BattleTech: A Dish Served Cold

The Proliferation Cycle, Part V

Chris Hartford and

Jason M. Hardy

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Epilogue

More BattleTech Fiction by Chris Hartford

More BattleTech Fiction by Jason M. Hardy

The BattleTech Fiction Series

Prologue

ANTIPODES CONTINENT

LORIC

LYRAN COMMONWEALTH

9 APRIL 2459

False thunder hammered the ground. The floor trembled, and fresh cracks shot through one of the bunker’s concrete walls. Lights flickered and dust showered down on the plotting board, sparkling like rain as it fell through the holographic projection.

The blast hit Captain-General Geralk Marik like a heavy mallet against his chest. He grimaced and gripped the table edge tightly, his attention focused on the blue lines plotting out enemy positions. Lines which, until this morning, had been isolated from his position by a broad swathe of purple. Now they looked like arrows shooting toward his command post.

The Lyrans had pushed through some of his most hardened troops.

“Their artillery has us bracketed, sir.” The young commtech split his attention equally between his lord and his sensitive communications gear. “That was a direct hit on the western logistics park.”

Geralk grunted. Ammo and food supplies gone. Problematic, but far from fatal.

He leaned over the table. His purple uniform was creased, dust-covered, and smeared with a crust of dried blood from earlier fighting. Slouched over the table, he felt a weight far beyond his thirty-nine years.

“What about our counter-battery fire?” he asked.

“Inconclusive, sir. Captain Mathews says they’re off on the eastern edge of the Lean Massif, on the far limit of our range.”

“Damn it. Where are the fighters? We need that battery silenced!” He scarcely heard the reply as another massive projectile slammed into the ground, and the trembling started again. This time the flash of the explosion was clearly visible through the bunker’s window, and Geralk could smell the acrid smoke of burning plastics and flesh. “And their pushes?”

“The western assault is being held at the Djansky crossing, but our losses are mounting. The northern one is crawling along the Kohlan Road—we’ve slowed them enough for the 471st Armor to roll into position. They should hold.”

“At least the Elsies can’t come across the massif any easier than we can,” Geralk said. “But damn their artillery.” As if on cue the earth trembled, lights flickered, and more dust rained down.

“And find that spotter!” Geralk snarled.

More flames were visible though the thin slits of the bunker’s windows, and the explosions of ammunition mixed with the cracking of flames, shouts from the camp, and the regular thump-thump of the Marik artillery’s counter-battery fire.

“Galaine! What’s the status of the eastern perimeter?” Geralk asked the commtech.

“No reports, sir.”

“Then get me a sitrep.”

Galaine made a series of attempts over the comm, becoming increasingly agitated with each failure. “No answer, sir.”

Geralk stared at him, unbelieving, then threw his baton onto the map table. The image wavered and collapsed. Turning, he dashed to the doorway and leaned out, twisting to look east at the massif. High on the ridge near the security post were flashes of light: tracers and explosions. Though easily half a kilometer away, he could see several large figures through the smoke of the burning stockpiles. Very large figures, from his point of view, but they were likely just people casting large shadows through the setting sun and mist. Nothing on the field would be that large.

“I think we found our spotters,” he said grimly. “Send the security company to the eastern perimeter.” And let’s hope they hold.

Galaine waved to him urgently. “Captain-General, message traffic for you, sir.”

Damn amateurs. The slightest hiccup and everyone wants to speak to the Captain-General to make sure their ‘Vital Report’ gets through. He sighed. “Which position?”

Galaine paled. “None, sir. It’s the Lyrans.”

Geralk snatched the headset. “This is Captain-General Geralk Marik. Who’s this?”

“Captain-General, I am General Marcus Andrews of the LCAF. I’m here to tell you you’re done.” The voice was clear and precise, slightly colored by a guttural accent.

“What?”

“You’re pinned. You’re undermanned. Yet I’m still willing to offer you the honors of war—something you generally neglect to offer us.” The bitterness in the general’s voice came through clearly.

“Pinned?” Geralk scoffed. “You’ve pushed through a few infiltrators. I hardly think I need to surrender.” He was calm and collected as he spoke, but put enough ice in his voice to chill the entire planet. “I think you overestimate your position.”

“And I think you underestimate the threat facing you. But you’ll see soon enough. Ihr Begräbnis, Metzger.”

A wall of fire rained down on the camp from the hillside; lasers, missiles, and cannon shells washed over the camp like an Olympian storm. The concussion knocked Geralk flat, and he could smell singed hair—his own.

The figures on the hill moved, striding down the slope as their weapons struck at the weak Marik defenses; not illusions at all, but fully as tall as their shadows had made them appear. Like angels of death, they descended toward the camp, swatting away temporary buildings and immolating defensive positions. Armored vehicles in the Free Worlds camp began to fire back, but they were few and far between.

Struggling to his feet, Geralk snatched the singed purple beret from his head and threw it into a corner of the damaged bunker, then grabbed a padded armor vest and a worn helmet and put them on.

“Pull everyone back across the Sumire River,” he said as he donned the gear. “Hold there if you can. If not, pull back to the DropShips.”

Galaine relayed the orders, then turned to his commander. “And you, sir?”

“’I’m going to buy the breathing room you need.” Pulling on the gloves he wore tucked into his belt, he strode outside and toward his tank parked adjacent to the command post. The massive vehicle bucked as it fired shell after shell at the metal predators stalking into the fringes of the camp.

Geralk reached up and triggered the mike on his helmet. “Michael, I’m mounting up.”

The firing stopped and the Captain-General hauled himself toward the turret hatch. Sitting in the entry, he turned back to Galaine, who stared up at him. “Get out of here now. That’s an order.”

“But, sir, you must evacuate, too. “

“Turn tail and leave the troops? Never. I’ll be the last one back to the rally point.” He grinned. “Didn’t they tell you, Galaine? Mariks are invincible.”

Galaine smiled weakly. He saluted his commander, who dropped into the tank and pulled the hatch shut.

Within moments, the turret-mounted cannon resumed its volleying at the approaching giants, its revving engine adding acrid fumes to the already-bitter air. Edging forward, the vehicle’s body swung in line with the massive main gun. He saw his targets more clearly now as they strode forward on heavy metal feet, their huge limbs bristling with every possible deadly weapon. They were like nothing Geralk had ever seen, and he found himself almost dazed by their aura of power.

He snapped out of it, churning tracks into the temporary roadway as he sped alone toward the approaching walkers, a lone mortal charging a pack of titans.

ATREUS CITY, ATREUS

MARIK COMMONWEALTH

FREE WORLDS LEAGUE

11 MAY 2459

Dark spots appeared on the dusty cap she clutched as tears fell from Simone’s eyes, her angular cheeks streaked with the remains of her makeup. It was undignified, but no one commented on the young woman’s display of grief.

She sat alone—tall, thin, scarcely nineteen years old—on the throne in Parliament’s chamber, and wept as the weight of the realm settled onto her shoulders.

The reports coming back from Loric were sketchy, but still contained enough information to be devastating.

“How?” Her voice was scarcely more than a whisper.

“He fought valiantly, Lady Marik, buying time for others to withdraw.” General Mattias Ivanevksy spoke, heading the delegation. His normally florid face was drained of color, his mouth drooping into his white beard. “The Lyran machines—these ‘BattleMechs’—were unstoppable.”

“I know he led the rearguard.” She sniffed. “How did he die?”

The general looked uncomfortable, glancing at his assembled colleagues and at the empty parliamentary benches. “He died…with honor.”

“Dammit!” Simone smashed her fist down on the arm of the marble throne. The blow made a feeble thud rather than the echoing crash she would’ve liked. ”Just tell me, Ivan. He was my father.”

“As you command, Captain-General.” Technically the title wasn’t hers yet, but as the sole eligible Marik—her brother was only eleven—she would succeed Geralk unless she refused the post. “His tank was disabled, but he refused to surrender. He kept shooting at the BattleMechs—and by all accounts crippled one—but eventually they overran his position. They—” he hesitated, “—crushed the Captain-General’s tank.”

Simone Marik struggled to keep her composure during the brief report. She wiped away her tears, leaving a puffy and streaked face with red-rimmed eyes, but her spine stayed stiff, and she projected resolve in the midst of her grief. “And the rest of our forces? What happened to them?”

“The command staff complied with your father’s orders, pulling back to the river line and holding it into the next day. But the Lyrans moved in and surrounded several elements, crushing them or forcing them into surrender. The last transports containing survivors left Loric on the twelfth. We’re anticipating some form of diplomatic approach in the next few weeks to discuss repatriation.”

“And the dead?” Her voice shook but was stronger than moments earlier.

“They have been interred on Loric. We were unable to recover your father’s body, but we believe it lies with the others.”

“He would have liked that. The troops were as much his family as Carlos and I.”

Ivanevsky nodded, pausing to give the new Captain-General time to cry again if she felt it necessary.

She didn’t. Her bearing stayed strong, and her voice hardened into ice. “And the other worlds?”

“Holding. It appears that the Lyrans have only a handful of these BattleMechs. They can achieve local superiority, and we should expect a pasting where they bring these machines, but they don’t have enough to support strategic operations.” He paused. “Knowing the Lyran industry, however, it’s only a matter of time before they field these machines in much greater numbers.”

“So we need our own BattleMechs.” It was not a question. She beckoned to a small, dark-suited man who was lurking behind the FWLM officers. He was tanned with dark hair, looking like a holovid star shrunk down to three-quarters size. “Something for the National Intelligence Agency, I think. Director Sanders, do you have appropriate assets?”

The wispy, quiet figure thought for a moment. Jervais Sanders’s memory for minutiae was legendary in governmental sectors. Then he nodded. “There are a couple of operatives I can set to work on it. Alarion gives us the best chance, I think.”

“And the timeframe?” The streaks on her face were now the only evidence of Simone’s recent grieving.

“I can issue appropriate directives as soon as the operation is approved—”

“—which I will do immediately after the confirmation hearing tomorrow,” she interrupted.

Sanders nodded. “We will likely need twelve to twenty-four months communication and operation time.”

Simone leaned back and faced the generals once more. “Can we hold that long?”

“Provided our assessment on the quantity of the walkers is accurate…”

“It is,” said Sanders, his whispery voice sliding through the room’s echoes.

“Then we can hold,” Ivanevsky said. “We’ll have some short-term losses—more worlds may fall while their BattleMechs are on the move. I’ve issued precautionary orders limiting our vulnerability to the machines, but that won’t stop them from coming. However, I believe I can prevent our losses from blunting our overall strength. For a year or two.”

Simone thought for a moment, then placed her bony hands on the hard armrests of the throne, her pale eyes seeming to pull in strength from the rest of the room, filling her gaze with determination and even ferocity. “Then I pray our enemies become overconfident, and don’t see the hammer blow of our vengeance falling upon them.”

Chapter One

ALAR HEAVY INDUSTRIES

ALARION CITY, ALARION III

LYRAN COMMONWEALTH

16 DECEMBER 2461

“So what happened, Mr. Rive?” The speaker’s diction was clear, precise, and cold, matching the atmosphere in the room. The voice had an edge that could cut glass. “Tell me. Please.”

Desmond Manvers, CEO of AlarCorp, sat in a room that seemed designed just for him. He was at the head of a table whose top was centimeters-thick glass; the walls around him were stone polished to a reflective gleam. The only non-reflective surface in the room was the AlarCorp logo etched into the table’s surface. The effect of all the shiny surfaces was disorienting to many visitors to the room, especially when they saw the CEO surrounded by a seemingly infinite number of ghostly mirror images. Manvers had two assistants flanking him, but they seemed almost as insubstantial as his reflections.

Manvers’ shoulder-length gray hair brushed the top of his elegant blue suit. The tall, dark back of his chair loomed over his head, in contrast to the small, barely padded chairs around the rest of the table.

A king must have his throne, Chief Engineer Gunther Rive thought, self-consciously rubbing his close-cropped blond hair while noticing how awkwardly large his off-the-rack gray suit suddenly felt. The seats in which he and his two companions sat felt like they were made of stone.

“Well, Chief Rive?” Somehow, Manvers’s voice seemed to have become even colder.

“It appears we…have a leak,” Rive said. He’d never been arrested, but he couldn’t imagine the experience would be much worse than this. His stomach felt like it had been braided, and the room seemed to be spinning and tilting dangerously to Rive’s right. He almost leaned to his left to compensate, but he had enough self-possession to realize how that would look to Manvers. “On Project Ymir. Some details of the TTS have appeared in the Alarion Technical Review. None of them are directly attributable to Ymir, but their specs are too close for comfort.”

“And you identified this similarity?”

“No. Elias did.” He gestured to Elias Singh, the project’s chief electronics engineer, sitting on his right. Older than Rive, Singh wore a trademark orange turban that was the one point of color in the otherwise sterile room.

“And you reported it right away after Mr. Singh informed you?”

“No. We weren’t sure at first, and wanted to compare specifications.”

“You weren’t sure? Aren’t you intimately familiar with the project? Isn’t that your role?” Manvers’s jaw clenched and unclenched, and the grinding of his teeth was almost audible. Other than that and the occasional curt, authoritative hand gesture, he sat still. To his right, one of the assistants keyed a running log of the conversation, while to his left the other kept up a flow of facts and figures, displayed on the liquid-crystal display beneath the desktop. The screen showed stock prices, up-to-the-second news, equations for calculating profit and loss on various transactions, and—Rive presumed—details of the present meeting and its attendees.

“We wanted to examine the matter in more detail before issuing a wider alert. Calling in security right away might have been counterproductive, had it been revealed to be just a superficial similarity.”

“And was it?”

“It didn’t appear to be.”

“Mr. Singh, did you agree with the decision not to involve security right away?”

Singh leaned forward to address the figure at the head of the table. His voice was soft and trembled slightly. “As Gunther said, we wanted to avoid overreacting.”

“It was a simple question. Did you agree with the decision?”

“It was—”

“Yes or no will suffice.”

Singh took a deep breath. “Yes.”

Manvers focused his attention on the third member of the team, sitting on Rive’s left. “Mr. Connor, did you likewise concur? Did you think not involving trained security was a good idea?”

Daniel Connor tried briefly to match Manvers’s cold gaze, but failed miserably. The young man’s eyes darted away quickly, scanning through many of Manvers’s ghosts around the room, before finally settling on a spot somewhere over Manvers’s left shoulder. “We could have talked to security sooner, though it wasn’t our fault.”

“So you don’t concur.”

Rive shot the younger man a worried look, and suddenly wished he hadn’t. Manvers would be alert for any signs of discord between the three of them.

As if on cue, Manvers turned his attention back to Rive. “Mr. Rive. Do you have a problem with Connor’s assessment?”

“Not a problem, no. We discussed the matter, and agreed that the best way to proceed was how we did.”

“I’m sure you’re familiar with the security procedures, yes?”

All three nodded. The assistant made notes.

“Well, let’s leave that for a moment. What was your assessment of the situation? How did it come about?”

“We concluded that the details in ATR were from the Ymir schematics, at which point we contacted security.”

More notes. “And how did the leak take place? Who had access to the information?”

“Security and ourselves determined that eight people had access to the leaked information: the three of us, yourself, and four members of the production team. Assuming, that is, no electronic infiltration of the systems.”

“And your assessment as to the origin of the leak?” Manvers sounded increasingly impatient. Clearly, he knew what conclusion he wanted to reach—he just needed the conversation to get there.

Rive leaned forward, resting his palms face down on the work surface. “I’m sure none of my team was responsible. We follow procedures rigorously, and have a high regard for security matters.”

“That’s as may be, but you still have a leak. An unexplained leak on a project vital to the corporation.” Manvers steepled his fingers. “Pending a security review, I am placing you all on administrative leave until January twelfth. Your pay and benefits will continue, but your security clearance and facilities access are suspended until then.”

The room seemed to tilt so hard that Rive nearly fell off his chair. This had all the qualities of a bad dream, except he was fully clothed. He almost had to ask Manvers to repeat himself, to make sure this was really happening, but he didn’t think the boss would appreciate that.

He tried to compose himself by reviewing his options. He could fight the prohibition—workers’ rights in the Commonwealth were strong—but that would label him a troublemaker. Better to work with the system and save the big guns for later, in case Manvers wanted to take it further. He hated accepting the decision—it felt like capitulation—but as the MechWarriors who relied on their product knew, sometimes a tactical withdrawal was in order if the war was to be won.

Hearing no objection or comment from the three condemned men, Manvers rose to his feet. “I will see you all in a month’s time. Security will liaise with you in the meantime.” He strode toward the glass double doors, assistants in tow, and pushed his way through without offering his hand to the employees, as if their very touch had become poisonous.

* * *

“Well, that’s us screwed. The old man had made up his mind before we got there.” Connor was fuming.

Rive motioned him to silence with a chopping motion of his right hand, pointing at the control panel of the elevator. It was well within the bounds of possibility that Manvers had the executive lift bugged. Almost a certainty, in fact. Guards had escorted them from the boardroom to the elevator shaft, and the controls were—Rive assumed—security locked so only their programmed destination would work.

They rode in silence the rest of the way down to the main lobby—the sixty-second ride feeling more like an hour—and stepped out into the cool atrium. The trees and plants gave the place a feeling of life that contrasted with the austereness of the office where they had just received their spanking.

“So what now?” Connor was the first to speak, as ever. Getting out of Manvers’s oppressive presence was like ripping a gag from his mouth. “Will security lock us up? Can we beat the rap? Are we—”

“Dan, give it a rest.” Rive was in no mood to indulge the younger man. “We just have to see what security wants, and deal with things as they arise. At least we’re being paid—that’s more than I expected from the old ghoul.” He felt his temper rising, finally making him angry now that the actual conflict was over.

“As fate wills,” was Elias’s only comment. He was lost in thought.

“But what do we do? Should we get lawyers?” Connor asked, a panicked look in his eyes.

“Probably. I don’t know. Look, go home, sleep on it, and we can talk more tomorrow. I have other plans.”

The trio split, each heading their own way: Singh to his family, Connor to somewhere that probably served too much sugar and had lots of game machines, and Rive to the Brunswick Tavern in downtown Alarion City.

He was on his second beer, hunched over the bar with his tie undone and hanging loose around his neck when slender arms slipped around his waist just after he caught the scent of roses.

A tall, slim brunette leaned close and kissed his cheek, a strand of loose hair brushing his neck. Rive leaned back into her, his left hand lifting up to caress her cheek and neck, then pulling her closer for a more deliberate kiss.

“God, I’m glad to see you, Sandi.”

The elegant young woman dropped onto the seat next to him, depositing her black briefcase alongside his brown one on the floor, her green tailored skirt hitching up as she crossed her legs. Rive, beaten down by the day, didn’t bother to hide the fact that he was staring at her, particularly her thighs. He gestured to the barman for a refill as well as a drink for his companion.

“Well, I gathered from Lanai what had gone down today.” Lanai was Elias’s wife, Sandi’s colleague in the contracts department. It was through Lanai that he’d managed to hook up with a high-flying lawyer like Sandrine Miller. At first he thought she was slumming—a bored corporate lawyer looking for a bit of excitement. He wasn’t, of course, going to object to being exploited by someone like her, and somehow after eighteen months they were still together. The thought of something more permanent—kids and marriage—had crossed Rive’s mind on more than one occasion, but he didn’t dare broach the subject, fearing those would be the accursed words that would make her vanish into thin air.

The barman deposited the beers, and immediately Rive took a pull from his, grasping the glass in his left hand while the fingers of his right held tight to Sandi. “Suspended on full pay ‘pending an official investigation.’ Someone has to take the fall over this, and I think you’re looking at him.”

She squeezed his hand, massaging it with her thumb. “I know firsthand how much of a bastard Manvers can be, Gun. Most of us in contracts have fallen afoul of him. The good news for you is, he hates to squander resources.” She took a sip of her beer. “I think your job is safe.” The faint traces of her Skye accent seemed out of place here on Alarion. Foreign. Alien. Alluring.

“Well that’s nice to know. He won’t let me go, but that doesn’t rule out the other million or so punishments he has to offer.”

“He knows what you’re worth. I know what you’re worth. It seems the only person who doesn’t is you.” She looked him straight in the eye, and as usual her piercing green gaze stilled him. “Have some trust in yourself. Yes, you might get a slapped wrist, but unless you outright gave away trade secrets, that’s as far as it will go. Trust me.”

“I do, but it annoys me that the others and I will probably be punished for something we didn’t do.”

“Unless they find who did leak the material.”

“Right. Unless they do. Of course, there’s as much chance of Security doing that as there is of a single power uniting humanity. They stop people getting in or out, but they’re not much for investigating. Finesse to them means dealing with the perps while leaving corporate assets intact.” He almost spat the last.

“Shh.” Her free hand came up and caressed his cheek. “Give them a chance. You never know.” Her fingers trailed down his jaw line and onto his lips. He kissed her fingertips. “Home time, I think.”

Chapter Two

ALARION CITY, ALARION III

LYRAN COMMONWEALTH

12 JANUARY 2462

Sunlight, filtered through the leaves of the tall, narrow trees outside the apartment, dappled the breakfast table, . The late summer sun had been above the horizon for some time despite the early hour, but the long run into winter was beginning. It would be another two or three months before the ski runs on Mount Halloran—one of the few non-restricted mountain peaks near Alarion City—opened, but the peak of warmth had already passed.

Rive sipped his orange juice—an expensive luxury—and then bit into his toast. His glass clinked as he set it down on the stone tabletop. His attention was not on the meal, and he scarcely noticed as Sandrine, immaculately dressed in a charcoal trouser suit, set her plate down opposite him and slipped into the wooden chair.

“Only toast, Gun? You’ll waste away.” The smell of eggs and black pudding, the breakfast staples of distant Skye, wafted across the table. Normally Rive would have found it appetizing, but not today.

“I’m not sure my stomach can handle anything more. We’re due at the big man’s office in an hour. Judgment day.”

Sandi reached across the table and patted his shoulder comfortingly. “Believe in yourself. You’ll be fine.”

He sighed and nodded, then continued to look forlornly at his breakfast. The moment he finally turned away from it, Sandi smoothly snatched a piece of his toast and popped it in her mouth.

“Well, if you’re not hungry…” She laughed and he grinned back. His smile was weak, but it was something.

* * *

“Ten thousand kroner.” Daniel said for the millionth time as the three technicians rode the metro back toward their offices. “I’ll never pay that back.” His older colleagues stood there in quiet contemplation, the shock of the judgment yet to fully sink in.

Contributory negligence, Manvers had said. Poor security protocols and practices that allowed persons unknown to gain access to AlarCorp’s proprietary information. That there was no direct proof that the leak had come from the team mattered little—security had ruled out any other possibilities.

“I think you’re an awkward individual, Mr. Rive,” Manvers had said. “ And I don’t like it when people disrupt our harmonious working environment. But you are good at your job—all of you are—so I’ll hold off on firing you. For now at least.” Because you want something to look forward to, don’t you, you vindictive swine? “Instead, per clause 6.23.7b of your employment contract, each of you will be subject to a financial penalty to cover the costs of the investigation, to be collected through wage deductions or paid in full as you see fit.” The three men had been dismissed to return to jobs that suddenly paid quite poorly.

“Lanai and I have deposit money for our own house,” Elias interjected mournfully. “Had a deposit, I should say.”

“We are so screwed,” Daniel whined. He paced anxiously as the train rattled along. A sharp turn almost threw him off balance, but he caught a handhold. “I know, we should appeal. They can’t punish us for something we didn’t do.”

“We pay up or he fires us. Or worse. That’s the story.” Rive dangled from a strap as the train decelerated sharply, pulling into their station. The trio moved out. “Manvers has hung us out to dry. Yes, we could appeal—we’ll check with Sandrine and Lanai—” Elias nodded, “—though it’s a little out of their area of specialty.”

Part of the mass moving out of the station, they were swept toward the gate. At the barrier, Rive reached out his CredCard and swept it past the reader to open the gate. It made a rude noise. To his sides, he heard similar rejections. His eyes met Elias’s, and the two men sighed.

* * *

Extricating themselves from the station proved to be an exercise in diplomacy—convincing the staff that there must be an administrative hiccup with their AlarCorp-issued CredCards and then paying for the tickets with the card from his personal account.

At first Rive thought it was some glitch associated with their predicament and the fine, but later in the day, as he tried to go about his normal business, it quickly became apparent that the difficulties ran much deeper.

“You’re not cleared to enter here, sir,” the guard stated at the entrance to the archive, his posture rigid and his hand hovering near his pistol.

“I need the power coupler schematics for the integration routines,” Rive said, surprised by the guard’s obstinacy.

“That may be, sir, but I can’t allow you through.” He was polite and menacing at the same time.

“I have Red Two clearance.” He held out the ID card again, touching it to the reader.

“That clearance is insufficient for this area, Mr. Rive.”

“Since when? I’ve always gotten my own archive material.” Since the Hesperus raid, he inferred. “What level do I need?”

“I can’t tell you that, sir, but I can say that the status change took place in mid-December. If you wish to access the facility, you will need to consult your line manager for a security upgrade, or else arrange for an authorized person to enter the archive.” It was obvious from his manner than the guard did not expect the former to happen any time soon, not while the specter of treachery hung over Rive’s team.

Rive walked away shaking his head. Manvers had locked them out of the technical archive, hampering their ability to work. What else were they to be denied? Was Manvers pushing to get a response, seeing if they would knuckle down or buckle under the pressure? Or was he just angry, and lashing out at Rive and his people however he could?

The rest of the morning didn’t go much better, and Rive was seething when he met Sandrine for lunch at the AlarCorp canteen, finding her in the vast swarm of identical beige tables.

“You didn’t call,” she said. “I wanted to see how things went.”

“Phone block,” Rive responded sullenly, taking a bite out of a sandwich. Distracted, he hardly tasted it and dropped it onto the plate. “I have to get all out-of-wing phone numbers approved.”

Sandrine looked up from lasagna and snorted. “Well, talk about bolting the stable door after the horse has escaped.” A chunk of the pasta and sauce disappeared into her mouth.

He glared at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

She shrugged casually—she hadn’t caught the tone in his voice yet, since most of her attention was still centered on her food. “The info went out, and the phone block isn’t going to make it come back, that’s all.”

“The leak didn’t happen because my phone was unblocked!” Rive said too loudly. Several nearby coworkers gave a quick glance at him then turned away, straining not to stare.

Sandrine finally looked directly at him. “No, no, shhhhh. That’s not what I’m saying. Of course that’s not what I’m saying. That’s the main reason you shouldn’t have your phone block, naturally—you had nothing to do with the leak. I’m just saying that, even if you had, a phone block would be a meaningless gesture at this point.”

Rive was somewhat mollified, and he lowered his voice. “It’s not meaningless. It’s there to piss me off. Manvers either wants me to stay here and work through this stream of little humiliations he’s throwing out, or he wants me to quit. I’m not sure which choice would make him happier.”

“Why would you care what makes him happy?”

“So I can do the opposite,” he muttered.

Sandrine smiled sadly. “Poor Gun. I wish I had something useful to offer, but I’m afraid there’s little to be done at the moment.”

“What about the appeals process?”

Sandrine chewed thoughtfully. “I’ll need to check specifics when I get back to the office, but I think the war statutes get in the way. Under LCAF directives, AlarCorp can take any measures it deems fit to ensure security. It’s stretching it in this case, but knowing Manvers, he wouldn’t hesitate to justify it in that way.”

Rive swore. “Tightfisted swine.” His fist slammed down on the table. Again, the rest of the employees resisted the urge to gape.

Sandrine reached across and rested her hand on his fist. “We’ll work something out, I’m sure of it. Just give it a little time.” She smiled at him. “Right now, however, I need to get back before they decide I’m shirking. We’ll talk more when I’m home, though I’ll be late. It’s gym tonight.” She stood up, leaned across the table and gave him a peck on the cheek.

Rive, glowering, barely noticed.

* * *

The recruiter held a small plastic box, no more than five centimeters per side, near his stomach. He pressed a small button on the right side, and it cycled through pictures of three men. He stared at them, memorizing their faces, while the blue glow from the screen lit up the underside of his face.

“The entire personnel files, naturally, are in there, as well,” the man across the table said. Sunlight pierced through a fast-moving break in the clouds, and the small coffee shop, with its white latticework chairs and round glass tables, looked absurdly cozy. Steam lazily drifted up from their cups.

“What kind of recruitment are we looking at here? Straight or transitory?”

“Transitory,” the contact said, his face swallowed by the large mirrored lenses of his sunglasses.

“Really?”

“Really.”

“They’re ready for that?”

The contact shrugged. “Getting there. One of them is pretty much our man already, though of course he has no idea. The other two will come around.”

“What’s the timeframe?”

“Immediate. Make your first contact whenever you see fit.”

The recruiter scanned through the faces again. “It’ll take some time. Laying the groundwork. You know, developing the right approach.”

“Of course. We trust you to do what is necessary, and will compensate you for your time.”

The recruiter smiled. “Of course you will.”

Chapter Three

ALARION CITY, ALARION III

LYRAN COMMONWEALTH

18 JANUARY 2462

Lanai Singh pressed her nose against the glass and stared at the dress, a sleek and elegant dark silk ball gown, bias cut with lattice back. A month ago—a week ago, even—she would have bought it without question. Now she had to watch every penny. It was a hard transition for someone as used to luxury as she was. She sighed.

Sandrine’s hand came to rest on her shoulder. “Come on, Lan, best not to think about it.” Hooking her pale arm through Lanai’s much darker one, Sandrine guided her friend away from the window. “Damn Manvers for a cold bastard,” she muttered, pitched so only Lanai could here her. “Still, it would’ve looked good at Jen’s do.”

“Jennifer Searle is having a party? I hadn’t heard.” Lanai frowned.

“Oh. Yes. I think Sasha mentioned it in passing. Jen didn’t say anything to me directly, so, you know, I can’t be sure.” Sandrine spoke quickly, awkwardly. She was all too obviously trying to preserve Lanai’s feelings.

Lanai took one more longing look at the dress until Sandrine tugged her arm, forcing her away.

“Witch,” Lanai mumbled, meaning Jen. “You may have your blasted party without me. I’m getting used to it—there’s a lot of that going on.”

“There is,” Sandi replied. “We’re suddenly personae non grata. Guilty by association, thanks to the CEO’s little stunt. It’ll blow over.” She squeezed Lanai’s arm. “I hope.”

* * *

“Just fix it.”

The folder thumped onto Rive’s desk. He tried to glare a hole in the manager’s back as the officious little prick strode away, wishing for an instant that the anger he felt would transform into a PPC bolt and vaporize the bastard. Hell of a lot of nerve.

Before the leak, Rive’s team had been treated with a modicum of respect. Now, even though the leak had not been directly attributed to anyone, the fine made people assume they were guilty—careless at best, spies at worst. It had become de rigueur to dump thankless tasks on them. Refusing was hardly an option; their stock was that low.

He opened the dossier and gazed briefly at the contents before pushing it back across the desk. He stood and angrily marched out of his office, stomping down the short hall to the kitchenette. He poured a glass of water from the cooler and sipped it slowly while peering through the armored window into the technical bay. Elias was up to his elbows in the drive train of a light ’Mech that had been mangled by a rookie pilot, while young Daniel was hanging from a hoist, straining against the weight of the component Elias was working on. A far cry from Connor’s usual computers. Since returning to work, their former high-level tasks had been replaced with mundane servicing and grunt work. The skills they had spent years to acquire had seen little use.

Just like that piece of crap, Rive thought, looking at the crippled war machine. King of the battlefield now, pushing the damn Mariks back from world to world. Now it’s little more than scrap metal unless we can coax some life out of it again. Hell, my damn career is scrap metal—but I don’t have anyone coming to fix it.

He swallowed the last of his water and dropped the paper cup into the recycling bin. For a moment he stood in contemplation, then pulled on his overalls and keyed through the security door into the bay. At least he could do that without asking for permission. Of course, his entry into the secure space was logged, and the bay cameras were watching his every move, so it was not as if he could feel like he had been given a lot of trust.

He grabbed the hoist and indicated that Connor could take a break. The young man slowly released his grip on the cabling, making sure Rive had control of the bulky device. Myomers held the main weight, but manual pressure provided fine control. Connor slipped the remote into Rive’s top pocket.

“Fizz?” Connor asked.

Head lost in the mechanisms, Singh grunted. Rive shook his head, and the youth headed off for sugar and caffeine.

“How’s it look, Elias?”

“I’m surprised he was able to limp back to base. It’s a full-replace, I think—grease-monkey job.”

“Right.” Rive scowled. “I’d rather be back doing R&D and analysis than this. And we have two more lined up, by the way—DiMaggore just dropped them off.”

Singh swore. Gunther didn’t understand the language, but the meaning was clear, probably aspersions on the execs’ parentage. “Gods, will they ever give us a break?”

“I doubt it,” Rive replied. “Manvers seems to want us trampled.”

Singh threw up his hands. “Is the man such a child? What does he expect to gain from this? Does he think maybe one of us is harboring a guilty conscience and will step forward after enough mistreatment? Then one of us should confess already and end this misery.”

Rive stepped forward, anger moving him without thought. “Are you accusing us? I’m not confessing anything! I’m innocent, dammit!”

Singh’s eyes widened, and his jaw opened and shut before he could say anything. “No. Gods no, Gunther, that’s not what I meant. Of course I don’t think you had anything to do with the leak. It’s just the frustration talking—I want this to be over.”

Rive slumped, the anger leaving as quickly as it came. “I know, I know. I’m sorry, Elias. I overreacted. Come on, let’s forget it and get back to work.”

Singh nodded, and the two men continued on the menial tasks that now dominated their days.

29 JANUARY 2462

“This is getting beyond a joke,” Rive muttered, each word an effort. It was approaching midnight and he lay on his back, head in Sandrine’s lap and the pages of a technical report held before him. Sandrine looked down from her own sheaf of financial documents, then brushed back his hair. “A full day’s work, and then they dump these reports on us.”

“It goes with the management territory,” she sighed, removing her reading glasses and resting them atop her head like a barrette. “Particularly when the boss is pissed.”

“Or a sadist.”

“Same thing.” She smiled, but it was forced.

“I need to check my contract to see what it says about working hours. Manvers can’t expect a full day in the shop and then all this time on paperwork.”

“I believe the wording requires ‘all the hours required to carry out the duties of employment,’ or words to that effect. I’ll need to check the specifics, but that’s pretty much standard for AlarCorp.”

“So technically it’s all aboveboard.” He swore and threw the report across the room. It bounced off the bookcase and fell to the floor. “Bastard lawyers.”

Sandrine set her documents down gently on the arm of the sofa then, almost casually, cuffed him on the head.

“Ow! Present company excepted, of course.” She shifted her weight slightly, and Rive sat up and turned, a dark expression on his face. Sandrine returned his gaze impassively. “Sorry.”

“We ‘bastard lawyers’ are used to it.”

“Does saying ‘beautiful bastard lawyers’ make it better?” Rive said deadpan, leaning forward to peck her on the cheek. She pulled away, feigning affront, but a smile tugged at her lips. “Sorry,” he repeated. “It’s my own fault for not knowing what I signed my name to.”

“If I had a kroner for every time someone didn’t read an employment contract properly, I wouldn’t need to work here. There’s a reason companies employ smart—”

“—and pretty,” he interjected.

She grinned. “—and pretty people like myself.” She reached out and grasped his hands in hers, then leaned forward, resting her forehead against his. “To be honest, it’s not even the small print that gets most people. People read into things what they want—and sometimes suppose things are there that aren’t.”

“You lost me. Such as?”

“The number of days annual leave, their sick-day entitlement, the length of their notice period, that sort of thing. Can you tell me what your contract says about those?”

Rive blinked and sat back. “I get twenty days leave, seven holidays, am allowed about a week off sick, and have a notice period of a month.

“You’re certain?”

“Near as I recall. I don’t recall all the specifics.”

“Most people can’t, which is my point to some degree. You’ll be glad to know you got the holidays right, at least.”

He blinked. “And the rest?”

“The standard AlarCorp contract makes no provision regarding sick days and so the Commonwealth statutory minimums apply, which is ten working days per annum, though no more than three days at a time self-certified.”

“Fascinating,” he said, deadpan.

“Most people are ignorant of their entitlements and tend to drag themselves into work, saving the company a significant amount of sick pay. People’s ignorance used against them.” She disengaged her hands and reached down for the wine glass on the side table, taking a long sip.

Rive slumped back against the opposite arm of the sofa. “Ah, the joys of corporate life.”

“Yes. A lot of corporations are, at heart, greedy sociopaths, but AlarCorp sometimes seems particularly bad.”

“Didn’t use to be,” Rive said.

“Didn’t use to be for you,” Sandrine corrected. “You don’t notice how bad a sociopath is as long as you’re on their good side.”

“Sociopaths have a good side?”

“Everyone has a good side,” she said, and kissed his right cheek. “This is yours.”

“Flattery will get you almost anywhere,” he said, but then his face fell again. “Ah, dammit, sometimes I wish I could just leave the whole corp behind.”

“Then look around. You’re highly skilled, I imagine any number of companies would be happy to have you.”

“Right. Except I’ve got a non-compete clause in my contract, meaning I have to stay out of my field for a year after leaving AlarCorp—see, I read at least that part—and I’m pretty much completely broke after the fine Manvers leveled. Not to mention the fact that pretty much every supervisor I have at the moment would offer a toxic recommendation to anyone who asked. I’m as good as unemployable.”

“I probably shouldn’t mention the strategic occupations clause of your contract.”

“Strategic occupations?”

“Strategic occupations. Even if you tried to quit, Manvers could call on his government contacts and claim you were a key asset of the corporation.”

“Like that shows,” he interrupted sarcastically.

“Well, he can jerk your chain as much as he wants, knowing there’s little you can do about it.

“So I’m screwed. We’re screwed—Singh and Connor with me.”

“Don’t give up,” Sandrine said. “You never know—something could happen that turns the whole situation around.”

Rive noticed, though, that she didn’t offer any suggestions about what that “something” might be.

Chapter Four

ALARION CITY, ALARION III

LYRAN COMMONWEALTH

12 FEBRUARY 2462

It was a Sunday, and Rive had a few hours in the afternoon where he didn’t have to think about work. Sandrine was off with friends, leaving him an afternoon of solitude. He’d been looking forward to this all week. He’d selected the perfect spot for lunch, a place that had warm sandwiches, cold beer, and every sport in the galaxy on holovid. The décor was subtle and understated, wood paneling and some football memorabilia, allowing the holovid action to stand out that much more.

He got a table for himself, ordered enough fried appetizers to cause cardiac arrest in an entire platoon, and happily watched the action all around him. He would have felt completely content, except he knew this was only a brief window in his otherwise oppressive daily life.

He was halfway through his appetizers and already working on his second beer when a tall man in a dark raincoat ambled toward his table. Rive watched him suspiciously, disliking the man on sight. His black hair was too slick, his young face too chiseled, his bearing too confident. He looked like all the up-and-coming managers who had been treating him like nuclear waste for the past month or two. Yet for some reason, he was walking toward Rive’s table.

“Hey, buddy,” the tall man said. “Place is pretty crowded today. Mind if I take a seat here?”

Rive looked around to confirm that most every table was, in fact, full. He shrugged, hoping the noncommittal gesture would discourage the man. It didn’t.

“Thanks, pal. Which game are you watching?”

“All of them,” Rive grunted.

The man laughed. “Okay. Let me see if I can keep up.”

He kept his eyes moving from screen to screen, occasionally asking about action from earlier in each game. Rive provided him with curt answers.

“Well, I gotta hand it to you, Gunther,” the man finally said. “Your mind doesn’t miss a step. Can’t say I’m surprised, though.”

Rive dropped the hunk of fried cheese he’d been gnawing on. He purposefully hadn’t mentioned his name to the man, yet the stranger was talking like he was quite familiar with him. Crap, he thought. Even my relaxation time gets screwed up.

He eyed the stranger suspiciously. “Do I know you?”

“No. For the time being, though, you can call me Johnny.”

“Johnny, huh? Clever alias.”

The man tilted his head. “It’ll serve its purpose. What you have to understand is, I can’t be talking to you. So it’s better that you don’t know my name, because then, as far as you know, you’ve never spoken to me.”

“Uh-huh,” Rive said. He would have been convinced the man was a crackpot, except he’d known his name. Part of him felt like taking a quick walk out of the restaurant, but he had a huge hoagie coming to his table in a matter of minutes. And the man, though possibly crazy, seemed fairly harmless.

“Now, there’s something else I should tell you about the conversation we’re about to have,” Johnny said. “In the course of it, I will not make you any offers. I will not offer any guarantees. I will only offer some advice that I firmly believe you should follow. That’s it.”

“Okay,” Rive said, thoroughly bemused.

“Let me tell you first that I know what’s happened to you at AlarCorp. I also know you’re extremely talented and your abilities are being wasted. I think that’s a shame.”

“Yeah, you and me both.”

“I know each and every clause in your contract that’s making it difficult for you to end your misery by seeking employment elsewhere.”

“How do you—”

“Standard AlarCorp contract—I’ve seen a million of them,” Johnny interrupted. “Since I know what’s in your contract, I also know what you need. You need someone who knows your situation, knows your abilities, knows just what you need to get out, and has the resources to provide it.”

“And you’re that person?”

Johnny smiled. “No, no, no. I’m just a guy in a restaurant giving you some friendly advice.”

“Which is?”

“You’re in a growth field. There will be more and more jobs in your area in the future. Some of them will be—some of them are—on Alarion. I realize you have a non-compete clause in your contract. Twelve months, right? So do something else for twelve months. Find another job. If I were a betting man—and, in fact, I am—I would wager that by the end of the twelve months, you’d have a fine offer waiting for you.”

The beer dulled Rive’s senses a little, but not so much that he didn’t get the gist of what Johnny was saying. Given his current situation, a new offer—any offer—had appeal. But, of course, strangers were generally not to be trusted.

“And what happens during those twelve months?” Rive asked, playing along for a little while longer. “I’m not employable in my actual area of expertise, and I come with baggage and a whole sheaf of negative references. Who’s going to pay my way for that year?”

Johnny smiled. “An excellent question. Naturally, I can’t answer it directly. All I can do is…”

“…give me advice, I know. Go ahead.”

Johnny reached into his coat and pulled out a news flimsy. A large ad had been circled several times in red. The headline read “Business and Engineering Job Fair.”

“Go there,” Johnny said.

“A job fair? What am I, a graduate student?”

“Look, you don’t know me. You don’t trust me, which is good, because I’m just a guy who walked up to your table in a restaurant. But all I’m doing is giving you advice. Go to the job fair. You want to know if you can trust me? Go to the job fair. Find out.”

Johnny stood, leaving the flimsy on the table. “Keep it. Oh, and you should show it to your friends, Singh and Connor. Nice meeting you, Gunther.” He walked away.

Rive didn’t bother watching him go. Stark raving nutters, he thought. One for the record books. But when he left two hours later, he took the flimsy with him.

13 FEBRUARY 2462

Elias Singh slumped forward, elbows resting on the table and fingers massaging his temple. It appeared that he might remain in that position indefinitely, as he didn’t move when Rive deposited three cold, wet bottles on the worn table.

McNeil’s, a pub one or two precarious steps above a dive, wasn’t their usual venue, but that was the point. It was away from AlarCorp, a place where they usually weren’t seen, and noisy enough that they wouldn’t be overheard.

“Another triumphant day of work, eh, boys?” Rive said.

Singh snorted. “I’m starting to believe we’re a day or two away from being asked to scrub toilets.”

Connor looked more energetic than Singh, but his expression was just as dour. “Scrubbing toilets would be a relief. At least we’d have a clear sense of purpose, and we’d be doing a job we knew was useful. I’ve done mundane—I worked in fast food when I was at college—but this is different. It’s malicious. Deliberate.” The youngster looked atypically serious. “Hell, there are moments I wish we had leaked the info. Then we’d at least have gotten some sort of reward for this, rather than simply being persecuted because someone wants a scapegoat.”

“There’s an old phrase: ‘may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.’” Elias agreed. “There are moments I feel the same.”

Rive looked at them warily. “That could be construed as treason against the Commonwealth. Or breach of contract against AlarCorp, if nothing else.”

“Well, pardon my Kuritan, but screw AlarCorp, and screw the Commonwealth if this is how honest, hardworking people are treated!” Elias was more animated than Rive had ever seen him.

“Right,” Rive said. “Okay. This is why I wanted to talk to you about my lunch yesterday.”

Singh and Connor exchanged dubious glances, but their frowns eased somewhat and their brows de-furrowed as Rive told them about his meeting with Johnny.

“It sounds like this guy Johnny’s been watching too many spy holovids, with this cloak-and-dagger act,” Connor said. “I wouldn’t give him a single kroner of credibility.”

“But he knew my name. That has to mean something—I don’t know what, but it’s something.”

“I do not think it means we have to trust him.” Singh said.

“No. I don’t think so, either.” Rive pulled out the flimsy Johnny had left him. “But there’s this. A quick and easy way to look into Johnny’s advice. The way I see it is, there’s a very slim chance that he actually knows what he’s talking about. And if he does—well, it could be our ticket out. I think, for that chance, I’ll go ahead and stick my head in a job fair.”

Singh nodded slowly, but Connor still did not appear convinced. “I don’t know,” he said. “Could be a trap.”

“Who would want to trap us? Why?”

Connor thought long and hard and came up with nothing. He just shrugged.

“All right. This is what I wanted to tell you—I’m going to this. For the hell of it. You can come with me if you want.”

Neither Connor nor Singh was ready to say they’d be there, but the fair was only five days away, and Rive thought that a few more workdays would help make up their minds.

Chapter Five

ALARION CITY CONVENTION CENTER

ALARION CITY, ALARION III

LYRAN COMMONWEALTH

17 FEBRUARY 2462

Rive felt quite old. Connor, by contrast, seemed to enjoy fitting right in, and had started conversations with a significant number of attractive young ladies as the three men wandered the floor.

Interactive kiosks and wide holovid screens filled the entire large room with flashing lights and blaring noise. The ordinary people beneath these displays were almost invisible in the glare of the lights.

While Connor seemed to be enjoying himself, Singh and Rive had spent most of their time in the middle of the convention floor wondering what they were supposed to be doing.

“Are we supposed to find someone?” Singh asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Is someone supposed to find us?”

“I don’t know.”

They stood around for another ten minutes. Nothing happened.

“Perhaps we should walk around,” Singh suggested.

“Okay,” Rive said. “We can’t do much worse. I’ll separate Connor from that brunette.”

Once Connor was free, they made a slow circuit around the floor, talking to the occasional recruiter just in case someone on the floor had something to tell them. After an hour, they’d found no reason for them to be at the fair at all.

“Any job can pay you,” a speaker at a small booth was saying as the three men approached. “Many jobs can be rewarding. There are only a few jobs, though, that allow you to earn a living while strengthening your country.”

About eight people surrounded the speaker, and most of them nodded in agreement. The speaker had his hooks in.

“When you work for Stanislaw Consultants, you work for our men and women on the front lines. We consult on every matter critical to their livelihood—transporting food, ammunition, and other supplies, managing shipping lines, dealing with personnel issues—if it’s relevant to today’s military, we work on it. If you are lucky enough to be one of us, you will become a vital part of the war effort, working hand in hand with our brave military.”

Rive smiled. It was a pretty good sales pitch—all the man was offering was a desk job that most likely involved reviewing endless invoices and supply lists, but he was making it sound like the next best thing to piloting a ’Mech on the front lines.

He jerked his head, telling the other two it was time to move on. Unfortunately, Singh and Connor had already been pinned by another Stanislaw recruiter. Connor shifted restlessly, left foot to right and back again, while Singh managed to hide his impatience a little better. Rive walked over to see if he could rescue him.

“I think you gentlemen will find we have openings for people with a wide variety of skills and experience. Our company’s operations are as broad as the war effort itself.”

“Yes, yes, I’m sure it is,” Singh said. “Unfortunately we are somewhat pressed for time at the moment. If you could, perhaps, leave us a brochure…”

The recruiter beamed. “Certainly! Certainly, gentlemen. One for both of you.” He handed a small brochure with an impressive holographic version of the Stanislaw logo, a DropShip passing in front of a misshapen moon, on the cover. “And one for your friend,” the recruiter said as Rive approached, handing him another brochure.

“Thanks,” Rive said, and pulled the other two away.

One hundred meters past the Stanislaw booth, they passed a trashcan. Connor dropped his brochure inside.

Three steps later, Rive stopped dead in his tracks. “Connor. Go back. Get your brochure.”

“From the trash? You want me to dig through the trash?”

“Get it!”

Connor shrugged and retrieved the brochure.

“Open it,” Rive said.

Connor did as he was told, and his eyes widened. Singh did the same.

“Do you all have the same note?” Rive asked.

They compared brochures. They all had a note in small, tight handwriting written on the bottom. Rive’s brochure had his name at the top of the note—the other two had their own names. Below that, there was a brief job description: “Goodwill Ambassador. Twelve-month contract. No experience required. Duties at the discretion of the employee.” Rive figured that was business-speak for “you can do whatever you want.”

Below that were two figures, one for annual salary, one for a signing bonus. Both were implausibly handsome.

The final line had contact information for someone named Emile Morton, with a note saying, “Tell him Johnny sent you.”

19 FEBRUARY 2462

“When something seems too good to be true, there tends to be a perfectly good reason for it,” Lanai Singh said. “Going down that road is just asking for trouble. I would have nothing more to do with it.”

“Part of me agrees with Lanai,” Sandrine said. “But there could be reasons for a legitimate company to behave this way.”

They had gathered for a conference of war in Rive’s apartment—Rive, Connor, Singh, Lanai, and Sandrine. From the beginning, Rive was inclined to write off the whole incident as some underhanded scheme that was likely to do him more harm than good, but he couldn’t just dismiss it on his own. He was hoping his friends and coworkers would reinforce his instincts and encourage him to do what he should do—forget the whole thing.

So far, except for Lanai, it wasn’t working that way.

“We should call,” Connor said. He was the only one standing, and he wasn’t still for more than five seconds at a time. He had circled Rive’s living room at least a dozen times. “What’s the harm in calling? These guys know something about us, and they want us. Why not find out what’s going on?”

“And Stanislaw is a legitimate organization,” Sandrine said. “Pretty good track record, long-standing contract with the military, unblemished reputation.”

“But why would they want to pay a bunch of engineers to do whatever we wanted?”

“That’s a good question,” Sandrine said. “But I may have an answer. Stanislaw has some pretty strong ties to Coventry Defense Conglomerate. I’ve actually found a number of people who have moved back and forth between the two companies. It could be that Stanislaw is recruiting you to employ you until your non-compete clause is up, then they’ll pass you along to CDC, and you’ll be back to doing the jobs you’re trained for.”

She tapped her finger on the side of her empty glass, becoming more animated. “In fact, as I think about it, that makes more sense. If you try to go anywhere, AlarCorp might invoke the strategic occupations clause in the contract. But then Stanislaw comes back and shows that you’re vital to the war effort if you’re working for them, too. Either way, you’re crucial. So AlarCorp loses its leverage.”

“So CDC is behind this?” Singh said the corporation’s initials with near-reverence. Technically, they were already CDC employees—AlarCorp was a CDC subsidiary—but the two operations had completely different sets of management, and often operated more like competitors than cousins.

“Could be,” Sandrine said. “That would explain the subterfuge. The companies have a strict agreement about tampering with each other’s employees. Manvers would not be happy if he discovered CDC was poaching his engineers, and we all know what an unhappy Manvers is like.”

The three men nodded vigorously.

“The trouble is,” Rive said, “we can’t prove what’s happening. What Sandrine says sounds credible, but I could design at least a half-dozen equally credible scenarios that end up with us getting royally screwed by this Johnny guy. And I don’t know how to prove what’s actually happening.”

“You don’t have to prove anything,” Lanai said. “As long as there’s such a large chance that this entire offer is not on the level, you should have nothing to do with it. You should not consider it any longer.” She folded her arms tightly, doing her best to demonstrate that she thought the matter was closed.

Sandrine’s brow was creased in thought, though—she may not have registered anything Lanai said. “You know, I’ve dealt with CDC before. I know some people over there. Of course, no one will say anything for certain, but…well, I think I could get a decent idea of whether this is on the level.”

Lanai looked around frantically, for the first time understanding that she might not win this debate. “No. No! It shouldn’t go any further! No inquiries! This is a crazy risk!”

But the three men had seen the figures written in their brochures. And they’d all imagined what this Stanislaw Consultants job might be like compared to what they were doing now.

They all turned to Sandrine.

Chapter Six

STANISLAW CONSULTANTS HEADQUARTERS

ALARION CITY, ALARION III

LYRAN COMMONWEALTH

8 JUNE 2462

It was a wonderful job. Hell, it wasn’t a job—it was a wonderful paid vacation. Rive reported to no one. He watched sports on his terminal more often than he did anything that could be called work. He even had a comfortable office chair.

Connor was having as much fun as he was, perhaps more. He had become a feared competitor in several virtual gaming arenas, and his index fingers and thumbs often twitched when he was away from his terminal. Only Singh seemed restless in the new job, impatient for actual work instead of a full year of filling a meaningless title.

Rive was more patient. He’d used his learning and knowledge to the best of his ability for several years at AlarCorp, and it had landed him, for a time at least, at the bottom of the corporate junk heap. He was ready for a break.

He came home each night with a bounce in his step. Sandrine had jokingly complained about it once.

“I think you’re just rubbing it in,” she said. “You know I’m still working under Manvers’s whip, and you just like to rub it in that you’re living free and easy.”

“It’s your own fault,” he had told her. “I was ready to let this whole offer fall by the wayside. You were the one who convinced us it might be on the level. Without you, we probably wouldn’t have gone ahead at all.”

Sandrine had grimaced. “Don’t remind me.”

In truth, Rive could tell that Sandrine was happy with his job change. In his last few months at AlarCorp, he was fairly certain that he’d been a complete bastard to live with. Sulky, churlish, barely able to go for ten minutes without complaining about work in some way or another. Now he didn’t talk about work at all, which was quite easy considering that he almost never did any actual work.

It was a good life. It would get old, he was sure—he didn’t believe he could spend the rest of his life without performing some useful function or another—but for now it was extremely pleasant. If Sandrine really knew what she was talking about, in a little less than a year he should be getting an exciting new offer right in his field. And to this point, all her guesses had been right on the money.

MECHANICAL ENGINEERING DIVISION, COVENTRY DEFENSE CONGLOMERATE

14 MAY 2463

“I’ll be honest, we went back and forth about whether to keep the three of you together,” Winthrop said as he led Rive down the clean white corridors of Coventry Defense Conglomerate’s Alarion facility. He walked with an awkward bounce in his step. “We think you have a lot to teach us, and some of us thought it might be better to spread your knowledge across various teams. In the end, though, we couldn’t get away from the success you three had working as a unit. In my experience, when you find a group like that, you don’t break it up. So, as long as it’s acceptable to you, we’ll reunite you with your old team.”

Rive grinned like a child on Christmas. “That’s perfectly acceptable.”

Winthrop fumbled with a doorknob, then successfully turned it and led Rive into a large office filled with state-of-the-art workstations, ’Mech models, three desks, and anything else his heart might desire. A long window looked over the vast production floor, where sparks flew, joints were coupled, gears were greased, and the multi-pronged business of CDC went forward.

Connor and Singh were already there. Both smiled broadly and walked toward Rive, hands extended. He was having none of that—he brushed their hands aside and grabbed each man in a hug.

They hadn’t seen much of each other for most of their time at Stanislaw. Their individual interests had pushed them apart, and with no joint projects to work on, they ran into each other less and less. Rive had actually started feeling guilty whenever he saw Singh, as his coworker’s palpable hunger for real labor reminded Rive of his own indolence. Now, though, they were all together, all on the job, and there was no reason to feel awkward about anything.

“There’s one more person I’d like you to meet,” Winthrop was saying, pushing his thin voice above the din of the happy reunion. “Mr. Russell Schwieger from Human Resources will be helping you get oriented and acclimated to the way we work here.”

As if on cue, a tall figure appeared at the door to the office. His dark hair was slicked back, his grin was blindingly white, and even though Rive had only met him once in his life for a few brief minutes, he would never forget the man’s face. He stepped forward, extended his hand, and almost called the man “Johnny.”

“Mr. Schwieger?” he said instead.

“Yes. You must be Gunther Rive.” Schwieger grabbed his hand, his smile wide, his eyes knowing, but his voice not betraying a hint that he’d ever met Rive before in his life. “I can’t tell you how happy we are to have you working with us.”

* * *

As the first week at CDC wound down, Rive hadn’t found anything to dampen his enthusiasm for his new job. His immediate supervisor, Herman Winthrop, had made it clear that he thought too much hands-on leadership interfered with creativity and progress. Naturally, he’d like Rive to keep him apprised of what the team was working on and what kind of progress they were making, but a quick note written at the end of each week would be sufficient.

That left Rive, Singh, and Connor to play with the considerable stack of toys they had inherited. Other teams seemed almost absurdly eager to share their ideas and plans with Rive’s team, and in one week he felt he’d made more progress than he had during the entire last six months of his time at AlarCorp. Each evening, he came home bubbling to Sandrine about his latest ideas.

“You understand that only about a tenth of what you’re saying makes any sense to me, don’t you?” Sandrine said one night. “You can tell me that you put legs on a ’Mech to make it walk, but anything more technical than that, and I’m lost.”

Rive smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry. I’m sure I’ve been difficult to put up with recently. It’s just that…God! Compared to what we’re doing now, AlarCorp seems like it’s some relic from the Stone Age! Of course I knew the power of the things we were working on—I knew they’d dominate any field they were dropped into—but I never realized the future these things have in front of them. The possibilities! What they’ll be able to do someday…” He could only shake his head in wonder. “It’ll make what we have now look like scrap metal.”

“Well, you’ve hit the big time,” Sandrine said, at least half-sincerely. “All I ask is that as you continue your glorious march through technological history, you remember that you wouldn’t be there if I hadn’t talked you into it.”

He pulled her to his side. “I owe everything I have to you,” he said, and kissed her firmly on the cheek. “Everything.”

Chapter Seven

PRISON FACILITY

ALARION CITY, ALARION III

LYRAN COMMONWEALTH

24 NOVEMBER 2463

He never knew there could be so many shades of gray. The metal counter in front of him was a dark, steely gray. The chair he sat in was lighter, the gray of clouds that could only muster a drizzle. The window in front of him, shot through with strands and fibers to make it unbreakable, was almost white but not quite, so it put a grayish cast on all objects seen through it. His jumpsuit was the bland gray of metal primer. And the receiver in his hand was two shades darker than his suit, one shade lighter than the counter.

The only color Rive saw was Sandrine, sitting on the other side of the glass, wearing dark green and burgundy, blue eyes wide, her hand clutching a receiver as gray as Rive’s. He tried to picture how she looked on happier days—like any from the past half year. Until everything had fallen apart. Until yesterday.

“You need someone better than me,” she was saying.

“There’s no one better.”

She shook her head fiercely. “No. I know contracts law. What you’re into now…I don’t have any experience. At all. I don’t even know anybody who does this.”

“Could you ask around?” Rive unsuccessfully tried to keep the desperation out of his voice. “Someone’s must know someone who can help me.”

“Of course. Of course.” There was a pause. Sandrine’s lips trembled, her eyes moistened.

“Sandi. Don’t. Please don’t.”

“Sorry. I’m sorry. It’s just…God, Gun, what’s going on?”

“I don’t know. I wish I did.”

“Treason, Gun. They’re talking about charges of treason. They’re making Manvers look like an absolute pussycat!”

“Look, Manvers would have done the same if he could have proved anything. He just couldn’t.”

“Are you saying Coventry can?” Sandi said. “Do they have proof?”

Rive leaped to his feet. “No!” he yelled. “Of course not! There is no proof! I didn’t do anything!”

“Rive!” yelled a guard from the end of the room. “Settle down!”

Rive took a deep breath and sat back down.

Sandrine was crying freely now. “Sorry, Gun, sorry, I know, I know…”

“No, no, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled. You’ve done everything for me, I know you wouldn’t accuse me of anything. It’s just…” He ran his hands over the stubble where, until this morning, his hair had been. “How could this happen? How could this happen again?”

“I don’t know. But I’ll find someone, Gun. I’ll find someone. We’ll work it out. Hang in there, okay? I need you to hang in there until I figure out how I can help you.”

“Okay. Okay, Sandi. I will.”

They hung up their receivers, and the guard came to escort Rive out, leading him to the five completely different shades of gray that made up his cramped prison cell, a barren room where all he could to was think about how his life had turned into a repeating nightmare that was worse the second time around.

26 NOVEMBER 2463

Two days later, his new lawyer came by and was able to meet Rive in a private room. The walls were painted beige—just that fact alone, that the lawyer had been able to expose him to some color, made Rive trust her. She wore a brown pinstriped suit, dark hair coiled in a tight bun at the top of her neck. She had the long, gaunt face of an endurance runner, or a greyhound.

“Mr. Rive, I’m Claudia Thorne. I’d say I’m glad to meet you, but such words tend to ring hollow in these circumstances.”

“Yeah,” Rive said.

“I hope you’ll forgive me if I forego small talk and get right to business.”

“Of course. I insist on it.”

“Fine. Naturally, the first matter of business is getting you out of here. You’ll be arraigned tomorrow, and I believe I should be able to get an affordable bail. You have no record, you have ties to the area—you haven’t been off-planet for decades, correct?”

Rive nodded.

“And the affair at AlarCorp won’t come up. Thankfully, it is not a matter of public record, and the executives are eager to keep it private. I doubt it will be discussed in this case, and even if the prosecution tried, I would argue it is irrelevant, since there was no finding of any actual guilt on your part.”

“Okay. So that means…”

“That means, assuming all goes as I believe it will, you’ll be back at home tomorrow afternoon.”

Rive exhaled, letting out more air than he realized he had been holding. “Okay. Good.”

“Fine. Next matter of business—getting you a separate trial.”

“Excuse me?”

“You do not want to be tried jointly with Mr. Singh and Mr. Connor. You should ask for a separate trial.”

“Why? We’re a team. We stand together.”

“Your loyalty is admirable,” Thorne said, though the tight frown running across her lips indicated that she felt otherwise. “However, I’d like you to remember the facts. You were on a team with those two men at AlarCorp, and there was a leak. Then you formed a new team with them at CDC—and there was a leak. A leak far more damaging than the first had been.”

“What are you saying?”

Thorne sighed. “Mr. Rive, I believe it’s time you started giving serious consideration to the possibility that one of your colleagues may be guilty.”

“No!” Rive hit the table so hard that pain shot through his arm. “I’ll never consider that! Dan and Eli are like family to me! How could I suspect one of them?”

“Just look around, Mr. Rive. Look at where your ‘family’ has put you, first at AlarCorp, then here. All I ask is that you consider it.”

Rive fumed. He remained angry through the rest of the conversation with Thorne, barely hearing most of what she said as she reviewed the preliminary case against him. He continued fuming as he was led down the sterile hallway into his drab cell.

Then he had a long, quiet night to think it over.

8 DECEMBER 2463

The pounding at his door had been going on for five minutes. Rive had almost reached over to turn off the lights, but then remembered that would be a sure sign that someone was home.

“Gunther!” Knock knock knock knock. “Gunther! Look, I know you’re in there. I saw you walk in. I just want to talk, okay? Just open the door.”

Rive looked helplessly at Sandrine. She shrugged. He was hunched by the couch, pushing an end table against the wall as he tried to stay out the view of any windows. She had hidden behind a potted forsythia that, in truth, provided little coverage.

“GUNTHER !” Knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock.

Rive sighed, stood, and walked to the door. He didn’t open it, though.

“All right, Dan,” he said. “All right. I’m here. What do you want?”

“Open the door, Gunther,” Connor said.

“Not at the moment. Tell me what you want.”

“I want to talk. About what you did. You have your own lawyer? A separate trial? And we haven’t heard from you for weeks. What are you doing?”

“I’m lining up my defense, Dan. That’s all.”

“The hell! Getting a separate trial isn’t just ‘lining up your defense.’ It’s the first step to trying to pin the blame on one of us, isn’t it? You’re going to try to make one of us take the fall for you!”

“No, Dan, of course not.”

“Then why won’t you open your door!” Connor renewed his pounding.

Rive took a deep breath. “Look, Dan, this isn’t the kind of conversation we should be having without our lawyers!” he yelled so Dan could hear him above the pounding.

The noise abruptly stopped. “Lawyers, Gun? We have to talk through lawyers now?”

“No, no, of course not, Dan. It’s just…when we’re talking about this whole leak thing, about our trials, yeah, we should have the lawyers involved. But we can talk about anything else together. If you want to come in, that’s fine, we can talk about whatever you want. Just not the trial.”

Connor didn’t respond. Rive peered through the peephole and saw Connor’s back as his friend strode quickly away.

He turned, head hanging. He wished he had adequate answers for Dan. He wished he knew what was going on, what had happened, so he could make some decisions that he knew were right and fair. But he didn’t know anything. So he was left to take advice from Thorne, who seemed like she knew what she was talking about. And now he was on the verge of losing Eli and Dan as friends; after all, they’d gone through together. He was helpless, buffeted and pushed by forces far bigger, far stronger, and far more mysterious than anything he understood.

He pulled himself out of his sorrowful reverie long enough to see Sandrine still crouched behind the bush, peering around the leaves, wondering what was going to happen next.

He smiled, but there was no happiness in it. “You can come out now.”

KELLY, LANGSTON, AND THORNE LAW FIRM

21 DECEMBER 2463

Claudia Thorne had called half an hour ago and asked Rive to come to her office as soon as possible. He had asked if later that afternoon was okay, and she had paused briefly, then repeated that she’d like to see him as soon as possible. He left for her office immediately.

The law firm of Kelly, Langston, and Thorne took up a quarter of one floor of an old warehouse. The brick walls were worn, but the wooden floors were polished and new, the doors were thick glass, and both the artwork and the receptionist looked very expensive indeed.

“I’m here to see Claudia Thorne,” he told the receptionist. “I’m Gunther Rive.”

“Of course, Mr. Rive,” the receptionist said, his voice like cool velvet. “Please proceed back and to your left.”

Thorne was waiting for him, sitting behind her desk, hands clenched and twisting back and forth. She stood and unclenched them to shake Rive’s hand, then renewed the twisting.

“The prosecution has sent me some files,” she said, as usual dispensing with any non-business talk. “There’s trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Take a look.” She pushed some printouts in front of him. “CDC likes to keep track of the flow of data within the company. Each time a file is moved or copied, it’s given a stamp to show where it’s been and where it’s going. Naturally, CDC doesn’t advertise this feature heavily to its employees, and only a few people within the company know how to access the stamp. Now, these printouts all have the stamp revealed, there in the lower-right corner. The last number in the list indicates the final CDC computer to hold this information.”

“Okay,” Rive said.

“This is all leaked data that is now in the hands of the authorities. Notice that in each case, the number at the bottom is the same.”

Rive nodded.

“Mr. Rive, that number corresponds to the portable computer issued for your use.”

Rive’s head spun. His legs shook. Sweat broke out on his forehead, but his chest felt ice cold. The world beneath him felt like it was trying to throw him off.

Thorne waited while he absorbed the impact, remaining still in her chair. Apparently comforting distressed clients was not one of the services she offered.

When Rive was finally composed, she said, “I’m afraid that’s not all. I’d like you to take a look at this letter.”

It was on AlarCorp letterhead, and it was signed by Desmond Manvers. Rive was too dizzy to make much sense of it. It seemed to be saying something about “patriotic duty,” and “Doing what’s best for the Commonwealth even though it may not be what’s best for AlarCorp.”

“What’s this mean?” he gasped.

“It means the prosecution somehow convinced Manvers to testify. He’ll talk about the leak from AlarCorp, their investigation into it, and why you were punished.”

“I thought you said that was irrelevant!”

“They’re arguing it shows your character. The judge seems sympathetic.”

“Oh my God,” Rive said. He could barely open his mouth—it was so dry, all of its parts were sticking together. “Oh my God.”

“I know it looks bad,” Thorne said. “And let me be clear—it is bad. Very bad. Which is why I’d like you to listen to an acquaintance of mine.”

Thorne pressed a button on her desk. “Send in Mr. Smith, please.”

Rive’s head suddenly felt heavy. He lowered it into his hands, closed his eyes, and waited for the world to stop spinning. It seemed to help. Vaguely. After a minute or two, he was able to raise his head.

Standing next to Thorne was Russell Schwieger. Johnny. Looking elegant as ever in a purple silk shirt with a dark blue cravat.

“Mr. Rive, I’d like you to meet Mr. John Smith.”

Rive tried to laugh, but only three dry coughs came out. “John Smith? Please.”

Smith—Johnny—shrugged. “Names are tools, used when needed. That one will do for now.”

Rive looked at Thorne. “You know him? For how long? What do you know about him?”

Thorne pursed her lips. It might have been a smile, but Rive couldn’t be sure. He’d never seen her smile before.

“I’m afraid that falls under attorney-client privilege,” she said.

“Sorry to hear about what happened,” Johnny said. “Bad luck. I had high hopes for you at that job.”

“Yeah,” Rive wheezed. “I’ll bet you did.”

“Now, you’re in a bad spot,” Johnny said. “You’re going to be convicted. The press is well on its way to prejudging you and making sure you get an unfriendly jury, and the evidence Ms. Thorne has just showed you is more than enough to make them send you up the river. Or just up a few steps to the hangman. Whichever.” Johnny smiled, though Rive didn’t find anything he was saying remotely funny.

“So you have a choice,” Johnny continued. “Stay here. Continue on the course you’re on. Rush toward execution. Or get out. Now.”

“Now? Out? Where?”

“You’ll come with me. I can get you off-planet and far away. Well out of the reach of any authorities, local, Lyran, or otherwise.”

“You’ll take me foreign.”

“Correct. Consider it a transfer—you’ve actually been working for my country covertly for quite some time. Now you’ll just be doing it openly.”

Rive shook his head. “No. No.”

“It’s that or death.”

Rive slumped, defeated. “Death, then.”

“Perhaps I should make myself clearer. Death for you. Death for Elias Singh. Death for Daniel Connor.”

Rive reared back with sudden life. “They didn’t do anything! Your ‘evidence’ only implicates me, not them! Leave them out of it!”

“Mr. Rive, you forget who I am—Russell Schwieger of CDC Human Resources. I have a large number of resources in the company. If I need evidence linking the two of them to your leak, I’m certain I’ll be able to find it.”

“Create it, you mean.”

Johnny shrugged lightly. “Whatever. And I’m sure Desmond Manvers would be happy to smear all three of you equally with his testimony.”

Rive collapsed back into the chair. Lanai had been right. His instincts, so long ago, had been right. When something sounded too good to be true…

“Why are you even bothering with me? ” he said, voice sagging. “You’ve got plenty of access already, don’t you? You’ve been in CDC longer than me. Why bother with me? ”

“Ah, I have plenty of access to human-resource matters and a few other areas I’ve managed to poke my way into,” Johnny said. “The tech files, though, are a tougher nut to crack. And then there’s the interpretation of them. We could read them day and night, but we’re having trouble finding people who can build the things. And this kind of job is a little too important to trust to rookies.”

Well, at least someone values my skills, Rive thought bitterly. It didn’t make him feel any better.

“Now, if you’re smart enough to take the lifeline I’m offering, you’ll do more than just survive,” Johnny continued. “You’ll prosper. Your own offices. Your own team. A salary beyond your imagination. No more pesky leaks. And similar offers are being extended to Mr. Singh and Mr. Connor—they might even decide to join you.”

There was only one thing left to say. “Sandi…”

“The stroke of fairest fortune for you,” Johnny said brightly. “I already had the opportunity to talk to your friend Sandrine and discuss the situation with her. She expressed her desire to go wherever you go.”

Of course she did, Rive thought. Of course she did.

MERCHANT-CLASS JUMPSHIP PINNACLE

ZENITH JUMP POINT, ALARION SYSTEM

LYRAN COMMONWEALTH

21 DECEMBER 2463

It was still the same day. Rive couldn’t really believe it. It was the day that had ended his life. Johnny said there was a new life waiting for him light years away, but he couldn’t believe that. He felt dead. But his heart ignorantly beat on.

Alarion was fading behind him. He probably could have found some sort of window—either an actual view or some sort of vid—but he didn’t want to. Instead, he sat in a cabin that was only slightly better appointed than his jail cell. There was a flimsy metal end table, a cracked plastic coffee table, and a couch and two chairs whose upholstery felt like burlap.

He was on a merchant vessel of the Federated Suns. He didn’t know how he had gotten clearance to be on it. He didn’t know how he got past spaceport security. Johnny had done it. Johnny had been planning this day for a long time.

Sandi was supposed to be on the ship somewhere, but in the chaos of his rush on board and the hurried takeoff, he hadn’t been able to see her. Now that they were away, though, Johnny had promised he would find her and bring her to Rive.

The door to his cabin opened, and she was there. Her hair was out of place. Her blouse was untucked in the back. But her eyes were calm, while he imagined his were dancing like marbles in an earthquake.

She ran to him, embracing him for a long time. Neither of them spoke. Finally, she pushed back.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” she said. “I just…I can’t believe it. But we’ll find a way through.”

“Yes, we…yes, I’m sure that…” But Rive couldn’t keep up the charade. “Who are you really?”

She blinked rapidly, looking confused. “What?”

“Your name. Is it really Sandrine? Is at least that much true?”

“I don’t—”

He slammed his hand down on the end table, leaving a fist-shaped dent that buckled the entire piece. The force of the blow surprised even him. “The leaked files came from my computer! You convinced me to take the Stanislaw job, to trust ‘Johnny’! You set me up with Claudia Thorne, who happened to know Johnny! I was dumb enough not to see it until now, but I’m certainly not dumb enough to keep pretending. Now what the hell is your real name?”

She sighed. “Sandrine… My name really is Sandrine. And I’m really from Skye.”

“What planet?”

“Zaniah. It was a League world. Most of my family died when the Commonwealth took it. We still remember.”

He took a deep, rattling breath. “Well, you’re going to get them back. You’re going to get them back plenty, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” she said, and her voice carried a bitter edge he had never heard before, but an edge, he now knew, that had been pushing her all the years he had known her.

“And me…and us?” It was a meaningless, insignificant question given everything else that was going on. But he had to ask it.

“We were necessary,” she said flatly, but then her face softened somewhat. “But I spent a long time with you. I couldn’t…go that long without something genuine being there. I suppose.”

He had hoped an admission of that sort would do something to the dark hole in the middle of his stomach. It didn’t. “But you made this all happen,” he said. “You stole the data from my computer. You got me arrested on capital charges. You made it so I had no choice but to defect.”

The steel returned to her face. “You’re coming. The tide will turn. I did what I had to.”

“I could blow my head off on this ship,” he said. “Never give your country anything.”

“You could,” she admitted. “It’s up to you. But is this worth your life? Have the Lyrans truly done so much for you? Are they so noble? You’re just changing fights between two sides that, honestly, are deeply imperfect. For you, the main difference is that the side you’re on now is going to treat you better than the old one—treat you like a hero, pay you well. Is that worth killing yourself over?”

Rive didn’t respond. Sandrine waited a long time then finally shrugged. “You’ll make your own decision,” she said. “Goodbye, Gunther.” She turned toward the door.

“Wait,” he said. She stopped. “Your last name. What’s your real last name?”

She shook her head sadly. “Sorry,” she said. “Classified.” She turned again and left.

He watched her go. Knowing her last name would have been nice, but it wasn’t necessary. Enough about her was burned into his memory. He would never forget.

He wasn’t going to kill himself. To be honest, he wasn’t sure he had the guts. He’d go to the Free Worlds League. He’d do their work and, most importantly, save the money they paid him. As much as he could, as fast as he could. Then he’d find her. It may take years, decades even, but he could wait. That’s all that was pushing him along now, all that was giving him the will for life.

Somehow, someday, he would have his revenge.

Epilogue

NEW MILAN, ALULA AUSTRALIS

FREE WORLDS LEAGUE

3 MARCH 2469

Tracer fire lanced toward the behemoth, streams of phosphorous mixed with the lead shells. Most went wide, but the Lyran gunner, in an act of suicidal courage, walked the fire across the battered landscape to where it intersected with the bipedal war machine. The Icarus rocked back slightly as the shells slammed into it, but most simply ricocheted off. Like a vengeful demon, the combat machine twisted and extended an arm toward the gun emplacement. Man-made lightning scoured the bunker from the landscape, transforming the dusty scrub into a raging inferno. Men and equipment scorched together into twisted, unrecognizable shapes.

“How do you like it?!” Hector Galaine screamed in his cockpit. “The boot’s on the other foot now!”

Did this make up for Loric? The nightmares of the bloody carnage there still haunted him, but his experience against the Lyran BattleMechs and his technical aptitude—he’d been a young commtech back then—made him a natural for the Free Worlds’ program. He’d been involved from the outset, in fact, meeting the technical teams on Atreus and then helping with the development program. This first League war machine lacked the refinement he’d seen in reports from the Hegemony, but it was a product of the League, a counterbalance to the program in the Commonwealth and a chance to stem almost a decade of reversals and retreats.

He twisted the torso to the left and snap-fired at a fleeing tank. It disintegrated in a spectacular ball of fire, its ammunition cooking off and showering the surroundings like sparks from an anvil. Another volley, and another fleeing tank died, then another, then another. He was unstoppable, a titan among mortals.

A heavy blow snapped Galaine from his reverie. Of all things, a squad of infantry had caught him with a mass volley of handheld missiles. He scanned the console. No armor breaches, but it didn’t pay to be careless. He scoured the infantry’s hiding place with his secondary weapons. He felt rather than heard the rotary cannons spin up and spit their hail of death against the unprotected troops. Some of the Lyran grunts ducked into the rubble, escaping the deadly rain, so the League MechWarrior triggered his missile packs. Flames engulfed the hilltop.

For seven years the battle of Alula Australis had raged, commencing with a lightning assault by Commonwealth ’Mechs that had made short work of the FWLM defenses. The LCAF had failed to capitalize on their advantage, however, and the conflict had bogged down into a bloody stalemate as the Lyrans had deployed their scarce war machines elsewhere. Until a week ago the League had given ground slowly, and the LCAF had little reason to fear the Eagle’s talons. Then in less than a week, the FWLM’s own BattleMechs had reversed the tide of the campaign, pushing the Lyrans back into a single bastion that would not—unless they received massive reinforcement—withstand the whirlwind unleashed against them.

Galaine’s war machine strode through the shattered compound, vigilant against further attack. None came. He scanned the sensors as the machine climbed the steep hillside, but there was no sign of life. A blip on the MagRes marked Pressfield’s approaching machine, a twin to his own, approaching on an intercept course. A moment later, the two ’Mechs crested the ridgeline side by side and looked down on the Lyran bastion. In the distance, still several kilometers away, the egg-shaped transports were clearly visible. As they watched, plumes of smoke erupted from the base of one and it rose into the sky on a plume of brilliant flame, climbing slowly but accelerating toward orbit. Other vessels seemed to be in various stages of launch prep.

“Eagle command, Talon One. Point Epsilon secure. The Elsies look to be bugging out. Tacfeed on channel two.” He threw several switches, broadcasting his camera pickup signal to the command post. “Shall we press them?”

“Negative, Talon One. Hold position and observe. Let the rabbits run.”

The battle was over. The demons of Loric had returned to the Lyrans in kind. Starting here and spreading to any planet Simone Marik cared to send them, the Marik ’Mechs would take back what was there. After years in cold storage, the Captain-General’s revenge was finally heating up.

MORE BATTLETECH FICTION BY CHRIS HARTFORD

If you enjoyed this BattleTech novella, you can find other stories by Chris Hartford in the following book:

BATTLETECH: FIRE FOR EFFECT (BATTLECORPS ANTHOLOGY VOLUME 4)

This volume contains the story “Case White: The Voice of the Resistance,” in which a farmer’s wife on Terra activates her resistance network to help the incoming Com Guards in the fight against the Word of Blake.

MORE BATTLETECH FICTION BY JASON M. HARDY

If you enjoyed this BattleTech novella, you can find other stories by Jason M. Hardy in the following books:

BATTLETECH: THE CORPS (BATTLECORPS ANTHOLOGY VOLUME 1)

This volume features the story “Poison,” where a criminal who supplied a toxin for a high-profile assassination is caught between both sides of the burgeoning FedCom Civil War.

BATTLETECH: FIRST STRIKE (BATTLECORPS ANTHOLOGY VOLUME 2)

In the story “Ants,” an infantry squad from the Death’s Head Mercenary Corps stranded behind enemy lines must test their mettle against towering BattleMechs if they hope to make it out alive.

BATTLETECH: WEAPONS FREE (BATTLECORPS ANTHOLOGY VOLUME 3)

This volume features “Cockroaches,” in which members of the Death’s Head Mercenary Corps must do anything to survive the backwater world of Antallos. They have no money, no ’Mechs, and their disgruntled former employer is seeking revenge…

BATTLETECH: FIRE FOR EFFECT (BATTLECORPS ANTHOLOGY VOLUME 4)

This volume contains three stories by Jason M. Hardy: “Case White: Backroads at Night,” where a lone ComStar MechWarrior braves backroads to link up with friendly forces after the rest of his unit was killed. In “Case White: The Good Fight,” the Com Guards are scattered and must work together to push through enemy lines or face extinction. In “Self Defense,” a Star League representative is blackmailed by Canopians and must find creative means to fight back.

BATTLETECH: COUNTERATTACK (BATTLECORPS ANTHOLOGY VOLUME 5)

In the story “Twisting in the Vacuum,” the Star Seeds mercenary outfit, renowned for boarding and capturing enemy spacecraft, are hired to steal a Jade Falcon DropShip, but something about this job doesn’t sit right…

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NOVELS

1. Decision at Thunder Rift by William H. Keith Jr.

2. Mercenary's Star by William H. Keith Jr.

3. The Price of Glory by William H. Keith, Jr.

4. Warrior: En Garde by Michael A. Stackpole

5. Warrior: Riposte by Michael A. Stackpole

6. Warrior: Coupé by Michael A. Stackpole

7. Wolves on the Border by Robert N. Charrette

8. Heir to the Dragon by Robert N. Charrette

9. Lethal Heritage (The Blood of Kerensky, Volume 1) by Michael A. Stackpole

10. Blood Legacy (The Blood of Kerensky, Volume 2) by Michael A. Stackpole

11. Lost Destiny (The Blood of Kerensky, Volume 3) by Michael A. Stackpole

12. Way of the Clans (Legend of the Jade Phoenix, Volume 1) by Robert Thurston

13. Bloodname (Legend of the Jade Phoenix, Volume 2) by Robert Thurston

14. Falcon Guard (Legend of the Jade Phoenix, Volume 3) by Robert Thurston

15. Wolf Pack by Robert N. Charrette

16. Main Event by James D. Long

17. Natural Selection by Michael A. Stackpole

18. Assumption of Risk by Michael A. Stackpole

19. Blood of Heroes by Andrew Keith

20. Close Quarters by Victor Milán

21. Far Country by Peter L. Rice

22. D.R.T. by James D. Long

23. Tactics of Duty by William H. Keith

24. Bred for War by Michael A. Stackpole

25. I Am Jade Falcon by Robert Thurston

26. Highlander Gambit by Blaine Lee Pardoe

27. Hearts of Chaos by Victor Milán

28. Operation Excalibur by William H. Keith

29. Malicious Intent by Michael A. Stackpole

30. Black Dragon by Victor Milán

31. Impetus of War by Blaine Lee Pardoe

32. Double-Blind by Loren L. Coleman

33. Binding Force by Loren L. Coleman

34. Exodus Road (Twilight of the Clans, Volume 1) by Blaine Lee Pardoe

35. Grave Covenant (Twilight of the Clans, Volume 2) by Michael A. Stackpole

36. The Hunters (Twilight of the Clans, Volume 3) by Thomas S. Gressman

37. Freebirth (Twilight of the Clans, Volume 4) by Robert Thurston

38. Sword and Fire (Twilight of the Clans, Volume 5) by Thomas S. Gressman

39. Shadows of War (Twilight of the Clans, Volume 6) by Thomas S. Gressman

40. Prince of Havoc (Twilight of the Clans, Volume 7) by Michael A. Stackpole

41. Falcon Rising (Twilight of the Clans, Volume 8) by Robert Thurston

42. Threads of Ambition (The Capellan Solution, Book 1) by Loren L. Coleman

43. The Killing Fields (The Capellan Solution, Book 2) by Loren L. Coleman

44. Dagger Point by Thomas S. Gressman

45. Ghost of Winter by Stephen Kenson

46. Roar of Honor by Blaine Lee Pardoe

47. By Blood Betrayed by Blaine Lee Pardoe and Mel Odom

48. Illusions of Victory by Loren L. Coleman

49. Flashpoint by Loren L. Coleman

50. Measure of a Hero by Blaine Lee Pardoe

51. Path of Glory by Randall N. Bills

52. Test of Vengeance by Bryan Nystul

53. Patriots and Tyrants by Loren L. Coleman

54. Call of Duty by Blaine Lee Pardoe

55. Initiation to War by Robert N. Charrette

56. The Dying Time by Thomas S. Gressman

57. Storms of Fate by Loren L. Coleman

58. Imminent Crisis by Randall N. Bills

59. Operation Audacity by Blaine Lee Pardoe

60. Endgame by Loren L. Coleman

61. A Bonfire of Worlds by Steven Mohan, Jr.

62. Embers of War by Jason Schmetzer

63. Betrayal of Ideals by Blaine Lee Pardoe

64. Forever Faithful by Blaine Lee Pardoe

65. Redemption Rift by Jason Schmetzer

YOUNG ADULT NOVELS

1. The Nellus Academy Incident by Jennifer Brozek

2. Rogue Academy: Iron Dawn by Jennifer Brozek

NOVELLAS/SHORT NOVELS

1. A Splinter of Hope by Philip A. Lee

2. The Anvil by Blaine Lee Pardoe

3. Not the Way the Smart Money Bets (Kell Hounds Ascendant 1) by Michael A. Stackpole

4. A Tiny Spot of Rebellion (Kell Hounds Ascendant 2) by Michael A. Stackpole

5. A Clever Bit of Fiction (Kell Hounds Ascendant 3) by Michael A. Stackpole

ANTHOLOGIES

1. Shrapnel: Fragments from the Inner Sphere

2. Onslaught: Tales from the Clan Invasion

3. The Corps (BattleCorps Anthology, Volume 1)

4. First Strike (BattleCorps Anthology, Volume 2)

5. Weapons Free (BattleCorps Anthology, Volume 3)

6. Fire for Effect (BattleCorps Anthology, Volume 4)

7. Counterattack (BattleCorps Anthology, Volume 5)

8. Front Lines (BattleCorps Anthology Volume 6)

9. Legacy

10. Kill Zone (BattleCorps Anthology Volume 7)

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BATTLETECH: A DISH SERVED COLD (THE PROLIFERATION CYCLE, PART V)

Cover art by Franz Vohwinkel

Design by Matt Heerdt & David Kerber

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