A Silence in the Heavens (7 page)

He paused for a moment. “ ‘At ease’ is yet another order. It means ‘you may move your right foot, though your left will remain in one place as if glued there. You will clasp your hands in the small of your back. You may look around, but you may not talk.’ Try it again. Company! At ease!”

Will clasped his hands in the small of his back, as instructed, and waited for the command that would send him into the open building and the next phase of his strange new life.

Tigress, Summer 3133

Power Play

12

DropShip Landing Field

The Four Cities, Tigress

Prefecture IV, Republic of the Sphere

April, 3133; local summer

O
n Tigress, the day was clear and dazzlingly bright. The air above the landing field rippled with midsummer heat. Then ground and air alike trembled with a heavy, growling vibration as an object came into view in the sky above the field: first a dot, then a disk, then a huge and steadily descending shape, as the first of the DropShips landed with a roar and rumble. The Steel Wolves were coming home to the Four Cities.

The fighting had been good on Achernar, at least for those of the Wolves who had won honor and promotion. Not everybody was happy among those returning. Some of the Warriors looked beyond the fighting to the longer strategy, and saw Achernar still master of its own fate, loyal to The Republic of the Sphere and controlled neither by the Steel Wolves nor by Lord Aaron Sandoval and his puppet Erik Sandoval-Groell. The defenders of Achernar could boast that they had taken on Kal Radick’s Steel Wolves and sent them home bleeding, and that was no little thing in times like these.

Star Colonel Anastasia Kerensky saw the longer strategy as well as anybody else. Nevertheless, she had a bit of a swagger in her step as she left the DropShip
Lupus,
with her leather jacket slung over her shoulder and the sun picking up the red highlights in her thick black hair.

The patches and blazons on the jacket told an interesting story. Its wearer, they said, had indeed fought in the campaign just past, but her fellow Warriors had not been Clan. Anastasia grinned, remembering. She’d had fun on Achernar, fighting next to the locals and testing herself against Kal Radick’s Steel Wolves. Finding a comrade-in-arms—and a pleasing if temporary lover—in her fellow MechWarrior Raul Ortega. Being Tassa Kay.

The grin faded a little. Raul Ortega had gone back to his local woman in the end, and Tassa Kay was—not dead, exactly, but put away until the next time Anastasia wanted to shed for a little while the ambitions and expectations that went with being the bearer of a famous Bloodname. And there was no Bloodname more famed among the Clans than Kerensky.

Aleksandr and Nicholas Kerensky had pulled the ancestors of the Clans away from the wreckage of the original Star League and made them into what they now were. Natasha Kerensky, the Black Widow, had won fame and notoriety throughout the Inner Sphere as one of the group of mercenaries—and covert intelligence gatherers—called the Wolf’s Dragoons. Anastasia, for her part, intended to take the Kerensky Bloodname still further before she was done.

For now, she needed to get herself established here on Tigress. The port workers could handle the offloading and berthing of her
Ryoken II
BattleMech without her direct supervision, and could begin the job of cleaning it up and repairing the damage it had taken during the campaign on Achernar. She would check up on their progress frequently, of course, because the
Ryoken II
was hers—her weapon and protection in battle, a metal-and-myomer extension of her physical self—and its continuing good condition was as important to her as her own. But Tigress was a Clan world now, and its port laborers and repair techs would know the difference between a real fighting machine and a retrofitted piece of industrial gear. Meanwhile, Anastasia had other work to do.

Her first stop was the Portmaster’s office. The Portmaster, like the laborers who worked under him, was a Steel Wolf from one of the labor castes—in his case, from among those charged with administration and record keeping. His placid expression changed when she entered his office; she could see that he already knew who she was. Absolutely nothing travels faster than gossip, and Anastasia was well aware that the news had spread from the DropShip faster than its passengers could disperse:
A Kerensky is among us.

“Star Colonel?” he asked.

His voice was deferential. His manner was not cringing or subservient—he was a Wolf, even if he was not a Warrior, and no Wolf was ever subservient—but he nevertheless accorded her the deference befitting her rank and name. She had missed that automatic deference while she was fighting among the natives on Achernar, even while Tassa Kay was enjoying the easy camaraderie that had filled its place.

She gave the man a brief nod of acknowledgment. “Portmaster,” she said. “Is there anything happening at the moment here on Tigress that a new arrival ought to know?”

“Your arrival with the DropShips from Achernar is the only matter of current interest,” the Portmaster said.

“We have already arranged a local berthing facility for your
Ryoken II,
and a repair crew has been assigned.”

A reputation, Anastasia reflected, was a handy thing to have, even if so far hers was mostly genetic and not of her own making.

“Excellent,” she said.

“And for yourself, Star Colonel—do you wish your personal effects taken to Headquarters?”

Anastasia had done her research before embarking on this adventure. The newly constructed Headquarters building housed the senior Steel Wolf officers present on Tigress—at least, it would do so once the Wolves finished settling in—and her rank of Star Colonel entitled her to a substantial set of rooms.

“No,” she said. “I plan to look for accommodation on the local economy.”

A person could obtain a great deal more privacy by securing private housing, and could also escape the strain of having to endure the company of potential rivals on a round-the-clock basis. Living alone would also make it easier, if she ever wanted, to bring Tassa Kay out of hiding for a few hours of irresponsible fun.

“As the Star Colonel wishes,” said the Portmaster. “The Four Cities area has a wide range of possibilities available for officers who want to look for separate quarters, and Headquarters keeps a list of recommended housing providers on file.”

“Excellent. I would prefer not to waste good time looking at bad rooms.” She gave him her best charismatic smile. It had worked for Tassa Kay on Achernar, and it would work again on Tigress for Anastasia Kerensky. Start with the support staff and go on from there, gaining their goodwill and admiration, or at least their respect. “Out in the field is one thing—all of us have seen worse than cold water and thin walls and the local vermin—but just because something can be endured on campaign is no reason anyone should consent to live with it afterwards.”

“My feelings exactly, Star Colonel,” the Portmaster said. “Aside from the berthing and repair of your BattleMech, is there anything else that you need?”

“One thing, yes,” she said. “Inform Galaxy Commander Kal Radick that Star Colonel Anastasia Kerensky has arrived on Tigress, and that she wishes to meet with him at his earliest convenience.”

13

Steel Wolf Headquarters

The Four Cities, Tigress

April, 3133; local summer

F
or Anastasia Kerensky, Kal Radick’s earliest convenience came sooner than she had expected. She had spent most of her first day on Tigress combing through the local rental and purchase listings, tackling the acquisition of living quarters with a ruthlessness that left sales and rental agents exhausted. Her efforts brought their own reward: By late afternoon, she had the keys to a one-bedroom apartment in neither the best nor the worst section of the Four Cities. The building itself was an unattractive brick structure, like a shipping crate with windows, but it was well kept up by neighborhood standards, and its security systems were excellent.

And for all the building’s laboring-class ugliness, it possessed one overwhelming advantage: Nobody in the Steel Wolves would expect to find Star Colonel Anastasia Kerensky living in such a place. She still had Tassa Kay’s mustering-out money from her service on Achernar, in good Republic stones—more than enough to cover her first and last month’s rent and her security deposit, and to pay for the activation of utilities and a connection to the planetary communications net. All done with the pleasant anonymity of cash.

Privacy, she thought. And cheap at the price. She hoped that hard currency would continue in use on Clan worlds in the Republic. If the Steel Wolves ever managed to reestablish the standard Clan voucher system locally, such anonymity would be much more difficult to come by.

She checked the net connection on the spot by locating and opening her official mail. Nothing there . . .

except for a note asking for the pleasure of her company at dinner that evening with Galaxy Commander Kal Radick.

“Fast work,” she said aloud, and didn’t bother to explain her comment to the rental agent. Radick obviously wanted to meet her before she had a chance to settle in—wanted to catch her on the run and see what she was like with her guard down. “Well, the hell with
that
.”

Her personal gear was still back at the DropShip field; she hadn’t wanted to haul a full duffel all over the city while looking at apartments. But her earlier cordiality toward the Portmaster proved to have been a good investment. Upon her return, he proved willing to let her clean up and change into uniform in the female employees’ locker room.

“I do not want to keep Galaxy Commander Radick waiting,” she explained as she collected her duffel and headed for the showers. When she reemerged a few minutes later, scrubbed clean and freshly dress-uniformed, Tassa Kay was gone completely and the Star Colonel was ascendant.

Public transport took her to the Headquarters building where Kal Radick had his quarters—no living off base for him.

“Star Colonel Kerensky to see Galaxy Commander Radick,” she said to the guard at the front entrance. “I am expected.”

The guard consulted his data pad. “You will find his quarters on the top floor, Star Colonel. Take the elevator up and follow the signs for Twenty-Five A through F.”

She was not surprised, when she reached her destination, to find Kal Radick’s rooms austere almost to point of bareness: stark metal-and-crystal furniture, with the walls and carpet and curtains done in shades of brown and gray and bone ivory. The Clan aesthetic sense ran to the purely functional in matters of design, even when the materials themselves, as here, were the best available. Anastasia Kerensky, trueborn of the iron wombs on Arc-Royal, approved, but the voice of Tassa Kay whispered impudently in the back of her mind that some people might consider that the Galaxy Commander was trying a bit too hard.

Radick himself was a lean man, on the tall side for a MechWarrior, with dark hair and a complexion either deep tanned or naturally olive. He came forward to greet her at the door.

“Star Colonel Kerensky,” he said.

He sounded genuinely pleased by her arrival, and Anastasia had to remind herself that the Galaxy Commander was younger than he looked. His true age didn’t show in his appearance or in his general bearing, but she had delved into the history behind his meteoric rise to the rank of Prefect. Mixed in with the triumphs—his gaining of the Radick Bloodname, his successful challenge for the position of Galaxy Commander for the Clan Clusters in Prefecture IV—she had seen other, more disquieting things.

His dealings with the new Prefect of Prefecture III, for example. Kal Radick clearly had no idea how much he had offended the Countess of Northwind by his suggestion that The Republic of the Sphere might eventually be replaced by a renascent Star League. The Campbell woman was passionately loyal to Devlin Stone’s Republic. Anastasia, for her part, found such passion for a jerry-built political experiment more amusing than anything else—and had reacted to Kal Radick’s offhand comment as though he had spoken deliberate treason.

If the Countess of Northwind had been Clan, Anastasia thought, we would have had a Trial of Grievance by now, and the whole Inner Sphere would have learned which side had the stronger argument.

All this passed through her mind as she weighed the proper response to Kal Radick’s greeting. The tone of the evening was social, rather than official—their meeting was in private quarters rather than in public space, and food and drink were on offer—but not too social, since Radick wore a plain working uniform rather than civilian clothing.

Anastasia settled for making eye contact and giving Radick a nod in reply. “Galaxy Commander Radick.”

“Have you eaten?” he asked.

“Breakfast this morning only,” she said. “I have been occupied with settling in.”

Radick gestured toward the table she had glimpsed earlier. It stood in a window nook overlooking the DropPort. Night was falling outside, but the silhouettes of
Lupus
and its mates were still visible on the landing field. “Join me, then.”

“Happily, Galaxy Commander.”

The meal that waited for them turned out to be much like the room it was served in: everything of the best quality, but all of it plain to the point of simplicity. Not ostentatiously so—the Galaxy Commander did not dine at home on field rations, or on anything badly cooked or otherwise inedible—but bland and unsophisticated nonetheless. She wondered if the near austerity was meant as a political gesture, to demonstrate to the more militant among the Steel Wolves that he was uncorrupted by the ways of The Republic in spite of having been immersed in its politics.

“What brings you to Prefecture IV?” Radick asked. He filled his plate with sliced roast meat and boiled greens as he spoke. “Tigress is a long way from Arc-Royal, quaiff?”

In more ways than one, she thought. “Aff.”

“Yet you came here by way of Achernar. Why?”