Loren L. Coleman - BattleTech - MechWarrior - Dark Age 07 - By Temptations and By War

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

For Peter and Cathryn Orullian.

Rén bú huì tài duoháo you.

(One can never have too many good friends.)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

One year ofMech Warrior Dark Age books behind us, I look at the storyline and the way it is

developing and see so many new possibilities I’m really not certain where we will end up. I feel I can

safely say, however, that Battle Tech lives on through the Mech Warrior line, and that these novels have

a long future ahead of them. Here’s to another decade of good fiction, and to the people who help make

that all possible for me:

The WizKids themselves: Jordan and Dawne Weisman, Mort Weisman, Maya Smith, Mike and Sharon

Mulvihill, Scott Hungerford, and everyone at the company who continues to work very hard on such

dynamic and growing universes. And certainly Janna Silverstein, who continues to push me into being a

better writer. Thank you.

My agent, Don Maass, and his office staff, for their hard work on my behalf. Also Laura Anne Gillman

and Jennifer Heddle at Roc. Anyone who thinks too many editors spoil the book have never worked

with these very excellent people.

Allen and Amy Mattila, for their longtime friendship. Randall and Tara Bills, Bryn and Rhianna, who

have also made themselves such a large part of our lives. Kelle Vozka, Erik and Alex, who are always

welcome at our home. Phil “Skippy” Deluca, who really should come over more often.

The gang of usual suspects: Mike Stackpole, Herb Beas, Chris Hartford, Chris Trossen, and the

mapmaker Oystein Tvedten. Special thanks to Team Battle Tech members Pete Smith, Chas Borner,

and Warner Doles who gave so freely of their time this last year. Special acknowledgements for “JT”

Yeo Jia Tian and also for Howard Liu for their help with Chinese translations.

For my loving wife, Heather Joy, who makes everything worthwhile. To my children, Talon, Conner,

and Alexia, who get more interesting (and more frightening) with each year. Okay, and the cats. Chaos,

Rumor and Ranger. What would I do without them? (Probably much better. I hope they didn’t hear

that.) And Loki, who, like all dogs, is happy just to be here.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Or hath God assayed to go and take him a nation from the midst of another nation, by

temptations, by signs, and by wonders, and by war. . . .

—Deuteronomy 4:34

PROLOG

A Dark Night on Liao

This use of the Emergency Communications System is to inform all citizens and residents of Liao

that the local ComStar network has suffered a loss of systems coordination. Precentor Rayburne

Belzer, citing last week’s three-day interruption, promises to have the HPG back up as soon as

possible. “Disruption will be kept to a minimum.”

—Station WXU, Alert News Broadcast, 2200 hours, 7 August 3132

Outside Lianyungang

Qinghai Province, Liao

Prefecture V, The Republic

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

11 August 3132

Twilight had come and gone on Liao, and that wasn’t good.

Evan Kurst paced a tight box around his small moving van, one of four haulers parked in a staggered line

atop an isolated bluff overlooking the Cavalry River. He kept to himself, as he’d been taught to do.

Kicking gravel against the van’s oversize tires, Evan divided his time between watching the narrow

access road that had brought the small cadre ofIjori Dè Guang members here, and looking at the

jewel-studded blanket of velvet sky. Not a trace of sunset’s color bled over the western horizon, and the

sky remained crystal clear with visibility at twenty kilometers or better. The worst possible conditions for

a clandestine operation.

“Drive flare!” someone shouted from behind another of the dark-painted vehicles. Evan winced,

wondering—worried—how far the shout would carry in the still night. “DropShip.”

The flare was little more than a bright star moving across the heavens, a thin dagger of hard, white light.

Too small for the merchant-convertedUnion they were expecting. Too high for any kind of approach to

the bluff. And actually, wasn’t it close to—

“Twenty-one hundred hours.” Evan glanced at his watch. “That is the ballistic shuttle from Nánlù.”

Liao’s southern continent. “Not our DropShip,” he said softly, to himself.

It wasn’t coming. Something had gone wrong, again. He dried his palms against his jeans. Evan knew

only one of the other six recruits. Mai Wa wasn’t here, the needler pistol weighed his hip down

awkwardly, and they were fifteen kilometers outside of Lianyungang—the city’s lights were a muted glow

above the forest to the northeast—with no good safe house to run for should the local constabulary

swoop down.

“And I have a military history test on Monday.”

That bothered him more than it probably should have. A member of the buddingIjori Dè Guang ,

Liao’s newest band of self-proclaimed freedom fighters, should not be worried about his position within

The Republic’s militia. But he was. Evan had worked too long and hard for this chance to become a

MechWarrior. With his recent transfer to the prestigious Liao Conservatory of Military Arts, his personal

honor demanded that he make his mark above the line set by any citizen student.

It almost made him laugh. “What I could tell them now about the end of the Capellan invasion in 3112

would qualify as Master’s level work.” Doctorate, even. A few history books would have to be

rewritten.

But he wouldn’t tell. The secret he’d been entrusted with was too big to share with anyone save Mai

Uhn Wa, Evan’ssifu in all things seditious. Mai would know what to do with such a secret.

If Mai ever arrived.

If the DropShip came.

Too many ifs.

A warm breeze smelling of pine trees, wildflowers, and the day’s moist heat ruffled Evan’s mop of dark

hair. The warm, wet climate made Qinghai Province one of the planet’s best agricultural centers. Rice,

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

peppers, sweet naranji: everything grew well here. Nánlù and the once-more inhabitable regions of

Anderia were Liao’s industrial heart, but Beilù, the northern continent, was Liao’s breadbasket.

It was also the seat of occupation by The Republic of the Sphere, and the very heart of all resistance to

Devlin Stone’s “benevolent” despotism.

Devlin Stone. The “devil” Stone. Evan Kurst looked up into the starry heavens, found the suns of

Nanking, Tigress, and there, on the horizon, valiant Tikonov. Capellan systems, all, and along with Liao

once belonging to the mighty Capellan Confederation, one of the Inner Sphere’s five Great Houses.

In the local constellation of Qu Yuan, the poet, Evan located the sun that looked down upon Terra. It

was from that cursed star system sixty-five years before that the Word of Blake launched its Jihad against

civilization, bringing the Inner Sphere to its knees in ten brutal years of scorched-earth warfare. Devlin

Stone led the resistance that finally cast down the Armageddon worshippers. Then liberator turned

conqueror as Stone bargained for a new realm centered around Terra, taking as spoils of victory a

territory spanning a hundred-and-twenty-light-year radius around mankind’s birthworld. Which was how

Liao and over fifty other Capellan worlds became part of the new Republic of the Sphere.

Whether they wanted to or not.

“You see somethin’ up there, Kurst?”

Whit Greggor stepped up next to Evan. Greggor was the oneIjori Dè Guang member present tonight

that Evan knew. The large man had a voice that rumbled up from deep within his chest, broad, Slavic

features, and crew-cut reddish-brown hair turning premature gray. Too old to be a student, full of ideals.

Too young to remember life under the Confederation, fifty-some years before. Evan pegged him as a

thug. Mai Wa probably recruited the tough out of a dark alley somewhere.

Did Evan see something? More than Greggor could imagine.

“Freedom,” he finally said. “I’m enjoying sunlight that never looked down on the Word of Blake . . . that

never knew Devlin Stone.”

“I’d rather catch the drive flare of our ’Ship. We need more weapons.” He cracked his scarred,

oversize knuckles. “Then we can ram real freedom down the throats of all these paper citizens.”

“Spoken like a true patriot.” Crude and boorish, the sentiment summed up Greggor quite well. Evan

considered it very likely that there was a bridge somewhere missing its troll. Would a man like this even

care to understand what he was fighting for?

“You sayin’ we don’t need more weapons?”

“We need something,” Evan agreed. Weapons. Resources.Leaders . The people of Liao longed to slip

The Republic’s harness. Mai Wa prophesied that once the landslide began, it would sweep the world.

Evan believed now more than ever.

“So what’s the holdup, you think? The new ComStar blackout?”

“Could be.”

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

The man hawked, spat to one side. “What else, ya think? Theoubluduk cowlheads’ve never had their

shit in one sock.”

Greggor’s speech was often laced with Russian curses and colorful stock, but his analysis did not differ

much from Evan’s. ComStar’s local service had gone down again, disconnecting Liao from the rest of the

Inner Sphere for the second time this month. Without faster-than-light communications provided by the

organization’s network of hyperpulse generator stations, disruptions occurred in everything from shipping

schedules to interplanetary market trades. Once had been a costly anomaly, virtually unknown since the

agency’s inception.

Twice? Evan wondered.

“The JumpShip could have had technical problems,” Evan finally said. “Customs maybe stopped the

DropShip in orbit.” Besides the HPG network, so much relied on the tenuous fabric of interstellar travel:

jump-capable vessels that moved thirty light-years at a leap and DropShips ferrying goods and people

between worlds.

Greggor wasn’t satisfied with that. “I still say it’s ComStar. Got us all frigged up again. Filthy

vrebrachneys .”

Evan shrugged. Greggor’s black moods could be contagious. A shout from another cadre member

saved him from any reply.

“Lights! Lights on the road!”

“Truck,” someone else called out. “Hovercraft.”

This time Evan didn’t worry about the noise. He worried about who was arriving so late to their party. A

chill took him as he drew his needler pistol, felt its uncomfortable weight in his hand. His efforts in theIjori

Dè Guang so far had been limited to “liberating” supplies from remote military compounds and

sabotaging public transportation services. Military academies taught MechWarrior cadets basic small

arms handling—laser pistols, for example—and those he wasn’t allowed to carry outside the firing range.

The needler was a more vicious weapon than any he’d trained with.

Perspiration warmed under Evan’s arms as he took cover behind his rented haulers, extending the

weapon in a two-hand grasp over the vehicle’s hood and waiting for confirmation of sight, fight, or flight.

The open-bed hovercraft flashed its lights twice, once, twice.

“Mai! It is Mai Wa.” The resistance leader. Liao’s best hope.

Relief flooded Evan with a cold touch, like an aftertaste of the regret that came after any compromise.

Part of him had looked forward to pulling the trigger, he realized, placing himself apart from those who

talked , and among the company of those whodid . Even the Cult of Liao, Evan had discovered recently,

honored action over rhetoric. In that, the underground political movement had more in common with the

formingIjori Dè Guang than most people thought.

The hovertruck cut its lights and lift fans just short of the gathered haulers, settling to the ground as its air

cushion spilled out from beneath rigid skirting. The dying whine of its lifters reminded Evan of this

morning’s visit to the Cult of Liao shrine, and the humming of its generator, which echoed off stark,

barren, bunker walls.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Mai Uhn Wa slid out from the cab, pouring himself to the ground with a fluidity which Evan had come to

envy. His shaved head was tanned to a leathery brown, his mustache oily black and obviously dyed on

the fifty-odd-year-old man. Small and compact, rarely given to exaggerated gestures, Mai Wa might

have been any Capellan-descended citizen you passed on the street if you never noticed his eyes. Black

and hard, and never blinking enough, they were eyes that had seen—and still saw—too much.

Yet Evan would show his mentor something the other man had never dreamt to look upon.

The thought warmed him, buoyed his hopes, until Mai Wa looked over his assembled cadre and shook

his head slowly. Once.

“The DropShip will not arrive,” the elder man informed them straightaway. “Our off-world network is

compromised.”

“Compromised?” Greggor sounded as if he was struggling with the meaning of the word. “How? Who?”

Evan had never asked about Mai’s off-world contacts. In a resistance cell organization, the less you

knew the better. Evan already knew more than he should about Liao-based operations, including the

names of other cell leaders, which he put down to being a prominent Mech Warrior candidate. Among

more common members Evan carried influence, which Mai Wa had used in this last year.

Now he regretted not asking. His ability to advise would be limited.

“Customs Security on Genoa halted all outbound traffic three days ago,” Mai Wa told them. “In the

process of routine management, some . . . discrepancies were uncovered. The DropShip was destroyed

trying to flee authorities.”

Like dominoes poised to topple, no doubt a great deal of Mai Wa’s network stood exposed. How bad

was this setback? And why haltall outbound traffic? The disruption such a decision caused . . . would

pale next to any larger disruption already occurring.

“The blackout,” Evan said, spitting out the word like a mouthful of rancid naranji pulp. The timing could

not be coincidence. “Genoa noticed that we were off the HPG net again.”

“Yes,” Mai said. “And no. And not exactly.” The small man seemed to be carrying an extraordinarily

large burden, and now simply heaved it aside in the most direct manner possible. “Four days ago, Genoa

witnessed something we were spared. In a way. They saw nearlyevery world go dark. In a six-hour

period, they lost HPG contact with all star systems but one, New Aragon, which reported much the same

thing.”

The implications rolled over Evan Kurst like an assault tank. HPGs reached out fifty light-years. Two

worlds reported a complete loss of signal from almost every other station within that distance?

“Arboris?” someone asked. “Ningpo and Gan Singh?” Neighboring worlds. “New Canton?” The capital

of Prefecture VI.

Mai had little left to offer. “Only a single JumpShip has come in bearing any news so far. Shipboard

rumor claims that sporadic contact has been made with New Canton, yes. And with Achernar in

Prefecture IV. But we may be looking at over ninety percent loss of the ComStar network. If that

extends into any of the Great Houses at our borders . . .”

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Hundreds. Thousands of worlds. Dark. Evan grasped at the full implications. Missed. “Our work here,”

he asked, “what of it?” The awaited supplies were everything they needed to flesh out a true resistance

force. To make theIjori Dè Guang something other than one more small-time movement. Evan felt their

work slipping away into nothingness.

“It is finished,” Mai admitted, “for now. Chaos reigns outside of this system, and likely will be here in

very short order. If we were prepared, it would be a golden opportunity.” For a moment, a flash of fire lit

up the other man’s dark eyes. Then, “But we are not.”

Angry now, Evan stepped forward. His hand itched to grab something, and his needler came to mind.

“We are out here, all of us, because of you,” he accused Mai Wa. “You made promises.”

“And it is no longer possible to keep them.” As if speaking to someone in the distance, theIjori Dè

Guang leader added, “It will not be the first time I have had to break such promises.”

What was one more person to fail the Capellan people, and Evan? Raised as a ward of the state, Evan

had hardened himself against most disappointments. But for the first time in years, he felt betrayed. Felt it

deep down near where the fires of hope had burned hot not many hours before. If the secret he carried

might change things, Evan would have spilled it in front of all. But it would not. He heard the sound of

defeat lurking behind Mai Uhn Wa’s words. The movement’ssifu was crestfallen—emptied, and hiding

it.

Evan turned away, ignoring questions that Mai would deftly deflect. He walked to the bluff’s edge,

staring out over the dark valley as, behind him, cadre members abandoned plans and each other in their

empty haulers.

Then all was silent. For a time.

“You are angry.”

Evan knew that Mai Wa had not left. The rebel leader’s eyes had never left the back of his neck. They

burned there, drilling holes.

“Anger has its uses, Evan Kurst, but if you let it guide your next actions, you will be lost.”

“I no longer need to listen to you, Mai Uhn Wa. What I do next is my own business.” To stand

alongside people whodo , and not people who make excuses.

“If you think I enjoy seeing years of my work destroyed in a single night, you are greatly mistaken, and

not the man I thought you would become.” Evan noticed that Mai held back from saying “the man I

thought you were.” Mai stared through Evan. “I have more important people than you to whom I will

answer for this failure. This time I gambled and I lost. Liao is on its own.”

Evan couldn’t trust anything the other man said. Mai Wa claimed ties to the highest authorities. To have

been involved in several uprisings on Liao over the years. He did put together theIjori Dè Guang , and

now he abandoned it—that was what Evanknew . That Mai thought it necessary made no difference to

Evan.

More importantly, it made no difference to the Capellan people.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Evan waited until footsteps gave way to the whine of powerful turbines, and then until the last echoes of

the hovercraft were lost back down the long access road. He watched the heavens rotate on the axis

star, a parade of celestial beings. Thinking. Planning.

“We have always been alone,” he finally whispered into the dark summer’s night.

But that was not necessarily the case.

Not anymore.

PART ONE

The Politics of

Destruction

1

Path Toward Redemption

“Prefect Tao’s relocation to New Aragon should not be considered any kind of estrangement

between himself and the Prefecture’s governing body, which will remain on Liao. We all accept

the need for shifting resources to match our new strategic demands.”

—Lord Governor Marion Hidic, Recorded address from Liao, 12 January 3134

Celestial Palace

Zi-jin Chéng (Forbidden City), Sian

Sian Commonality, Capellan Confederation

8 March 3134

Footsteps echoed in the outer corridor. Mai Uhn Wa nodded to himself. He sat cross-legged on his thin

mattress, feeling the cold stone floor through a half inch of meager padding and his threadbare prison

dungarees. Gooseflesh puckered his bared forearms.

He faced the gray cinderblock wall at the rear of his isolation cell, hunching forward in concentration. A

few strands of graying hair fell across Mai’s face as he dabbed more of his homemade stain onto the

wall’s porous surface. His ink was rancid pork fat rendered down by slow cooking under the light they

never turned off, mixed with soy and the red juice he pulped out of beets. A strip of cloth torn from his

prison dungarees acted as his brush. Wrap it over the end of two fingers, dip into the dark stain, and then

dab carefully. One day’s work completed two or three ideograms.

He’d worked halfway through his second when his cell door slammed back and a pair of Maskirovka

agents entered. Mai Wa did not flinch at their arrival, or even turn to look. Whatever was to happen

would happen with or without his participation.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

“More of your grandiose delusions?” Michael Yung-Te asked, disbelief coloring each word. A shrugged

pause. “On your feet, Mai Wa.”

Snugging the cloth strip tighter against his discolored fingertips, Mai Wa continued to stain a dark line

across the wall’s light gray facing.

Yung-Te stepped farther into the room. He scuffed his boot against the side of the thin mat. “I said get

up.” His tone was darker this time. Angry.

A second request? How novel. Almost enough to convince him to obey. Instead, Mai Wa put finishing

touches on the ideogram for “loyalty,” then straightened to survey his work.

“The highest and most important ideal in any MechWarrior’s life is loyalty,” he whispered softly.

That was the opening tenet of the sixth dictum of the Lorix Order, a quasireligious philosophy endorsed

by the Capellan state. It was also among the strongest principles endorsed by Capellan Warrior Houses,

the elite military enclaves of the Confederation: Imarra . . . Kamata . . . Dai Da Chi . . . Hiritsu . . .

Ijori?

As always, thoughts of the fallen Warrior House led Mai Uhn Wa back to his recent attempts to

resurrect it on Liao, and to the disastrous timing of the ComStar Blackout.Ijori Dè Guang. TheLight of

Ijori . If he’d only had six more months.

“Mai Wa—” Agent Yung-Te warned.

The Mask agents still hadn’t forced him away from his work. Sensing that this visit was something

beyond their normal interrogation and reeducation attempts, Mai Wa now set his wooden cup of stain to

one side and folded his strip of cloth next to it. He rose slowly to his feet, favoring his right side with the

taped ribs and electroshock burns. Neat columns of ideograms very nearly covered the entire wall.

Starting as high in the upper right corner as Mai Wa could reach, they scrolled from top to bottom and

right to left in the ancient tradition. The first five dictums, all complete, and the start of the sixth. With

effort, he would find just enough room to finish them.

“Such determination would have been admirable put in service to the State, rather than against it.”

Mai Wa turned and half bowed toward his keepers. “I am a traitor,” he agreed. “I serve the

Confederation.”

Michael Yung-Te was in his late thirties, with black hair and a lean, angular face. Ambition burned

behind gray-blue eyes. He was fast approaching that timeless quality some men of Asian descent were

fortunate to gain. His associate looked older, with the sunken-eyed expression of a man who was part of

too many secrets, too much senseless violence. Your basic agent of the Capellan secret police. Both

wore Han-styled charcoal gray suits and high-necked, stiff white shirts. Their mandarin collars were

closed at the throat with a triangular Confederation crest.

“You’ll serve as an example to other would-be traitors,” the older agent said, but his voice lacked the

usual dogmatic conviction.

Mai Uhn Wa looked at both men with a faint stirring of curiosity. A tense smile crept at the right side of

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

his face. The left no longer worked so well, even with the cheekbone reconstruction. “Will I?” he asked.

Yung-Te reigned back his associate with a raised hand. “No marks,” he reminded the other man, who

stepped forward and kicked Mai Wa’s bowl against the wall, splattering reddish-brown stain along the

lowest cinderblocks. Several large spatters smeared across the ideogram for “loyalty.”

“An untidy end,” Mai said softly.

Oh, yes. This was something different.

Mai Uhn Wa limped into the Chamber of the Celestial Throne with head bowed and ankles shackled

together by a short length of polymer chain. His bare feet whispered against teak flooring, the black

wood lacquered so heavily that it reflected the entire room like a dark mirror. Heady incense lingered in

the air. Sandalwood, he tasted. And jasmine. His prison dungarees rubbed roughly against his skin, but at

least they were freshly laundered and pressed with military creases.

One did not appear before the Chancellor of the Capellan Confederation, Soul of the People and God

Incarnate of Sian, in anything less than the best their station allowed.

His Maskirovka escorts paused awkwardly at the threshold, unbidden to enter but uneasy with leaving

their charge alone. A half dozen shuffle steps into the chamber, Mai Wa stopped as well. The Mask

agents finally bowed and retreated, closing the large, bronze-faced doors behind him.

Still, he waited.

“Approach me, Mai Uhn Wa.” The command was subtle, shadowed, but no less forceful for being

spoken barely above a whisper.

Mai raised his head and took in the austere beauty of Daoshen Liao’s throne room. The walls were

paneled with red-grained bamboo, suggesting a ring of flames around the entire chamber. A carved frieze

ran down the left-hand wall, depicting ancient warriors on an eternal march. On the right only a few

simple charcoal sketches hung as decoration, drawn by the hand of The Ascendant Sun-Tzu Liao,

Daoshen’s father, if stories were to be believed.

A runner of red carpeting shot through with gold threads led from the bronze-faced doors to the foot of

the dais. Gold: the prerogative of the emperor in ancient China. Mai avoided it, keeping to the right-hand

side as he approached the Celestial Dais with all due humility.

His life, and purpose, might very well hang by such a thread.

A suit of Chinese armor, from the Nán Bei Cháo dynasties of ancient Terra, stood on display at the

corner of the dais, a beautiful piece of physical history, as was the chair at the center of the dais, the

Celestial Throne itself. The Chinese zodiac wheel formed its upper backrest, a reminder of the diverse

nature of mankind, and each leg ended in a dragon’s claw. Carved from one solid piece of mahogany,

the red and brown wood grain promised both strength and character.

And on that throne, half hidden in shadow, sat Daoshen Liao.

For the third time in his life Mai Wa looked upon the Chancellor of the Capellan Confederation.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Loren L. Coleman - BattleTech - MechWarrior - Dark Age 07 - By Temptations and By War

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: