Masters of War Read online

  24

  Fortress Ashai, Nusakan

  Former Prefecture IX, Republic of the Sphere

  23 February 3137

  Though her accommodations on Nusakan were meager compared to the opulence of her lodgings on La Blon, Verena felt far more at ease in the small house she’d been given. Not much had been done in the way of decoration, but the refrigerator had been stocked with the food and beer she’d showed a preference for over the last month. In addition to that, various Nusakan industries had sent her gift baskets of products to welcome her, meeting most of her material needs on the domestic side of things.

  Baron Saville had provided for her needs on the military side, too. The Djinns had preceded her to Nusakan. The unit was a reinforced, combined-arms battalion, fashioned very much along the lines of the Wolf Hunters. She had three lances of ’Mechs, one each heavy, medium and light, though her new ’Mech fell into the assault class. The pilots were all veterans, and while they all should have known better than to believe the hype, the fact that they’d seen both her and Kennerly on the holovid seemed to make them a bit more respectful.

  Kennerly, who had been promoted to captain, led the medium lance. Officers she didn’t know commanded the companies of infantry, armor and artillery and, at least at first blush, had a strong working relationship with their troops. Things seemed to be functioning very well when she arrived, and despite the fact that she had never commanded a battalion before nor worked for GIN as most of them had, they accepted her easily.

  She’d commented on this to Kennerly, and he just laughed. “They got told that once you arrived on station, they’d be getting combat pay. Saville knows how to buy loyalty.”

  Verena put that comment into proper perspective and hadn’t let it get under her skin. The soldiers in her command would have been stupid to accept her just for a little more money. They had confidence in her—for whatever reason—and she was going to maintain that. It fit perfectly into the dimension of morale, and she wanted that one as high as possible before the Wolves landed on Nusakan.

  That meant her own morale needed to be high, and it was. Alaric had hit upon something that she had missed: She had been acting like a captive to Anastasia. She had continuously been measuring herself against Anastasia and wondering why the woman found her lacking. The answer had been obvious: because she was not Anastasia. By comparison with her, especially in her own mind, no one would measure up. It was no fault of Verena’s that she had been judged harshly—she had neither the tools nor desire to be Anastasia.

  Kennerly had changed, too, just a bit, and had become less annoying—at least until he learned of her liaison with Alaric. Prior to that he had complimented her on how quickly she had decked Hardin. He’d even alluded to the fact that she had once again almost gotten the key. She’d hoped he would drop a hint to allow her to figure out what he was getting at, but he didn’t.

  Then he learned she had slept with Alaric.

  His reaction had surprised her. He had just looked at her and nodded. “Took longer than I thought.”

  That had not been what she expected. Cutting remarks, contempt, or anger, any of those would have been appropriate. She even could have understood the exact opposite, a sudden softening of his attitude and his admitting that he loved her but had treated her badly because he didn’t know how to express his feelings. But indifference, his expecting her to have slept with Alaric, that made no sense.

  After that, he was back to his old self, picking at her—never blatantly enough to bust him on insubordination, but enough to scrape her nerves raw. She could have ordered him to stop, and he would have, but she dreaded the new outlets he would have found for his ambitions.

  More importantly, she had come to value his digging at her. He’d said that he was there to insulate the others from her and her collapse. He was her early warning system. He could see things about her that she could not see herself, and that made him valuable.

  Despite all this, Kennerly did not figure prominently in her thoughts because she hit the ground running on Nusakan. She diligently applied herself to learning everything she could about the world. She began to mentally organize the planet and its defense into the dimensions Alaric had revealed to her. She studied terrain, especially near targets of high value, rated it and planned defenses. She looked at ways to deny the Wolves the items they would be coming for, and initiated programs of dispersing the most valuable elements. She also worked on establishing improved sensor networks and increased maintenance schedules for the unit’s equipment. She wanted everything in top form when the time came to use it.

  Alaric came to her thoughts in the times when she felt the most alone—usually late at night when she was working by herself, poring over data and trying to let her mind absorb it all. She would turn the datapad off, douse the lights and crawl into her bed, which was infuriatingly—and yet refreshingly—cold.

  She would close her eyes and feel his touch again, his warm breath, his weight upon her. She found the memories stimulating—physically, certainly, but also mentally and emotionally. It was the emotional stimulation that she most craved. Her position required her to hold herself back and avoid familiarity—Kennerly, if he could be called one, was her closest friend. While he knew her very well, she drew little comfort from his company, and saw very little of that regardless.

  Alaric had needed her as much as she had needed him, and being needed meant a great deal. Having that need communicated with a simple human touch had import she could not describe. It was as if lines of a program were suddenly inserted and compiled, making her feel complete and alive and aware on levels that had not existed for her before.

  He had not been her first lover, but she could not say she had ever truly been in love. She didn’t even think she could say that now because she did not yet love Alaric. She could have grown to love him—at least there was a chance of it—but that did not matter. For the space of a night, the two of them had completed each other. They had validated each other on the most basic human level. One could strip away rank and nationality, skills as a warrior and in command, just break them down to the most fundamental demands on a human, and that was where they saw value in each other. It seemed too simple to reduce it to just boy-girl, tab A into slot B, but it was the very simplicity of that connection that confirmed they were human and they were alive.

  Kennerly had ridiculed Alaric’s idea of dimensions of warfare, but Verena could see them in human relations as well. There were many dimensions of humanity that remained closed to her because of her situation. With Alaric she had explored some of them, drawn satisfaction from them, and even begun to understand the lives of those she would be protecting because of them.

  She found solace in the memory of that night. Verena had little doubt that her prediction that they would never see each other again would come true. Yes, it was entirely possible that the Wolf Hunters and the Djinns would be tossed together once more, so the opportunity to see him would present itself. That said, she could not imagine a reunion with Alaric, and that inability seemed to close off that future.

  Ultimately, Verena just didn’t feel it.

  She had never before put much stock in intuition. Her life and approach to living really did not allow for intuition and hunches to function. She relied on accumulated wisdom, tempered with contemporary variables. She truly did follow a trail blazed by others and felt safe there.

  Kennerly’s scourging her with that point still rankled, but she saw no way out of the path she’d started down. Moreover, she had no desire to stray. He might be right, that she would only reach waypoints that others had marked, but straying from that path would lead to a grave.

  Or will it lead to greatness? In a heartbeat she realized that all trails blazed by others had, at one point or another, just veered off into what was the unknown. Sun-tzu, Napoleon, Aleksandr Kerensky and Victor Davion all had to depart from the paths others had blazed. They shifted direction because others might anticipate their path an
d prepare a defense.

  It was just like the evolution of chess. One strategy begat another. An attack resulted in the creation of a defense. The employment of that defense spawned another attack, which created its own response. And so it went, with the strong strategies surviving, and the weak responses resulting in losses.

  And if I were to mount a weak response, people would die. There would be no resetting the board. No starting over.

  Just as that realization made her feel proud, another thought, delivered in Kennerly’s voice, undercut it completely. But life is not chess. There is no set of rules that cannot be broken. There is no board, no ranks or rows or squares. You do not want to abide by the rules, you want to make the rules.

  Verena shivered. To make the rules she would have to travel outside the rules. She would have to go places she had never been before. She would have to look at the battlefield and the world and everything in a new way, a way without guidelines, without dimensions.

  She hugged her knees to her chest and huddled under a thick blanket. Her reality began to fragment. All the things she was certain she knew, all the sharp edges and crisp details, began to soften and fly apart. Colors ran, then swirled and splashed through each other, making new colors. Everything became energy flowing in vast rivers. To move against it was to be consumed. To float above it was to be carried along.

  But to dive in, to grab hold and warp it to what you desired and needed, that was something else entirely. That was to possess limitless power. The flick of a finger could start a current that would crest and wipe away an army. A flutter kick could sweep up worlds, a shout could be heard throughout the Inner Sphere. She could be invincible and immortal, feared and unchallenged. She could become as powerful as Devlin Stone and even surpass him.

  Is this what they all saw? Was the key to war, to life—the key that Kennerly held just out of her reach—was it just to dare to be the motivator instead of the moved? Was it enough to be the one who made the rules instead of the one who followed them? Could one truly master reality and shape it as she desired? Is that what Sun-tzu and Genghis Khan and Zhuge Liang and Victor Davion did?

  It seemed for a moment—one fleeting moment—that this must have been precisely what they did. They found themselves beset by problems and they reached outside reality to change things. What were problems suddenly had solutions. Traps could no longer close, or they were no longer caught in the jaws. It would take colossal effort, of that she had no doubt, but that had to be what they had done.

  Confronted with the impossible, they just changed things around so the impossible became possible.

  Part of her refused to believe this because she knew, she had known all her life, that reality just cannot be changed that way. It isn’t fluid. It doesn’t slosh around and take a new shape when transferred from one vessel to another. It is not clay that can be shifted and altered. It is more rigid and immutable.

  But who was to say that belief was true? Was it possible that before Galileo charted the orbit of the planets and discovered that Terra was not the center of the universe that it, in fact, had been? Could Terra once have been flat, then become a ball as people began to believe it was? Could generals destroy great hosts with a handful of soldiers just by convincing the combatants that they would win?

  No, not destroy, but defeat, yes. Had Zhuge Liang shifted reality? He clearly had for his enemy. Sima Yi had an army of more than a hundred thousand men and came to an open city. He saw Zhuge’s utter lack of concern and lack of fear, and knew that no man could be so confident and unafraid in the face of such a host unless he was confident of winning. By dint of his demeanor Zhuge Liang had changed Sima Yi’s perception of the world—of reality—and that led him to retreat.

  Verena sensed the truth in what she was thinking, but the most important element eluded her. How do I do it? How do I grab hold of reality and change it? She wondered if there was a mechanism, a key that would unlock the means to do that. Is Kennerly’s key the key?

  She did not know. Contemplating the whole puzzle, she fell into sleep and into terrifying dreams. Upon waking she remembered little of them, save the image of a shining key eluding her grasp.

  She looked at her hand and clenched it into a fist. An empty fist.

  Then she shook her head and resumed her planning.

  25

  Anapar, Unukalhai

  Former Prefecture IX, Republic of the Sphere

  23 February 3137

  Alaric forced himself to hold his head up high as he entered the Civic Auditorium in Anapar. His guts twisted and he easily could see himself sagging and collapsing like the bridge at Darien. He refused to succumb, however, because he chose to give neither Anastasia nor Donovan more pleasure than they were already taking from the situation.

  The auditorium lights had been kept low as the mercenaries paraded down the center aisle. Spotlights illuminated the waiting Wolves on the stage. Alaric actually thought the staging was a bit elaborate, and couldn’t imagine how Donovan could justify it on a cost-analysis basis. Then again, were I in his position . . .

  Donovan stood center stage, unrecognizable in a black wolf’s-head mask worked with gold. The rest of his uniform consisted of black Clan leathers, with a short cape of wolf’s fur over his shoulders. He wore a dagger in his right boot, and the spotlight cast his shadow huge against the backdrop. It dwarfed the Trinary of elementals arrayed in their battle armor at the back of the stage.

  When Anastasia, Ian and Alaric were still ten meters from the steps, Donovan raised a hand. “Trothkin near and far, seen and unseen, living and dead, rejoice. The Wolf has recovered one of its own.”

  “Seyla.” Anastasia and Ian uttered the word proudly, but Alaric whispered it reluctantly. It tasted bitter in his mouth. His throat threatened to close around it.

  Donovan continued. “I am the Oathmaster. All will be bound by this Conclave until they are dust and memories, and beyond that time until the end of all that is.”

  Again, “Seyla” echoed through the darkened hall. Though the word scourged Alaric, it also thrilled him. The Right of Return was part and parcel of Clan tradition, though rarely used. When their captors considered warriors too great to be made bondsmen, this ceremony was used to return them to their Clan. It was the ultimate sign of respect between Clans, and honored even among the most bitter enemies.

  His ransom mocked that honor. The Exiles were hardly proper Wolves. Anastasia should have made me a bondsman. In that instant he recognized how much it annoyed him to have been seen as unworthy for inclusion in her mercenary group. Even though he understood that it would have been utterly inappropriate for her to make him a bondsman, and while he had no desire to be in thrall to mercenaries, he hated to be excluded.

  He stared straight ahead, wishing his gaze could bore holes through Anastasia’s skull. He could not understand her at all. She captured him, tortured him, decided to keep him and teach him, then quickly handed him back to the Wolves. It all made no sense—other than perhaps by assuming she was insane.

  But he knew she was not insane, not by a long shot. She clearly had an agenda. Even though Ian Murchison, an apparent confidant, never commented on her actions and decisions, Alaric had read confusion on his face more than once. This made Anastasia very dangerous, because knowledge—wisdom—combined with unpredictability meant no one could take anything for granted with her.

  Donovan lifted his head like a wolf scenting prey. “Let Alaric Wolf come forward to rejoin his pack.”

  Anastasia stepped aside, then smiled. “You will be missed, Alaric.”

  He blinked. “You cannot be serious.”

  “I am, indeed.” She canted her head toward the stage. “I look forward to our next meeting.”

  “I am certain you do.” Alaric forced himself to smile to conceal his confusion. “You have been an able teacher.”

  He faced forward and marched to the steps. As he mounted them, Donovan stepped to one side and three of the elementals came forward. Two
of them grabbed the shoulders of the Wolf Hunter’s jacket and ripped it from him. Next they tore off his tunic, then his trousers. They allowed him to unlace his boots and kick them off, and then he stood, naked, with his back to Anastasia and the doctor.

  The third elemental handed him a long gray cloak with a mantle of wolf fur. Alaric pulled it on and fastened it at his throat with a silver wolf’s-head clasp. He accepted a wolf mask, which he settled over his features. Once it was in place, hiding his humanity, he slowly turned and faced his former captors.

  Donovan’s voice boomed. “Behold, Alaric the Wolf, reunited with his trothkin. As dark as were the lamentations while he was apart from us, so shall the rejoicing be bright. All are to abide by the rede given here. Thus shall it stand until we all shall fall.”

  “Seyla.”

  Alaric echoed, “Seyla,” with the others.

  Hiding behind the mask lessened his embarrassment, but could not eliminate it. Anastasia stood there before him, half hidden in shadows, gently illuminated by the backlight from the stage. He thought how easy it would be to imagine her an illusion and his time apart from the Clans a very short and horrible nightmare.

  But it had been real, very real. Now the welts on his face had healed, leaving no mark of his captivity on his body. And if he did not concentrate to remember everything that had happened, he could let it slip away as an unpleasantness that was beneath him.

  That is exactly what his mother would have done. Alaric could understand the allure of her coping mechanism, for concentrating on the disappointments and frustrations of life could embitter and cripple you. Too many people found themselves trapped in cycles that spiraled down, sapping them of options and energy until their frustration consumed them.

  His mother avoided that trap by putting annoyances behind her in one way or another. Granted, there were times when she did this through the suitable application of power. If half the stories from the Inner Sphere were true, she’d had enemies eliminated with little remorse. Alaric did not know if it was true that she’d had her own mother killed, but the truth of that rumor was really not important. He knew she was capable of having done it.