Текст книги "Natural Selection"

Автор книги: Michael A. Stackpole

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25

DropShip Lugh

Nadir Recharge Station, Great X

Federated Commonwealth

10 July 3055

 

Christian Kell pulled himself through the hatchway on the Lugh."Came as soon as I could, Colonel. What's up?"

Daniel Allard waved Chris over to the communications console. "It's about time for Conal Ward to find something else to bitch about. I thought having a witness here to offer some input would be useful. You're drafted because Colonel Brahe has already threatened to kill him if they ever meet."

Chris laughed lightly, but he knew the Clansman must have been working hard if he succeeded in getting a rise out of the unflappable Akira Brahe, commanding officer of the First Regiment.

A commtech's voice came through the console speaker. "Message coming in from the White Fangfor you, Colonel Allard."

Dan winked at Chris. "I can set my watch by him. Probably even has creases in his birthday suit." The Kell Hound commander punched a button on the console and the monitor filled with the image of a handsome man with a fierce scowl on his face. The anger in his eyes seemed to smolder from the depths of some dark, hidden place. "Good afternoon, Star Colonel Ward."

"Daniel, I have to break this prohibition you have placed on extra-system communications."

Dan Allard continued on as if he had not been interrupted. "I would like to present one of my battalion commanders, Major Christian Kell."

Conal Ward looked over at Chris from the screen, his expression darkening even further. "I should have expected it. You are the half-caste, freebirth bastard of Morgan Kell's brother, quiaff?"

Chris nodded. His face did not betray his shock at the words, but only because he knew Conal was trying to provoke him. Had the Clansman not added the word "freebirth" to his insult, Chris might have taken offense. That term, while a vile slur against any member of the genetically engineered Clan warrior caste, was meaningless in the Inner Sphere, where everyone was born "freely." To react is to give him power over me, and that I shall not do.

The Clansman looked back at Dan. "Colonel, I am required to make a report to my leader, the ilKhan. Since you have coerced the spineless ComStar bureaucrats into clinging to this fiction that their hyperpulse equipment is damaged, I am prepared to use my own hyperpulse generator. "

Dan frowned, as if confused, but Chris knew from years of association with the older man that it was a mask of deception. "Star Colonel, a prohibition on communications is in place for a reason. I think your report can wait."

"And I think it cannot." The black-haired man pounded his fist into the palm of his other hand. "This is a military unit, Colonel. We have a chain of command."

Dan's head came up at Conal's furious tone. "And thisis a military operation, Colonel. Your chain of command runs through me. Request denied."

"It was not a request, Colonel."

"It is still denied, Colonel Ward." Dan turned from the screen and nodded to Chris. "The reason I asked Major Kell to be present was to inform you of the reason we've been sitting at this recharge station with our tracking signals identifying us as merchant vessels. I know I have tried before, but you do not seem to understand. Major?"

Chris wanted to laugh out loud, but suppressed the desire. "Colonel, the desire for complete HP-communications silence is because we hope to make Great X a target for the raiders. We know what sort of information they were able to gather on Deia, and your transmission of the interrogation transcripts from the men you captured has been helpful. If we could debrief them, we think we could learn more."

Conal shook his head. "That is impossible. Those individuals have been destroyed."

Dan blinked and came back around to face the screen. "What? Destroyed?"

"That is what we Clans do with bandits. They are obviously defective." Conal became smug. "We do not desire their presence" in the gene pool, so we expunge it."

Chris stared hard at Conal Ward's image on the screen. "But in the transcripts they claimed that it was the Red Corsair who enslaved them and whose orders brought their release."

"Disinformation. You can take nothing they said as fact."

"But Hooper and Vandermeer both checked out as members of the Robinson Rangers. They were captured on Kooken's Pleasure Pit." Dan punched up data on an auxiliary screen. "Voiceprints matched the men you had."

"Then they were traitors and became even more deserving of death."

Dan Allard shook his head. "I think, from this point on, you will not be destroying any more prisoners. Consider that an order."

Conal's face hardened. "I will take it under advisement."

"You will deliver all prisoners to the Kell Hounds, Star Colonel. You will maintain radio silence until such time as the raiders have committed their DropShips to a run on Great X Four."

Chris marveled at how Dan kept his voice level and under control.

Conal seemed unimpressed. "Or what, Colonel?"

"Do not challenge me, Conal Ward." Dan leaned forward and Chris saw his chest expand. "I was on Luthien when we crushed the Smoke Jaguars and the Nova Cats. My 'Mechs are the equal of yours and my warriors are experienced in the ways of Clan combat. If you really want that chip knocked off your shoulder, I have six times as many warriors as you do, and every one of them would love to avenge the Zouaves.

"We're here to stop the bandits, Star Colonel. That comes first. When that's done, we can find some airless mudball where we can settle our differences. Until that time, you're under my orders, and those orders are to stick with the briefing we sent you earlier. Got it?"

Before Conal could reply, a new image filled the console. It was the regional traffic control scan of the solar system, showing little symbols and codes to designate all DropShips and JumpShips in the area. Chris immediately noticed a new symbol located at a pirate jump point two days out from Great X Four.

"Colonel Allard, we have a JumpShip arriving in-system. Prelim scan shows no IFF indicators and it seems to conform to previous scans made on the bandits."

Dan hit a button his desk and an alert klaxon began to blare throughout the Lugh."This is it. To your machines. When the bandits commit, we make this their last raid."

* * *

Locked in the virtual world of the Red Corsair's base, Nelson Geist traveled alone with his thoughts. An internal conflict raged within him and it angered him because he knew that, on one level, the Red Corsair had engineered matters specifically to twist him up. That made him want to dismiss the whole lot and try to keep it out of his mind, but he could not.

She had remained good to her word and released some of the other slaves on Deia. She had summoned those captured on Kooken's Pleasure Pit and told them that hehad chosen those who could go free. Then she had selected three men who had been with the Robinson Rangers and turned them loose. Though Nelson was glad for those men, it tore him up inside to see the anger in the eyes of Spider and the other Reservists, who believed he had betrayed them.

That, however, was a mere stone in the shoe compared to the other huge problem he faced. The Red Corsair had proved to be a voracious and skilled lover. She had kept him with her throughout the burn away from Deia and seemed almost drunk with happiness over having outrun the Wolves. In the intervening three weeks they had continued to spend their nights together, more often than not finally collapsing exhausted in each other's arms.

Nelson had never known such a sexual partner. With her there was no compromise, no surrender. Within days of their first encounter they had blasted beyond the envelope of what he had previously experienced, and never looked back. Their lovemaking seemed to rejuvenate him, even healing the damage his male pride had suffered because of the maiming of his hand. In bed they were equals and even partners, consuming and consumed by what they were and what they became together.

Yet when he awoke in her arms, the shock of where he was and who he was with would jerk him suddenly into crystalline consciousness. He was sleeping with the woman who had enslaved him. He was giving pleasure to the woman who kept his comrades in thrall and who forced him to kill others to prevent their deaths. He was drawing life from a woman who was a handmaiden to death, and finding rapture with someone who caused others to know grief and sorrow.

As much as he wanted to push her away, he could not. She was addictive and his only solace came from seeing that she seemed equally ensnared. They both knew that it could only lead to their mutual self-destruction, yet they laughed in the face of coming disaster. It was as if the paradoxes heightened the pleasure and the futility of it all made them hunger even more.

Then, as the bandits prepared for another raid, she began to distance herself from him in order to concentrate on the tasks they faced. He knew that the rejection was only temporary—she had said as much in words and deeds—but the hurt still surprised him. All this time I've been wanting to be free of her because, deep down, I really do hate her, yet the separation is eating me alive.

In an attempt to reestablish control over his emotions, Nelson descended to the deepest level of the main building, and headed for the corridor and doors that had caused him trouble on the eve of the Deia raid. If I visualize her and get a shock, maybe I can start my own crude form of aversion therapy.He smiled at the thought and turned the corner.

He braced for a shock, but none came. Instead he felt his head expanding like some cartoon character sucking on a compressed air hose. It grew larger and larger, with the world he saw before him splitting into two parallel views, then shrinking away to pinpoints. Bright white light surrounded the black dots and he tried to shut his eyes against the glare, but it seemed to feed directly into the vision centers of his brain.

As if drawn back into a slingshot and then released, the twin vision pellets shot forward. They expanded and rushed at him. He tried to duck away as they sailed in, but no matter what he did, they never deviated from their course.

He felt himself hit the right rail on the treadmill, then the moving rubber ribbon pulled his feet out from under him. He fell and slipped off the treadmill to the side. What happened?As he struggled to free himself from the goggles and earphones, he heard a siren signaling a call to battle stations.

He tried to roll up to his feet, but his head swam in familiar waves of nausea. We jumped. We jumped into the next system. Where we are ?

As he lay on his back on the deck, the world stopped spinning. He tugged at his gloves and started to peel the markers off his body, but the siren died arid three tones sounded. Hearing them, he reached out and grabbed one of the treadmill posts. We're jumping again!

The universe blew up like a bubble, then exploded. At once Nelson Geist saw himself as a quark in some ultra-large molecule and also knew that molecule was but a tiny part of himself. Those sensations fed back and forth, reflecting each other like facing mirror images repeating ad infinitum.

The hatch leading into the Red Corsair's cabin swung open and she lurched into the room. She laughed aloud, then crossed to where he lay, and kneeled to kiss him full on the mouth. "It was wonderful, Nelson. Almost perfect!"

"What?"

"They were waiting for us at Great X. They could have had us, too, had they waited until we'd committed ourselves to a raid." She lifted her head, baring her throat, and laughed again. "Trust the Wolves to be overeager. When we appeared, they immediately issued a challenge. We jumped to our secondary destination and left them wondering where we had gone!"

She lowered her faced toward his again and the fire in her beautiful eyes inflamed him. "A narrow escape," he said.

She smiled devilishly. "On the razor's edge, Nelson. To come so close to annihilation and to dodge it so handily. To be at the brink of death and get a reprieve." She reached out her hand and helped him to a kneeling position opposite her. "There is only one thing that can make this day more perfect. Come with me and we shall both have it."

* * *

Chris saw the JumpShip icon vanish from the screen. "Where did it go?"

"They jumped again." Dan punched up a closed line to his JumpShip captain. "Janos, get your navigators working on where a ship could have jumped from here. Correlate that data with our list of probable targets."

"That will be a fairly long list, Colonel."

"I don't care. If we're still sitting here when they hit a target, there will be hell to pay. Our lithium-fusion batteries are at 100 percent, so we can make two jumps if we have to, right?"

"Affirmative. We hit two stars, so does the Bifrostand that Wolf ship. That's six out of thousands."

Chris nodded as Janos's statement sank in. A jump could take an FTL ship thirty light years in any direction, and the lithium-fusion batteries allowed each ship to store two jumps' worth of energy. Though the number of inhabited worlds within the jump range of Great X was limited to five, the number of uninhabited star systems approached triple digits, and the bandits could recharge their ship at any one of them.

"Colonel, it's not going to be an easy hunt. If they hit an inhabited world, we'll know and can react."

"True, Chris, but what if they take a week to recharge for one jump and go. That could put them beyond our range." Dan shook his head and punched up the communications officer. "Korliss, any clue as to why the bandits jumped out?"

"Nothing positive, sir, but I think they got a tight-beam message from the Wolves."

"Oh, really?" The surprised look on Dan's face melted into a deep scowl. "Lieutenant, do me the favor of getting Star Colonel Ward back in communication with me."

"Yes, sir."

Chris pointed to the screen's image of the system. "We have another ship in."

Dan nodded as the new icon flashed on the screen, then the whole system image vanished, to be replaced by Conal Ward's face. "Yes, Colonel Allard? What is it, I have to prepare for a jump."

"Oh, you do? And where would that be?"

"In pursuit of the bandits, of course."

"Of course." Dan's voice took on an edge that Chris had heard only once before and it gave him a start. "Star Colonel, we seem to have detected a broadcast from your ship to the bandits."

Conal nodded perfunctorily. "Yes."

"What would that have been, Star Colonel?"

"A standard combat inquiry, Colonel Allard. You must have gotten the same from the Smoke Jaguars on Luthien."

"We did indeed but we were not looking to ambush the Smoke Jaguars."

Conal's head came up. "Real warriors do not wait in ambush."

Dan snarled.

" Realwarriors follow orders."

"Another signal coming in, Colonel, from the new ship," announced Korliss' voice. "It's going to the Wolves, too."

"Split the screen." Dan continued to stare at Conal. "Understand these orders, Star Colonel—you stay where you are until Itell you where you are going."

"I take no orders from any mercenary!"

"Then you willtake them from me, Star Colonel," a new voice commanded as Phelan's face joined Conal's on the screen. "The ilKhan sends you greetings, Colonel Allard. We are here to destroy bandits and we will do whatever it takes to accomplish our mission."

26

Caledonia

Federated Commonwealth

10 July 3055

 

The assassin abandoned his Carlos Negron identity at Lamon. Ar the planet's space station union hall, he sent messages that ComStar would eventually carry to his confederates. All similarly worded, the messages said that he had met a woman and would be staying with her for a while on Lamon. He asked that communications be sent care of the union hall, where he would pick them up.

That was a lie, of course, because he expected no messages. The few friends Carlos Negron had were among his fellow workers, who also liked to keep to themselves. Any messages to Negron would be from agents who had somehow tied him to the assassination, and those were communications he definitely did notwant to answer.

On the Lamon station Carlos underwent a startling transformation from a hard-drinking, foul-mouthed longshoreman to a black-clad member of the neo-Puritanical Wildmon sect. Wearing a crisply starched black suit and black hat that hid most of his face, he boarded a DropShip for the short hop to Caledonia. Fearing a dressing-down for almost anything, no one aboard ship spoke to him during the trip, which he did not mind at all.

At Caledonia the assassin again changed his identity, once more using a room held for a dummy corporation. The fearsome Wildmon vanished and was replaced by Chuck Grayson. Grayson, bound for a gaming junket on Solaris, dressed in gaudy clothes that would have sent a Wildmon member into convulsions. Chuck booked passage on the DropShip Lady Luck,stowed his gear in his cabin, and immediately headed for a lounge.

In the lounge his garish clothes were like tiger stripes in a jungle. Worming his way through a press of merrymakers, he ended up shoulder to shoulder with a stunning brunette wearing a sarong made from the same patterned cloth as his shirt. "You have wonderful taste in clothes, Miss. ..."

Her green eyes studied him going up and coming down again. "Calley. I'm Judith Calley, but my friends call me Jude. And your taste is impressive, Mr . . . ?"

"Charles Grayson, and my friends call me Chuck." The assassin saw the bartender hand her two thick, slushy drinks with a paper umbrella stuck in each one. "Are those good?"

Jude nodded. "Delicious." She sipped one and licked her lips. "I'd give you one, but the other is for my cabin-mate. Join us over in the corner when you order."

As she moved away, the assassin told the bartender to get him one of the same, then pressed a thumb to the bar tab, which immediately logged the price of the drink to his account. Taking the drink, he cut back through the crowd and found the corner table. Jude moved over so he could sit next to her on the edge of the semicircular booth.

"Chuck, this is Ronda, my cabin-mate, and John and Toni and Georgie and Mike."

"Chuck Grayson. Hi." He sat down and smiled politely as he felt Jude's right leg press against his left. "You all seem to know each other. Did you just meet here, or . . . ?"

John, a tall, muscular man—the group's alpha male-leaned back and looped his arm over Toni's shoulders. "We all work for Fennic-Dobbs, in the electronics sales division. The figures for sales last Christmas finally came in, and our department had the highest sales andthe highest collection rate. Because of it, we won a two-month junket to Solaris."

"Very nice." Chuck raised his glass and smiled. "Congratulations."

Ronda gulped a bit of her drink. "What do you do, Chuck?"

The assassin forced a blush on Chuck. "I'm a ghost writer. I work with celebs and other bigwigs and help them write autobiographies. I also do some of those instant-bio things on celebs who hit big."

John's dark eyes sharpened. "So is this trip business or pleasure?"

"It's supposed to be the former, but I hope for a bit of the latter." He smiled easily. "I'm going to see if I can get an interview with Kai Allard-Liao. ..."

Ronda squealed delightedly. "Oh, he's such a dream. "

Everyone at the table laughed a bit and Ronda turned a brilliant shade of red. "Well, he is."

"I hope you're not alone in feeling that, Ronda. I could use the sales." The assassin tasted the fruity drink and immediately realized the thing was packed with alcohol. He set it back down and resolved to nurse the drink for a long time. "He's never talked about what he did on Alyina, and my publisher hopes I can get him to spill the story."

Ronda smiled like a cat that had caught a whole flock of canaries. "I heard that after Prince Victor tried to kill him, Kai led the planet in a revolt that threw off the Clans and that he killed the Clan leader in single combat—thereby becoming the ruler of the world."

Toni, the petite blonde beneath John's beefy arm, spoke in a quiet voice. "I don't think the Prince tried to kill Kai."

Mike laughed aloud. "Toni, you don't believe Victor killed the Archon, either."

"He didn't."

Jude leaned over and stage-whispered to him, "Toni met the Prince once, years ago. She grew up on Tharkad and went to one of the Nagelring dances."

Toni's head came up and her lower lip thrust out defiantly. "I did meet him, and I even danced with him. He's too nice to have killed the Archon. He wouldn't do it."

The assassin shook his head. "I've been buried in writing a book for the past couple of months. The Prince killed his mother?"

John waved the assertion off. "Nothing official."

"You think they'd say if there was?" Ronda asked.

Mike pushed his glass of beer aside, and began to draw on the table with his left hand. "It's like this, Chuck. Victor ordered his sister to let his mother lie in state for only two days and then had her buried in a funeral he didn't attend. Now they say he's personally working at directing the investigation of his mother's death and that he keeps viewing all the films about it. If his sister Katrina wasn't running interference for him, the whole Federated Commonwealth—or at least the Lyran part of it—would be in chaos."

Chuck nodded thoughtfully. "Mind you, I'd not put it past any ruler of the Inner Sphere to kill his predecessor. Face it, the average person lives to be a hundred, but if you're a ruler, you die at least twenty years shy of that mark. I also, seem to remember some very short-lived rumors that the Archon had her husband knocked off so she could rule the Federated Commonwealth, but those proved groundless."

Ronda shook her head. "Yes, but remember—it was Victor who found his father. Who's to say old Victor didn't kill Hanse, too?"

"With his mother in line to rule?" John frowned. "No motive."

"Hanse was going to strip the Tenth Lyran Guards from Victor because of a confidential report from Kai Allard saying that Victor had tried to murder him on Alyina. Besides, Hanse was going to disown his son because he couldn't stand the fact that Victor married Omi Kurita while he was in Drac space."

Georgie rapped her knuckles on the table top. "You're wrong about Victor, all of you. The Archon was killed by a member of the Nature First movement. They killed her with the mycosia pseudoflorato protest the warping of genetics for human whim and pleasure. That official line about a nut is just a diversion."

"If you're right," Ronda challenged, "then why are so many questions still not answered?"

"Because the government doesn't want folks to know how widespread Nature First really is. It would cause a. panic."

Jude gave him a little nudge. "They'll go on about this for hours. I want to stretch my legs. Care to tour the ship?"

The assassin nodded. "My pleasure."

"That can be arranged." Jude took his hand in hers and turned to her friends. "We'll see you later, muchlater."

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