Malicious intent

  Doc smiled evenly and stood. "All right, Leftenant, let's cut the bull. You're one of the few people who isn't new to this unit, which means either the LAAF has no use for you, or you've got enough juice to bounce any transfer. Either one of those things points to someone who's an ace scrounger. You're tied into the local black market and able to move a fair amount of merchandise. Since you've got no overhead, it's pure profit. Am I tracking well here?"

  "I ain't saying nothing."

  "You don't have to, Leftenant, I can see the pride in your eyes." Doc chuckled lightly. "You're a resourceful fellow. I think we can do business."

  "How's that, Trevena? You got nothing I want."

  "No?"

  "No." The small man with slicked-back hair swayed like a snake as he sat there. "You got a pack of screw-ups and misfits to nursemaid around this planet in lightweight 'Mechs. A stiff wind and your unit's out of service." Copley laughed derisively and fixed Doc with a defiant stare. "Hell, a light breeze and your people are out."

  "Exactly."

  "Huh?"

  Doc smiled. "Let me tell you a story. One of my first assignments was with a unit that was still using equipment that was old before the Fourth Succession War. We wanted new equipment—stuff that was lighter, more durable, more reliable than what we were using, but command wouldn't replace our equipment because we didn't need new stuff. To make matters worse, a lot of our inventory was just ones and zeroes in the computer. The equipment had walked or decayed or been mislaid."

  "And you, being the officer in charge of the unit, would have had to pay for any shrinkage." Copley crossed his legs. "You're breaking my heart here."

  "Maybe this will repair it. I ordered my clerks to move all that phantom material, plus the old antiquated stuff that really did exist, into and around one of the warehouses not being used on the base. Only our stuff was in it. Then we had a training accident—someone used the wrong coordinates for fire-support missions—artillery fired, and, poof, all that stuff was lost. Not a trace of it left. The accident got written up and we got replacement equipment for all of it."

  Doc's smile broadened. "Of course, the warehouse we stored it in used to be a guardhouse at an unused gate—it was about sixteen meters cubed, but we had about twenty thousand metric tons of material jammed into it. Here on Coventry it would have to work differently, but you'd be surprised just how much stuff could be fitted into and onto a single hovercar that gets destroyed during an exercise."

  Copley's mouth had slowly gaped open as Doc spoke, then he shut it with a snap. The quartermaster shook his head, but his brown eyes still looked slightly glazed over. "With your people's scores and records, no one would ever doubt how much got lost or destroyed by accident."

  "Sixty-forty split."

  Copley snorted. "Sure, my way."

  "No, Leftenant, my way. You'll hold twenty of my points against getting me the equipment I want for my people on the black market."

  Copley frowned. "Why buy when we'll be ordering direct from LAAF?"

  "We're a dead-end unit—all they'll do is send me refurbished parts and partial shipments of whatever we order. My people may be screwballs, but they'll be the best-equipped screwballs I can pull together. You put my forty percent into something durable, with a nice high return value, got it?"

  "Yeah, I gotcha."

  "Good. I also imagine you're tapped into the local gossip networks. I want anything and everything that could be of use to me, right? I want to know what my superiors covet and how to get it for them ..."

  "... Or how to use it against them, right?"

  "I can see we'll get along fine, Mr. Copley."

  "I imagine we will, sir." Copley stood and gave Doc a weak salute. "I'll give you something for free right now ..."

  "Call me Doc."

  "Doc. Hauptmann Wells likes to play poker and will probably try to rope you into a game with the officers from Three Batt. When Wells is bluffing he tends to start blinking a lot."

  "I appreciate that, but no poker for me tonight." Doc led Copley to the door and opened it. "I'll be getting to know my people tonight."

  "I'll have more stuff for you tomorrow," Copley said with a sly smile, "including the coordinates for a couple of heavily laden aircars."

  * * *

  Doc arrived at his office before dawn the next morning and set about reviewing the records of the dozen people he'd met the night before. All of them had seemed to be pleasant enough and none were the total disasters suggested by their records. He found them attentive and a bit intense, but likable. In any other unit they'd be perfect mascot material.

  Bick had done a good job in picking out the holovids, and Doc used them the same way he would gun-camera films in a post-mission debriefing. The questions his people asked were thoughtful, but a bit naive. Answers to his questions were tentative, but more right than wrong, giving him some hope for the ability of his people to improve.

  He looked up as Bick knocked on the jamb of the open door. "Yes, Corporal?"

  Bick crossed to the desk and dropped an envelope onto the blotter. "It's the money from last night, sir."

  "Oh." Doc thumbed the envelope open, riffled the Kroner notes, then frowned. "There's sixty Kroner here. That's what I gave you to buy those snacks and to rent the holovids."

  Bick nodded. "Yes, sir."

  "Well?"

  Bick shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "Well, sir, after we were done, after you left, I mentioned that you'd paid for everything with your own money. We didn't think that was fair, so we took up a collection and, well, there it is."

  Doc shook his head. They paid me back! These people are too nice to be stuck in this unit. "Is there something wrong, sir?"

  "No, Corporal, nothing wrong." Doc sighed, then followed it with a smile. "You know what they say about nice guys finishing last. I guess we've got to make sure that doesn't happen with One-Two Company's Rangers, don't we?"

  13

  Avalon City New Avalon

  Crucis March, Federated Commonwealth

  7 January 3058

  Victor Ian Steiner-Davion, Archon Prince of the Federated Commonwealth, sighed aloud as he reviewed his schedule. "It seems that for everything I want to do there are two things I don't want to do."

  One of the other two men in the walnut-paneled office with him smiled, but the taller, ice-eyed one did not. Jerrard Cranston, Victor's intelligence chief, added a shrug to his smile. "I hope this briefing isn't one of the things you don't want to do."

  Victor tapped a finger against the screen of his monitor. "We can put this in the want column. The unveiling of this year's selection of postage stamps is a don't, as is attending the Society for the Repatriation of Orphaned Animals luncheon."

  "Don't forget that fuzzy little animals make for good holo ops for the newsgrids." Cranston's smile broadened. "And at the stamp unveiling you can wax eloquent about the joy of seeing your dear old friend Galen Cox memorialized."

  That prompted a laugh from the Archon Prince. He marveled at how well Galen Cox had slipped into the Jerrard Cranston persona they'd created to cover his supposed death. He found himself thinking of Galen as Jerry more and more often, a phenomenon that disturbed him slightly. Galen is a link to my life as a warrior and I don't want to lose that.

  Curaitis, the dark-haired giant from the Intelligence Secretariat, looked askance at Cranston. "That portrait of you looks too close. If someone with free time and a pencil darkened the hair and drew in a beard, your cover could be compromised."

  Victor shook his head. "I doubt doodling will constitute a serious threat to Jerry's identity. Besides, Galen was far more handsome than Jerry has ever been."

  "Agreed, but any leak could cause complications."

  Victor nodded. The failed assassination attempt against Galen had revealed two things to Victor. The first was that Duke Ryan Steiner, Victor's rival for power in the Skye March, had ordered the hit. Victor repaid Ryan in kind, abruptly settling the Skye question.
>
  The second thing was far more disturbing, yet something he couldn't act on without further, definitive proof. His sister Katherine—he refused to grant her use of his sainted grandmother's name—had possessed prior knowledge of the assassination attempt and had done nothing to warn Galen. In trying to investigate why, Curaitis had found circumstantial evidence that pointed to Katherine as a conspirator with Ryan in the plot to have Melissa Steiner Davion—Victor and Katherine's mother—killed in a bomb blast.

  "I don't think my sister will look at a redrawn stamp and conclude that we know as much about her operations as we do." Victor shook his head. "And even if she does, any actions she takes to cover her tracks could finally lead us to the evidence we need to prove she was behind my mother's murder."

  Jerry nodded. "The stamp is in the "Heroes of the Inner Sphere' series—every one of them dead—so people will take that as proof of Galen's demise. The only doubters will be the scandal-vids, but having them make a big deal of the story will be to our benefit."

  Curaitis shrugged as if their logic made no difference. "I can't stop you from dancing on the razor's edge."

  "Your caution is exactly why I need you," Victor told him gently, then glanced over at Jerry. "Updates on the LAAF?"

  Jerrard Cranston dropped into a chair. "Personnel are still being shuffled. The Fourth, Tenth, and Seventeenth Skye Rangers are getting a lot of rejects and folks presumed to be Davion loyalists dumped into them. Tensions in some of those units would make them more likely to attack each other than any enemy they would possibly face."

  Victor's gray eyes narrowed. "Someone is punishing those units for their part in the Skye Rebellion. Elements of all three fought on Glengarry against the Gray Death Legion. Is that Katherine's doing, or the influence of Tormano Liao?"

  "Steiner sentiment runs high in the LAAF. Nondi Steiner is still in charge there, and revamping those units is likely her idea."

  "Grand-aunt Nondi." The Prince frowned. "I never took to her, nor she to me. She is the wellspring of Steiner loyalty in the Lyran Alliance and seems to have transferred her feelings for my grandmother to my sister. It was a smart move keeping Nondi as commander of the Lyran Alliance military—she's got the necessary experience—but her hatred of the Draconis Combine means that anything I've done or will do in cooperation with the Dracs will offend her."

  Jerry nodded. "She's publicly spoken out about the occupation of the Lyons Thumb by Combine troops."

  "Under ComStar leadership and coming in as peacekeepers," Victor corrected sharply.

  "You and I know that, Highness, but she sees it otherwise," Curaitis said. "They're reorganizing and streamlining LAAF, which has reduced the effectiveness of intelligence assets in the Lyran military. Right now, I'd put intelligence from those sources at minimal reliability."

  "That I don't like, but there's little we can do about it right now." Victor frowned. "Has the schedule for getting back our JumpShips and DropShips improved?"

  "Somewhat, and that's due to Tormano Liao's influence. A certain amount of the supplies and money we're paying to ransom our ships is flowing into the Chaos March to his old Free Capella forces. As that gives Sun-Tzu Liao and Thomas Marik something to think about, it's good; but paying to get our own materiel back isn't a precedent I like having set."

  "Well, just make certain all the loot we're sending Katherine is listed as foreign aid. We might as well get a proper angle on the publicity for this debacle." Victor wrinkled his nose. "Thomas is meeting with our ambassador on Atreus today to iron out the details of the peace between us, right?"

  "Yes, sir. We anticipate no problems there."

  Victor glanced at Curaitis. "Your security check on the Intelligence Secretariat's forensic division found no leaks?"

  "Clean, sir."

  "So no one but the three of us knows that the man currently ruling the Free Worlds League is really someone made to look like Thomas Marik and substituted for him by ComStar back in 3037?"

  The taciturn agent's head came up. "No one save Thomas himself, and others within ComStar or Word of Blake?"

  "To the best of our knowledge, Curaitis."

  "No, sir, no one else knows, to the best of our knowledge."

  The Prince got up from behind the massive oak desk that had served his father before him, and began to pace. "I've tried to think of a way to use this information, but I keep coming up blank. Using it to extort concessions from Thomas seems to make the most sense, but he'd denounce the data as part of a ComStar plot to discredit him and Word of Blake."

  Jerry smoothed his beard to a point at his chin. "Giving the information to Isis Marik would supply her with a lever to guarantee her remaining Thomas's heir—the Captain-Generalcy is hers by blood, after all."

  "But she's engaged to marry Sun-Tzu Liao, and he'd be willing to kill Thomas to put her on the throne, especially if she had a legitimate claim to it and could show the current ruler to be an impostor."

  "But letting Sun-Tzu get that much power isn't something we want." Jerry shook his head. "In a very real sense the fact that the Thomas Marik on the throne is an impostor doesn't matter. He's found a way to give his people what they want. He's more popular than ever, especially since taking back the worlds we took from the League back in 3028. Even if the truth came out, the people of the League might support him anyway."

  Victor laughed. "Rather ironic, isn't it, that the most capable leader in the history of House Marik isn't a Marik at all."

  Curaitis began to grin, which filled Victor with foreboding. "Wouldn't it be even more amusing if ComStar still had the real Thomas Marik on ice somewhere?"

  "Is that possible?"

  "Of course, Highness."

  Jerry frowned at Curaitis. "But still only speculation. Very blue-sky."

  The Prince nodded. "Give me the short form."

  Curaitis sighed. "It took ComStar eighteen months to reveal Thomas's survival to the world in general, but the catalog of injuries suffered really doesn't seem to have required that much time for recovery. They did use words like 'complications' and 'rehabilitation' to explain some of the delay, but it wouldn't have taken that long to train an agent to take Thomas's place either. And it wouldn't have taken that long for the visible scars and alterations to the current Thomas to heal to the point where he could appear in public."

  Victor closed his eyes for a second, then nodded. "I think I see what you're getting at. ComStar says nothing when they first pull Thomas out of the wreckage, because they aren't sure if he'll live or not. Then he makes some progress, so they're hopeful and know he'll be grateful for their saving him. Then he loses some ground, or his recovery stalls, so they need to find someone who can take his place against the day he can be put back on the throne. Who would have him now, if he is still alive?"

  "We don't know. We think very few people were involved in the operation, and most of them are probably dead— Primus Myndo Waterly, for one. She might have had the real Thomas bundled off to any number of continuing-care facilities, on Terra or elsewhere, without letting anyone know who Thomas really is." Jerry shook his head. "But I don't think ComStar has him or knows they have him because he'd have been too useful as a lever against Word of Blake."

  Victor nodded. "And if Word of Blake had him, the current Thomas would be a lot more toadying of them and their efforts, or risk exposure."

  "That was my thinking, Highness."

  "So, is there any way we can find Thomas, if he lives?"

  Jerry shook his head. "The Inner Sphere is a fairly big haystack in which to search for one specific needle."

  "I know. If it were easy, we'd have found and recaptured the man who killed my mother." Victor smiled weakly. "And if it were easy I'd not be asking you two to do it. See if there's any sort of a trail in any FedCom records. Myndo might have hidden him in my parents' realm as a safeguard against her Thomas going rogue—and we do have the best medical care in the Inner Sphere."

  "We'll see what we can do, sir." Jerry Cranston f
ished a noteputer from his pocket and punched a few keys. "Last thing for today, sir, the Precentor Martial has sent a message asking to postpone the training exercise on Tukayyid until the middle of March. I'm coordinating with Shin Yodama to see how that will affect the Combine units involved. The delay is frustrating, but this operation was put together rather quickly, so problems like this are bound to crop up."

  Victor Davion's face turned down into a petulant scowl, and he knew it. The year 3057 had been a disastrous one, and he blamed most of his problems on the ways he'd unconsciously been emulating his father. It was then that things started to fall apart. Even the Free Worlds League invasion of the Sarna March could be traced back to his approving Project Gemini, begun by his father—a project Victor had been more inclined to shut down totally.

  To keep from ever repeating the mistake of trying to be Hanse Davion, he had decided to return to what had always been the core of his existence. Victor had been raised to be a warrior and, despite the internal turmoil in the Federated Commonwealth and the Inner Sphere, the Clans still represented the greatest threat to civilization. To reinforce that fact in the minds of everyone, and to get back to the life he knew best, he'd outlined and proposed to the Precentor Martial and the Coordinator of the Draconis Combine a joint military training operation to take place on Tukayyid, the world where the Clan invasion had been stopped.

  Focht and Kurita had both agreed to the exercise, which had originally been scheduled for mid-February. Having to put things off for a month was frustrating, but it would allow Victor time to get more ships back from the Lyran Alliance. It would also let him move the Davion Heavy Guards Regimental Combat Team to Tukayyid without taking such a toll on the interstellar trade and transport resources in the Federated Commonwealth.

  "This need for a delay is based on Focht's run to Morges?"

  "Yes, sir. An unexpected turn of events. It also appeared that part of the Wolf Clan has traveled to Arc-Royal, with Morgan Kell's blessing. I imagine the Precentor Martial will have enough information about that situation to brief us when we get to Tukayyid."