Loren L. Coleman - BattleTech - MechWarrior - Dark Age 13

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s

Imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business

establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is

http://www.penguinputnam.com

Acknowledgments

The process of writing this novel was not normal, which means the acknowledgments are a little strange,

too. But still, there are some people who need to be thanked:

 Sharon Turner Mulvihill, for giving me a shot and being supportive and helpful throughout the

whole odd process;

Randall N. Bills, for being the exact right person for me to leech on over a number of years;

Loren L. Coleman, for being encouraging as I gradually stuck my toes into the ocean of the

BattleTech universe;

Past editors—notably Donna Ippolito and Janna Silverstein—who were encouraging and positive

even when projects didn’t work out as planned;

My wife, Kathy, for being . . . well, for being my wife, Kathy;

My son, Finn, for similar reasons;

Everyone who ever wrote a book I loved. You know who you are.

And though they’ll likely never see this, thanks to Ethan Cannon and Sam Cannon (distant

cousins, not brothers) for first introducing me to RPGs. The adjustable-length ten-foot pole will

never be forgotten.

1

Paladin Steiner-Davion’s Residence, Santa Fe

Terra, Prefecture X

1 October 3134

The final glimmer of a purple-and-orange sunset had disappeared into the chill of a late-autumn night.

Even here, away from downtown, the sky-glow from greater Santa Fe overwhelmed all but the brightest

stars, while the background noise of city traffic, machinery and, above all, people, underlay everything

like a heartbeat, or like breath.

At well past midnight, the sprawling headquarters of the Knights of the Sphere was, for the most part,

dark and silent. Even in its residential wings, quiet ruled. The majority of Knights with quarters in the

complex worked hard and valued their rest, and those who were of a mind to relax or work off tension

usually wandered to other parts of the city to play.

The suite of rooms belonging to Paladin Victor Steiner-Davion appeared, from the outside, to be no

different from the rest. Only in the office was there light—and that merely the glow from a single data

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screen. All the curtains were tightly drawn; no one outside would know that the Paladin was awake and

at his desk.

You’d think that at my age I wouldn’t need to hide in the dark and work in secret, Victor thought to

himself. He gave a tired, quiet laugh. At my age, I shouldn’t have to do this kind of work any longer,

period.

We believed we’d taken care of all these problems, he thought. We told ourselves that we’d left them

behind along with everything else from the bad old days—the family ties and alliances that we set aside,

the BattleMechs that we gave up and turned in for scrap—because Devlin Stone’s vision of a new order

was going to make all of our fears and precautions obsolete. Maybe we should have known better. The

darker aspects of human nature do not simply disappear because some of the tools are taken away.

Power will always be contested. In so much you were wrong, Kattie, dear sister, but about this aspect of

human nature you may just have been right.

Yet the dream had become real; for a few brief decades it had worked. Until the day Devlin Stone made

the mistake of thinking that he could step away from his creation and let it run without him.

Was the dream flawed, then, from its very inception? Surely The Republic of the Sphere ought to be

able to continue without the charismatic presence of its founder. What did it say—about Devlin Stone,

about The Republic, and about those who had given their lives and their loyalty to both—that it might

not?

I have to believe, Victor thought, that we did not choose wrongly, and did not fight in vain.

His data screen pinged, distracting him from his reverie to announce a file arriving. He checked the

address from which the file had been sent, and smiled. The sender’s true name—which appeared

nowhere in the document—would have shocked respectable people and would have shocked The

Republic’s intelligence services even more had they known that Victor Steiner-Davion was in

correspondence with its owner.

But Victor had lived for a long time. He had been a MechWarrior during the turbulent, bloody years

before the founding of The Republic. In his youth, and even in his middle age, he’d associated with any

number of people whose names and dossiers would have made law enforcement and intelligence services

distinctly nervous. And quite a few of those people still owed him favors.

The information contained in this particular file had been bought with the price of several of those favors.

But Victor considered the favors well spent. At his age, he wasn’t likely to find another reason to need

them, and the information was good to have. The work he was doing now was like building a mosaic. He

had in his possession a great number of small pieces, each one individually nothing—but when put

together in precisely the right fashion, they would make the picture plain.

Collecting all the tiles for the mosaic was the easy part, he reflected, at least if you happened to be him.

You only needed sufficient money—or a sufficient number of favors owed—and sufficient patience,

combined with decades of practice at standing back and taking the long view. Anyone could have done

it, given those qualities.

The next part, though, would be much harder. He had to present his mosaic in such a way that even the

dimmest Senators and Knights and—especially—Paladins could see and understand the picture he

created. Not to single out any individuals, but if the truth were told, some of his comrades-in-arms had

always been more notable for courage and fighting skill than for brains.

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So he couldn’t just lay out the evidence and let the facts speak for themselves. He had to lead his

audience step by obvious step to the right conclusion. This would be his legacy to The Republic of the

Sphere, one last act performed for the sake of the dream of Devlin Stone, and it had to be done just

right. The forthcoming election could hinge on how well he did his job, on how many of the Paladins

understood what he now knew.

It was more than simply arranging the facts and ideas; he had to find the exact right words and tone, and

put everything in the right order. He’d never been much of a man for talk, and not much of a diplomat

either, although the newsreaders now called him a statesman—a reward, he supposed, for having lived

so long. He was a MechWarrior first and always, and the task of moving others to his way of thinking

through convincing argument was a far different task than piloting a ’Mech.

It was late. Eventually the words and the sentences blurred together, and Victor dozed, sitting upright in

his chair. Then he slept more deeply, as the chair—a marvel of modern design and medical

engineering—adjusted its contours to his slumbering form.

Morning came, bringing with it daylight streaming past cracks in the closed curtains, and he woke with a

start to a cheerful voice saying, “Good morning!”

Both the voice and the good cheer belonged to Elena Ruiz, the housekeeper (though he and she both

knew quite well that she was more nurse than housekeeper) who looked after his suite of rooms. She

was a pleasant sight for an old man’s eyes, even in her plain white uniform—dark hair, olive skin, and a

face always open and ready to smile. Her greeting was followed by a blaze of light as she drew the

curtains mercilessly open, letting in the bright desert sun.

Victor responded with a good-natured grumble. “Woman, they pay you to keep me healthy, not to kill

me.”

“Hah,” she said. “You’ll outlive all of us. And if you slept in your bedroom like most people, you

wouldn’t have to worry about me opening the curtains in the morning.”

“I was working,” he said. The display on his data screen was on and glowing, bearing out his words. He

frowned briefly. The display should have followed his lead and gone into sleep mode sometime last night.

It must have been brought back to life by some vibration or bump to the desk.

Victor shut down the file. He would work on it again later, after the coming of night once more brought

privacy. Then he turned to Elena Ruiz.

“Now—what’s for breakfast?”

2

Sheratan, Prefecture IV

20 October 3134

Knight-Errant Robert Goldberg saw his first political advertisement on Sheratan within minutes of his

arrival at the main planetary DropPort. The display on the wall outside the DropPort’s vehicle rental

office saidFOUNDER ’S MOVEMENT—KEEPING THE DREAM ALIVE! in glowing orange letters

that practically jumped off the poster.

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After that, elections and electioneering were everywhere he looked. The streets of the city were gaudy

with neon-and-laser billboards, and tri-vid ads flashed and rotated atop newsstands and information

kiosks. The displays said things likePEACE AND SECURITY in bright green, superimposed on images

of a bucolic, tranquil countryside and bustling, unworried cities. The images were accompanied by

voice-overs between the musical numbers that played over the audio system in the vehicle Robert had

rented at the DropPort: “In these troubled times, mutual trust and fellowship are more important than

ever. When you vote, reach out—”

The music eventually segued into the midday newscast. Still listening, Robert left the city, heading for the

country estate where Paladin Otto Mandela was staying during his sojourn here. The estate belonged to

one of the local bigwigs—a veteran of Stone’s Revenants from the old days, now turned prosperous

gentleman farmer—who had graciously made it available for Mandela’s use.

Robert’s journey took him out into the open countryside, where a lightly traveled winding road took him

through acres of rolling green pastureland dotted with sheep and dairy cattle. He spared some attention

for the newsreader of the hour, a woman with a pleasant voice. The title “Knight of the Sphere” sounded

glamorous, but the reality was sometimes less impressive. Functioning as part of the Exarch’s private

courier service was only one of the not-so-exciting tasks involved.

The newsreader said, “And it’s time for the top planetary news of the hour. With election day close at

hand, voter unrest continues in urban areas. In Pittston, supporters of local Founder’s Movement

candidate Ella Geraldo broke up a rally for Prosperous Unity opponent Dan Harwicke with taunts and

heckling. When Harwicke attempted to address the crowd, estimated at some three hundred, he was

drowned out by shouts of “Appeaser!” and “Clan-Lover!” and “No More Sellouts!”

“Interviewed later on this station, Harwicke said only that he was disappointed that some of his fellow

Sheratanites could not tell the difference between independent traders like Clan Sea Fox, with whom he

freely admits to having done mutually profitable—and legal—business in the past, and violent and

territorially ambitious groups such as the Jade Falcons and the Steel Wolves. Meanwhile, in—”

The news went on, a depressing tally of political meetings disrupted by one local faction and election

headquarters vandalized by another and riots instigated in the streets of depressed neighborhoods by a

third. The first planetwide elections since the dramatic collapse of the HPG network had signaled the end

of what people were already referring to as The Republic of the Sphere’s golden age, and the electorate

on Sheratan was bitterly divided. People were not taking the ongoing crisis well.

Under the circumstances, Robert thought, it was not surprising that there had been a mostly bipartisan

call for an official observer to be sent from the government of The Republic—preferably, an observer

who also had the authority to settle any arguments that might arise. Paladin Otto Mandela was an ideal

choice. He had worked on disputed elections before, and had made a name for himself previously in

investigations of brutality and corruption on various worlds.

Nor was anybody likely to call either his honesty or his devotion to The Republic into question.

Mandela, for all his fidelity to fairness and the rule of law, was still willing to demand that his accuser meet

him in single combat, ’Mech to ’Mech, and repeat the accusation there.

Robert turned off the main road, following the directions he had picked up at the DropPort. The narrow

farm road he traversed provided him, not surprisingly, with views of more sheep and more cows, as well

as an occasional field planted with crops Ortega didn’t recognize. He wondered if the tall grain was

meant for human consumption or for livestock fodder, and realized that he might never know.

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He could always ask, he supposed—if he didn’t mind looking ignorant in front of the locals, which he

was willing to do when the situation demanded it, but not out of mere curiosity. He was still getting used

to the confidence others placed in him as a Knight of the Sphere, and he had no intention of jeopardizing

it.

At the end of the road, he came to a low, sprawling farmhouse—an estate, really—built of the

buff-colored local stone and roofed in slate. He parked the rented vehicle out front. The man who came

out from the building’s capacious attached garage to meet him looked not so much like his expectation of

a chauffeur/mechanic as a farm worker with an occasional sideline into taking care of things with engines.

“You the man from Terra, supposed to come see Paladin Mandela?”

“Yes.” Robert felt relieved that he was expected. He’d sent a radio message as soon as the DropShip

came within communications range of Sheratan, but one never could tell these days. “Robert Goldberg.”

“He’ll be inside. You go on in—I’ll put the car in the garage for you.”

“Thanks.” He handed over the keys and entered the house.

The rooms within were shadowed and cool, making a pleasant contrast to the bright day outside. A

short entrance hall led to a large, open-plan room, its floor of dark, polished wood scattered with wool

rugs in muted natural colors. One wall held an enormous fieldstone hearth, cold now in the summer;

another was made up entirely of windows. The floor-to-ceiling glass panes afforded a view of lush green

hills and the inevitable livestock.

Paladin Otto Mandela, an imposing man with skin the color of dark coffee and grizzled hair cropped

close to his well-shaped skull, rose from a chair by the window. He held a tumbler of amber liquid in his

hand. At the sight of Robert, he set the drink down on the nearest end table and strode briskly forward.

“Lord Robert.” Mandela’s eyes were bright and eager. “What word do you bring for us from Terra?

Does Damien Redburn have something for me to do besides watching the Sheratanites vote and making

certain that everybody is too scared to cheat?”

“You could say that,” Robert replied. He reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out a stiff

rectangular envelope with a holographic seal. He proffered it to Mandela. “He’s set the date for the

election.”

The Paladin took the envelope and slit it open with a thumbnail. He perused the contents, and his

eyebrows went up. “December twentieth? Why the rush?”

Mandela had a point, Robert thought. By law, Damien Redburn was required to step down as Exarch

no later than the end of calendar year 3135. Holding the election on the date Redburn had chosen would

mean inaugurating his successor on the fifth of January of that year. It didn’t count as stepping down

early, under the strict interpretation of the law, but it came near enough. Robert shrugged.

“I’m just a Knight,” he said. “The Exarch doesn’t tell me stuff like that. All I officially know is that I’m

supposed to deliver the formal announcement and tell you that the Exarch requires your presence in

Geneva.”

Mandela raised an eyebrow. “How about what you know unofficially?”

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“Not much more. If I had to guess, I’d say that the Exarch was hoping to take all the assorted factions

by surprise. He means to hold the election before they have a chance to get their political machines

running in high gear.”

“Hmph,” said Mandela. “It’s a good thought. Damien isn’t stupid, and the damned factions are going to

kill everyone if something isn’t done about them first. Here, so far it’s only rioting and dirty tricks—it

could be worse. But on Terra—” he shook his head “—on Terra, the factions mean business. They have

dozens of different ways to follow Devlin Stone’s vision, and each of them thinks they’re the only ones

who have it right. Believe me, if I wasn’t here, the situation would be far worse. Don’t let the fact that

there aren’t any armies involved yet fool you.”

“I heard the news stories while I was driving out from the port. The situation sounds . . . complicated.”

Mandela snorted. “That’s an understatement. Anywhere you’ve got two people on Sheratan you’ve got

at least three political factions, and the locals can’t even vote for town dogcatcher without having two

protest marches and a riot about it first.”

“Is the situation safe enough for you to leave it without an observer?” Robert asked.

“Not really,” Mandela said. “But a Paladin isn’t necessary for a simple matter like overseeing the local

planetary elections.” He looked at Robert. “A Knight of the Sphere should be more than sufficient, now

that we have one on hand.”

3

Bernhard Island

Kervil, Prefecture II

22 October 3134

The morning of Operation Aftershock dawned fair and bright. The tropical sky arcing overhead was a

clear matte blue, the ocean below it was scarcely ruffled by the gentle breeze, and the sunlight glittered

over the surface of the water like a layer of golden spangles. Bernhard Island was a dormant volcanic

cone, its seaward approach dominated by rugged cliffs above vivid green slopes falling down to a long

arc of black-sand beach. From the ocean, Bernhard looked like an unspoiled paradise, the stuff of a

hundred tourist brochures.

And all of it was lies.

Bernhard Island was in fact a pirates’ haven, and under ordinary circumstances it would have been

cleaned out long ago. Kervil Marine Law Enforcement was a well-armed and thoroughly professional

combat force, quite capable of rounding up the typical piracy ring as soon as its criminal activities came

to light.

These pirates, however, were not merely local criminals. When KMLE agents tracking half a dozen

apparently unrelated cases compared notes, they saw similarities in methods and structure that pointed to

the existence of a larger organization. Nor, upon investigation, did all of the stolen cargoes and prisoners’

ransoms stay on-planet; KMLE’s detective work found links to off-world buyers of goods and suppliers

of weapons, as well as ties to smuggling rings on Terra and elsewhere. The criminal enterprises that

preyed on Kervil’s shipping lanes, they discovered to their dismay, were only the planetary branch of a

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multiworld organization almost as large in its scope as the pirates of Sadalbari had been in their heyday.

Even worse, after several months of careful investigation and infiltration it became clear to Kervilian

intelligence that the nerve center of the greater criminal organization was not located somewhere safely

off-world in somebody else’s jurisdiction. The interplanetary pirates had hidden their main

administrative-and-support base in the depths of the lava caves of Kervil’s own Bernhard Island.

Today, a task force assembled for the occasion waited just over the horizon from the island. In their

current position, the ships of the task force could not be seen by human observers, even on the island’s

high ground, and they had maintained radio silence for the past thirty-six hours. Kervil Marine Law

Enforcement stood poised to hit Bernhard without warning in overwhelming strength.

The interplanetary scope of the pirates’ endeavors was responsible for the presence among KMLE’s

current assets of anAtlas BattleMech piloted by a Paladin of the Sphere. TheAtlas took up most of the

well deck of Kervil Marine Law Enforcement’s Amphibious Assault ShipWaverley . Operation

Aftershock’s other landing craft had been dispersed to her sister shipsEllis andCuthbert , also taking

part in the assault.

The goal of Operation Aftershock was to smash the pirate organization’s nerve center before its

members could escape. There would be no advance warning, no chance for the high-level bosses to flee,

no time for the incriminating documents to be wiped or shredded. Nothing but the hammer of justice,

smashing down—and Paladin Jonah Levin and hisAtlas had come to swing it.

The landing ships waiting offshore were specialized craft, their hulls painted pale blue to blend in with the

ocean mists of Kervil, each of them carrying many smaller boats. The largest of the ships could ballast

down, flooding the vessels’ well decks so that small cargo craft loaded with heavy tracked and wheeled

units could float out. The smaller landing ships carried boats hung from davits, each boat large enough to

hold a squad of regular or armored infantry.

At the moment, a rainsquall obscured the distant horizon. Just beyond that horizon, on the shores of

Bernhard Island, the pirates waited. Jonah Levin was sure that they weren’t asleep; even with radio

silence in effect, the approach of the landing force would be putting out too much noise on the

electromagnetic spectrum for them to rest easy. No one had accused these freebooters of being anything

other than ruthless and effective. That was why an army with both regular and armored infantry, and with

wheeled, tracked and hover armor, lay just over their horizon—and that was why Jonah’sAtlas squatted

in a specially constructed hold in theWaverley ’s belly.

TheAtlas was still attached to the ship’s service power lines, but was otherwise ready to move as soon

as Jonah climbed into the cockpit and strapped himself into the pilot’s seat. TheAtlas had no jump jets,

which meant that Jonah, little as he relished the prospect, would have to wade his ’Mech ashore while

every artillery piece on the island poured energy and projectile fire onto him.

The ships drove forward, toward the horizon. Jonah ascended from his ’Mech’s resting place to meet

theWaverley ’s captain on the ship’s bridge for a final conference before the assault.

“They have to know we’re coming now,” the captain said, “if they aren’t blind rather than just dumb.”

Jonah nodded. “So they must.”

“You wanted the charts?”

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“Yes.”

“Here you go, then.”

Jonah looked at the display the captain brought up on his data terminal. “Can you give me a picture of

the subsea contours?”

“No problem.” The captain touched a sequence of keys, and the false-color display melted and

changed, now showing the water off the coast in gradations of blue and green where it had previously

been a solid-colored area.

“How recent is this data?” Jonah asked.

“Some years old. This has been a poorly charted area.”

Jonah pointed at a bar of lighter color that thrust outward from the southern promontory of the shoreline.

“Do you see this spit matching data from the task force today?”

“Nothing to contradict it,” the captain said.

“Then put me over the top of it . . . here,” Jonah said, pointing again. “Kick out your boats; I’m going for

a stroll.”

“We’re getting illuminated with fire control,” a sensor tech on watch said. “G and H band, ranging and

identification.”

“Countermeasures,” the captain said. “Active and passive. Keep them guessing.”

“They have to have figured out by now that something big’s coming,” Jonah said. “They’re going to be

hitting us with everything they’ve got.”

“So they will,” the captain said. “At the same time as we’re hitting them with everything that we’ve got.

Thanks to you, we have something more.”

“Start line,” the navigator said.

“Very well. Commence launching boats, form up wave circles, guide on me.”

“Commence launching,” the radio talker said. Jonah leftWaverley ’s bridge crew to their work and

headed back to where his ’Mech waited in the dark of the lowest hold, power cables snaking over it.

The ’Mech’s support crew—which, in these cramped quarters, was only two men—was standing by.

“Armed and hot,” the head rigger said. “Awaiting your orders.”

“Secure from ship’s power,” Jonah ordered. “I’m mounting up.”

“Secure from ship’s power, aye.”

While the two crewmen labored to disconnect theAtlas fromWaverley ’s power, Jonah stripped down

to his shorts and a thin mesh shirt. As chilly as the humid morning was against his bare skin, he knew the

atmosphere inside his ’Mech’s cockpit would be full of the literal heat of battle, where sweat running into

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a warrior’s eyes could be as deadly as inbound missiles. Without the concealment of his uniform shirt and

trousers, the tanned skin of Jonah’s limbs and torso showed the silvery, knotted tracks of myriad old

scars.

He climbed the ladder to the cockpit of theAtlas , reviewing the weapons systems as he went. Then he

entered the hatch to the cockpit, closed the hatch behind him, strapped himself into the ’Mech’s

command couch, and convinced the ’Mech to recognize him as its commander. He brought the ’Mech

up to its full standing height, stretched all its limbs to confirm response and agility, and cycled its weapons

and communications console. Then he keyed on the intraship communications link.

“All right. I’m ready.”

4

Hotel Egremont

Woodstock, Prefecture V

22 October 3134

When the DropShipAmphitrite touched down at the DropPort on Woodstock, Gareth Sinclair was the

first passenger to disembark. His luggage, which would otherwise have been subject to customs

inspection, received its entry stamp without needing to be opened, and Gareth himself was waved to the

head of the passenger line.

As a Knight of the Sphere, he was often extended such privileges whether he asked for them or not. He

refused them when he could—he already felt guilty enough about the doors opened by his family’s wealth

and position, and having more deference shown him did not make him more comfortable.

Today, however, he was willing to accept the advantage. He was on business for The Republic of the

Sphere, he had a message to deliver, and the sender would not want him to dawdle.

The information desk in Woodstock’s DropPort concourse had an actual person on duty behind the

counter, in addition to the usual data screens, input terminals and racks of brightly colored folding

brochures. Gareth approved. He had wrestled with enough planetary communications directories and

computerized mapping services to know that what seemed intuitively obvious to the locals often

appeared far less so to off-worlders. Interrogating a live human being was not as fast and efficient as

implementing a properly functioning data search, but Gareth had found people to be a lot easier to work

with when things went wrong.

The woman at the desk looked up at his approach, and her eyes brightened. He wasn’t surprised. The

working uniform of a Knight of the Sphere wasn’t as dazzling as the full-dress regalia, but the rank it

proclaimed was nevertheless capable of impressing spectators. He knew the attendant wasn’t glowing

because of his face; it was too thin, too long, too raw-boned to make pleasant young ladies smile at his

approach.

“May I help you?” the desk clerk asked.

“Yes,” he said. “I need to know where the mercenary contract talks are being held.”

The clerk’s expression cooled markedly. The topic of mercenaries, it seemed, was not a popular one on

Woodstock at the moment.

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Gareth was not surprised. Some years earlier, when the Steel Wolves under Kal Radick had first begun

to exhibit signs of military adventurism, the citizens of Woodstock had grown nervous. Their uneasiness

prompted them to hire elements of the Eridani Light Horse mercenary unit as a planetary garrison. As

matters fell out afterward, the Steel Wolves—first under Radick himself and later under Anastasia

Kerensky—turned their attention elsewhere, and the contract between the government of Woodstock

and the Eridani Light Horse expired without any combat having taken place on-planet.

The good people of Woodstock, far from being relieved, felt that they had promised to spend a great

deal of money to no purpose. They attempted to renegotiate the terms of the contract to a lower payoff,

on the grounds that the mercenaries hadn’t done any actual work. When the mercenaries objected and

brought the matter before the Mercenary Review and Bonding Commission for adjudication, the local

government countered by accusing the Commission of institutional bias and denying that its decisions

were binding without the consent of both parties.

The mercenaries had objected again, vehemently this time, and with what the government of Woodstock

chose to regard as threats of violence. It had taken direct intervention on the part of Exarch Damien

Redburn, and the promise of a Paladin, no less, to handle negotiations, before the mercenaries’ tempers

would cool.

The clerk said, “The talks are at the Hotel Egremont.”

“Neutral ground?”

“I really couldn’t tell you,” the clerk said distantly. “Do you need a map?”

“Yes, please.” Attempting to pinpoint the location of the hotel by wandering about and asking possibly

hostile strangers for directions would not be good, Gareth thought, for the dignity of a Knight of the

Sphere.

“One moment.” A light flashed within the depths of the info-booth console, and a moment later a sheet

of printout flimsy emerged. The clerk picked up the sheet and handed it to him. It was a map of the city,

showing the Hotel Egremont marked with a star and the route from the DropPort picked out in red.

“Here you go.”

“Thank you.”

After a pause, the clerk added, almost reluctantly, “It’s a long walk. If I were you, I’d take a taxi.”

Gareth followed the clerk’s advice. The last thing he wanted, considering the gravity of the message that

he bore, was to show up at the talks looking sweaty and rumpled.

The Hotel Egremont, when he arrived, was full of mercs in uniform. Gareth suspected they had scared

away all of the other customers within the first day or so of negotiations. He asked the desk clerk where

the contract talks were being held.

“In the Rose Room,” the desk clerk replied. “Off the mezzanine.”

“Thanks,” Gareth said, and headed toward the staircase.

“Hey!” the desk clerk protested. “Those are private negotiations. You can’t just—”

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Loren L. Coleman - BattleTech - MechWarrior - Dark Age 13 - The Scorpion Jar

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