Given his biases, Edenhoffer should have welcomed the death of Duke Ryan Steiner at the hands of an assassin. He would have considered it an example of just the kind of action necessary if humanity was to awaken from its lethargy and reclaim its heritage of greatness. Of course, Edenhoffer would never admit that he had no concrete ideas to back the rhetoric he spouted—as an artist dwelling in the realm of emotion it was only necessary to inflame. The rest, he presumed, would come naturally.
In his current state of mind the duke's death became a sacrilege, a heinous act with only one purpose. That purpose, as Edenhoffer saw it, was to place the ownership of the Skye Tigers in the hands of Ryan's widow, Morasha Kelswa. As that lady had never taken the slightest interest in the stable, she immediately offered it for sale and had provided no guidance on how the stable was to be managed. Which meant Edenhoffer could not arrange a fight with Kai Allard-Liao to redeem his honor.
He decided that Kai had ordered Ryan's murder specifically to deny him a rematch. This put Kai at the top of Glenn Edenhoffer's list of enemies—a distinction because it usually took someone a considerable amount of time to work their way up that very long list. Kai's placement at the top meant that Edenhoffer began to focus on the man and everything about him and his activities in hopes of finding a way to thwart him as Glenn had been thwarted.
Because of his obsession, Edenhoffer correlated two facts. The first was that Tormano Liao had people interested in knowing where Kai was at any given moment. He had also gotten wind of a number of Mech Warriors being called out on a mission, though it had been difficult sorting through the lies and rumor. That message indicated that MechWarriors who felt they owed Kai a favor should bring their 'Mechs through the tunnels to the spaceport because Kai had something going.
Glenn garnered all the details he could and determined that Kai was planning to leave Solaris. He decided this was information that Tormano Liao might find useful. Walking to the wall of his apartment, where he had pasted the invitation to Tormano's reception into the collage he had started before the fight, he located the number for Tormano's office. He punched it into the visiphone, raking his hair into place with his fingers as the call was answered on the other end.
* * *
Tormano looked up from the pile of notes concerning Kai that had been accumulating on his desk. He frowned, his hands crushing slips of paper into balls. "Did that call bring another rumor?"
Nancy Lee shook her head. "It was Glenn Edenhoffer. He was one of the two fighters who lost to Kai and Galen Cox."
Tormano smiled and leaned back, leaving crumpled paper on the desk. "And did Mr. Edenhoffer have anything useful to offer?"
"I'm not sure," she said, but Tormano could tell from the way her nose wrinkled up that she sincerely doubted it. "He suggested that with Duke Ryan's death, you might want to buy the Skye Tigers. I thanked him and told him you would speak with him late next week."
"What an idiot that man is." Tormano shook his head, then looked up at Nancy. 'Thank you, my dear, for handling him so adroitly."
"It is my pleasure to serve you, my lord."
"Indeed. I don't know what I would do without you."
34
DropShip Zarevo, Inbound
Shiloh Free Worlds League
27 April 3056
As far as Peter was concerned, the background chatter from the three Shiloh holovision networks mixed incongruously with the intensity of the discussion in the Zarevo's ready room. There was no disguising the disappointment in the voices of the troopers as they reported negative information about the Harloc Raiders. Normally, folks would be happy to know the enemy is bottled up in their base, but we all wanted to hit hard and destroy them in a sharp, decisive battle. He glanced down at the holographically displayed order of battle for the Harloc Raiders and wondered where they were hiding. It's as if they knew we were coming.
The Cossacks had originally planned to land their DropShips on the plains of Chatham and deploy both regiments south, toward the Raiders' last known area of operation. Initial data from Shiloh had looked normal and placed the Raiders near their intended landing zone. Then, suddenly, all information about the Raiders stopped flowing.
As nearly as they could tell from the data they monitored on Shiloh, the only forces that would oppose them on planet were the Third Sirian Lancers. Nikolai Khorsakov had dismissed them because the virtually green Lancers had no chance against a highly trained, elite mercenary unit like the Cossacks. "I would never suggest they'd simply fold up like a house of cards in a tornado, Highness, but I really have no respect for them."
Peter, though he found the assessment as foolish as it was frank, tended to agree with the aging mercenary leader. Even their intended prey, the Harloc Raiders, were not much of a threat. The unit was too new to have been blooded in battle, so the only way it could present much challenge was if Sun-Tzu had stripped the elite fighters from all his other units and sent them here. Peter thought that possibility very unlikely.
For Peter, Wu Kang Kuo became the key to the puzzle. Khorsakov denigrated Wu's past experience, but Peter thought the Capellan officer smart enough to be planning a trap. Obviously, Wu would dispute their landing, for any commander knew that landing was a 'Mech unit's most vulnerable moment. For Peter it became a question of when not if Wu would engage them, but he couldn't seem to convince the Cossacks of that.
Peter rested a hand on Nikolai's shoulder. "Colonel Khorsakov, I believe we will flush our quarry when we land, not a moment sooner. As I recall, we had indications that their main base is sixty kilometers south by southwest of our LZ." The eagerness to do battle freed a low chuckle from Peter's throat. "Shall we land closer and invite them out?"
The mercenary smiled graciously. "We have two days yet to map our landing. I shall prepare the contingency plans."
"Good." Peter yawned and stretched. "Too much traveling, too much anticipation. I think I'll try to get some sleep. Wake me if anything happens."
"As you wish, Highness. Pleasant dreams."
Peter smiled broadly and gave the other man a sharp salute. "All of our coming battle ... pleasant dreams indeed!"
Solaris City, Solaris VII
Tamarind March, Federated Commonwealth
It cannot be this hard. They have to be on some world or another! What am I missing? Keith looked at the holograph, then back at his computer. The key is here, I know it.
He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He had begun the process of trying to figure out on which world Tormano had stashed Deirdre and David with the rather simple tack of examining the holograph, then cataloguing its unique features. Because of the clouds in the sky he had no constellations as a point of reference. Had such data been available he could have pinpointed the world by having his machine pull down all available astronomical data bases and do a point by point comparison until he got a match.
In the holograph he tagged two things immediately: flora and fauna. The deer were the easiest to track, mainly because of their rarity. The data that came up on them showed that they had come to the brink of extinction during the Fourth Succession War a quarter-century before. Because of a breeding program funded by Tormano Liao, the Prudolm dwarf deer had been reintroduced in viable numbers on their native worlds of Tsitsang, Hunan, and Kansu.
"Only good thing you've ever done, Tormano," Keith commented drily.
The flora proved much easier to track down. He identified the grove of trees in the background as iron elm, and the computer produced a list as long as Keith's arm of worlds where they could be found. Unfortunately it included Tsitsang, Hunan, and Kansu, which meant he could not further narrow down the choices of worlds. I'm looking for a needle and this haystack is getting bigger, not smaller!
In narrowing his search to the three worlds that were home to the deer, he ran into a problem that threatened to destroy everything already accomplished. The Prudolm dwarf deer preferred a dry climate and usually roved in vast herds across plains. As the iron elm grew on
ly in temperate zones, the chance of the two things being found together was very slim.
The obvious solution to the paradox was that the deer were present in a private reserve, but that could be on any of the 137 worlds where the iron elm grew naturally. Then again, if the holograph had been made in a zoological or botanical garden, Deirdre and David could have been anywhere.
Not accepting defeat, Keith had gone through and pinpointed everything else in the picture. He knew the likely point of origin for all the clothing worn by Deirdre and her son. He'd even made a passable shot at identifying the manufacturer and interstellar distributors of her eyeshadow. He was particularly proud of having traced back to Odell, in the Cruris March of the Federated Commonwealth, the brand of mirrored sunglasses Deirdre had tucked into the neckline of her blouse.
If they were prescription, I bet I could even figure out the correction. He looked at the holograph, then called up the digitized version of it. Using a mouse he drew a square around Deirdre's chest. He started typing in the commands to blow it up, then stopped and redrew the square so it only contained the glasses. Satisfied that he'd have nothing to explain to Kristina, he increased the magnification by a factor of ten.
For the first time in two days he smiled. Yes, this could be it. In the magnified lens he saw a reflection. He added two more levels to the magnification, then punched up a correction of the data. The computer evaluated the image pixel by pixel and decided, by comparing each with those surrounding it, what its most likely color and composition should be. Once it had begun to transform the picture from a collection of blocks to something more recognizably human, Keith ran another filter that corrected for and lightened shadows, which stopped the figure's nose from spreading over its face like an inkblot.
Using the mouse he drew a new box that isolated the top lens. He pulled up the data on the sunglasses and had the machine do a flat projection of the image to eliminate distortion from the curve of the lens. That took the figure from being tall and slender to shorter and more solidly built. Again he corrected for pixel distortion, then again blew up the image by a factor of ten.
Keith ran another correction just to be certain, but he knew who he was looking at. The picture resolved itself and Keith found himself unconsciously snarling at the man who faced him. "You son of a bitch, Tormano. I've got you now. The question is, where in the FedCom have I got you?"
Keith's eyes stopped burning and new vitality flowed through him. He saved the picture he had created, then used his computer to plug straight into the Solaris information network. First stop was the local newsfax database. He punched up a search program that analyzed the last two months of data to find any mention of Tormano Liao. Every article, every picture, every caption that did was logged into a text file and sorted by time and date—first of those attributed to the article and second by date of publication of the item.
He let the computer perform that task in the background while he zeroed in on what he hoped would produce his target. Operating from the premise that Tormano Liao had not left Solaris in the past two months, he was certain Deirdre Lear had to be on Solaris itself. Just to be certain that memory of Tormano's comings and goings served, he was running the other check. The iron elm was native to Solaris, so it would not be much of a clue, but the Prudolm dwarf deer might just prove to be invaluable as a locator.
Keith steered directly through the system to the Solaris VII Holovideo Production Commission database. The S7HPC did everything it could to promote the shooting and production of holovid dramas on the world. As part of the service it offered to production companies, it maintained a massive database of locations throughout the world. Cenotaph had even given permission for one of its satellite training facilities to be used in an episode of a Constabulary Drama and had been paid handsomely for the privilege.
"C'mon, Tormano, you need money. Have you got a place with nifty little deer where you want folks to come make holovids?" He started a search program using every key he could think of from the holograph. As the computer began the task, he sat back and wracked his brain for any other ideas that might help pinpoint their location, but the machine kicked out an answer even before he'd gotten his feet up on the desk.
"Tormano's estate on Equatus! How could I have missed it?" Keith closed his eyes tight and raised his face toward the ceiling. The computer beeped at him and he opened his eyes to find the remote system wanting to know if he wished to download the survey packet of the Estate site. His expression of pain turning to one of joy, Keith replied in the affirmative and watched the light on his drive flicker as he pulled in the data.
The other check turned up a full schedule with two gaps. The first report was of a weekend trip by Tormano to his estate on the other continent and the more recent gap was for the day after Kai's title defense. "Yes!"
The packet of S7HPC data provided full visual scans of the estate, and Keith easily located an image that contained the area where Deirdre and David stood. He cropped the image and brought it up so it and the holograph were on the same scale. Using the date of the S7HPC image as a starting point,
Keith had the computer check astronomical databases and create a projection for when or if the shadows in the holograph were correct for 20 April 3056. It came back and informed him that, according to the shadows, the holograph had been made at one-thirty in the afternoon, local Equatus time.
Keith built the S7HPC data and a file with his information into a packet and used a compression routine to shrink it all down. Using the number Kai had given him he created a connection with the remote system. With the touch of two keys he started the download.
"I didn't even know they had computers out in Joppo." Keith shivered for a second, wondering if Kai truly did know what he was doing. "No, dammit, I trust you, Kai. I'm not going to be the one to botch up your plan."
The download finished in less than ten minutes. Keith waited a second, then typed: TRANSMISSION ENDED, REQUEST RECEIPT CONFIRMATION.
It took a minute as the reply appeared letter by letter. TRANSMISSION RECEIVED. MISSION UNDERSTOOD, SITE DATA APPRECIATED. Random letters and numbers then flooded the screen as the remote system terminated the communication.
Keith stared at the screen for a moment, then smiled. "Well, I've done all I can." He reached over to shut his system down, then hesitated. "No, I've done all I was asked to do. I can do much more."
Settling his fingers on the keyboard he smiled and wormed his way into the Solaris data stream again. Whatever the Joppo crew is going to do, it can't hurt if the estate doesn't know they're coming. He typed in a command that took him over to the area of the computers through which the telecommunications of the world flowed. From there he very methodically began the isolation of the Mandrinn's estate and the destruction of its security system.
Mandrinn's Estate, Solaris VII
Tamarind March, Federated Commonwealth
In the two days since Deirdre Lear had begun planning the escape she had learned some important things. The first was that escape was possible. She had studied the grounds and security arrangements with eyesight and perceptions honed on Alyina. Several times she found herself wondering what Kai would make of a given situation, but she stopped short of trusting what she thought he might think. I have to trust myself in this.
The security staff was attentive and did roam the grounds with assault rifles slung over their shoulders, but they were not wholly alert. The night before she had been able to roam the manor house without being challenged until she neared the kitchen. And the resistance she met there only happened because she surprised a guard helping himself to a late night snack. From the deference the man showed her, Deirdre concluded that even if the guard knew she was a prisoner, he remained awed by her previous status as a guest.
An escape plan formed itself quickly and she knew it would work. A quick strike from the house to the deer compound would enable her to open the heated corral where the deer were penned at night. She could release them and scatter them
over the grounds, giving the guards a multitude of targets to hunt. More important, if the guards used infrared scanners to try to track her, the compound itself would be a big heat source helping to blind them to her presence. They might know she had been there to release the deer, but trying to differentiate her heat signature from that of the deer would not be a simple matter.
From there she could head out and go over the wall. Outside the compound she would have to go to ground and hope she could elude pursuit or, if forced to do it, defeat them.
That led her to the second realization. David weighed just over seventeen kilograms, which meant she could not carry him. Nor could she fully explain everything to a three-year-old ahead of time because he might innocently blurt it out. Finally, because of his size he could not run as fast or as long as their escape attempt demanded.
Her logical side screamed at her to leave him behind, but her emotions wouldn't let her abandon him even briefly. She did not want to believe Tormano Liao would have the boy hurt, but he was quite capable of spiriting David away and using him against Kai and her. She realized her choices lay between the smart things to do and that which she had to do.
Deirdre thought back to her time on Alyina. At one point, she had been trapped by an Elemental and Kai could have run, could have escaped, but he did not. Detriment she might have been, but he came for her and defeated the Elemental in single combat.
If David's father would not abandon me, how can I abandon his son? That decision made, she set aside all her concerns about it. She dressed David in the darkest clothes she could find and similarly attired herself. She caught a nap in the afternoon, then waited until nearly midnight on the clock to begin her operation. She let David sleep through the first part, hoping to shield him from the violence that would be necessary.