank, the General's Koshi. Will saw the last of his squad onto their Shandra scouting vehicles, then mounted up himself.

  The graded dirt road south of Benderville dwindled in short order to a rutted track, the sandy ground to either side held in place-barely-by sparse brown grass. A hot wind blew out of the coastal interior. Sand came with it, stinging against bare skin, drifting into the folds of cloth and bends of flesh, sifting down into the cracks of instruments and machinery. As the day wore on, the constant sand and grit would be worsened by the passage of the task force's vehicles, and by the heavy footsteps of the Koshi. Will thought longingly of the hot showers in Fort Barrett; he knew that by evening he would be grateful for the chance to sluice himself off with a bucket of lukewarm water.

  "Another lovely day at the seashore," he said to the squad corporal, over the rumble of the Shandras' engines. "Just remember, there's daft folk in the big city who'll pay good money for an experience like this."

  26

  The New Barracks; Tyson and Vanvey 'Mech Factory

  Tara

  Northwind

  February 3134; local winter

  Ezekiel Crow woke up scared.

  He had returned to his own quarters, at the close of the previous evening's interlude with Tara Campbell, in a state of such near-euphoria that he had been hard-put not to show it. It would not have done at all for a Paladin of the Sphere to have been caught laughing aloud in delight as he walked through the halls of the visiting officers' quarters. The same elevated mood had carried him off into a sleep filled with pleasant dreams.

  The next morning, however, brought with it an emotion close enough to terror to leave him shaking. He had not realized the extent of his self-imposed isolation until part of it went away. It was as if he had been living behind walls of thick glass that muted everything outside. Now a window had opened, letting in a world of sight and sound and smell more intense than he had ever believed existed.