The Scorpion Jar Read online

  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 Scorpion Jar

  A ROC Book / published by arrangement with the author

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2004 by WizKids, LLC

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

  For information address:

  The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is

  http://www.penguinputnam.com

  ISBN: 0-7865-5245-X

  A ROC BOOK®

  ROC Books first published by The ROC Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ROC and the “ROC” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

  Electronic edition: December, 2004

  Acknowledgments

  The process of writing this novel was not normal, which means the acknowledgments are a little strange, too. But still, there are some people who need to be thanked:

  Sharon Turner Mulvihill, for giving me a shot and being supportive and helpful throughout the whole odd process;

  Randall N. Bills, for being the exact right person for me to leech on over a number of years;

  Loren L. Coleman, for being encouraging as I gradually stuck my toes into the ocean of the BattleTech universe;

  Past editors—notably Donna Ippolito and Janna Silverstein—who were encouraging and positive even when projects didn’t work out as planned;

  My wife, Kathy, for being . . . well, for being my wife, Kathy;

  My son, Finn, for similar reasons;

  Everyone who ever wrote a book I loved. You know who you are.

  And though they’ll likely never see this, thanks to Ethan Cannon and Sam Cannon (distant cousins, not brothers) for first introducing me to RPGs. The adjustable-length ten-foot pole will never be forgotten.

  1

  Paladin Steiner-Davion’s Residence, Santa Fe

  Terra, Prefecture X

  1 October 3134

  The final glimmer of a purple-and-orange sunset had disappeared into the chill of a late-autumn night. Even here, away from downtown, the sky-glow from greater Santa Fe overwhelmed all but the brightest stars, while the background noise of city traffic, machinery and, above all, people, underlay everything like a heartbeat, or like breath.

  At well past midnight, the sprawling headquarters of the Knights of the Sphere was, for the most part, dark and silent. Even in its residential wings, quiet ruled. The majority of Knights with quarters in the complex worked hard and valued their rest, and those who were of a mind to relax or work off tension usually wandered to other parts of the city to play.

  The suite of rooms belonging to Paladin Victor Steiner-Davion appeared, from the outside, to be no different from the rest. Only in the office was there light—and that merely the glow from a single data screen. All the curtains were tightly drawn; no one outside would know that the Paladin was awake and at his desk.

  You’d think that at my age I wouldn’t need to hide in the dark and work in secret, Victor thought to himself. He gave a tired, quiet laugh. At my age, I shouldn’t have to do this kind of work any longer, period.

  We believed we’d taken care of all these problems, he thought. We told ourselves that we’d left them behind along with everything else from the bad old days—the family ties and alliances that we set aside, the BattleMechs that we gave up and turned in for scrap—because Devlin Stone’s vision of a new order was going to make all of our fears and precautions obsolete. Maybe we should have known better. The darker aspects of human nature do not simply disappear because some of the tools are taken away. Power will always be contested. In so much you were wrong, Kattie, dear sister, but about this aspect of human nature you may just have been right.

  Yet the dream had become real; for a few brief decades it had worked. Until the day Devlin Stone made the mistake of thinking that he could step away from his creation and let it run without him.

  Was the dream flawed, then, from its very inception? Surely The Republic of the Sphere ought to be able to continue without the charismatic presence of its founder. What did it say—about Devlin Stone, about The Republic, and about those who had given their lives and their loyalty to both—that it might not?

  I have to believe, Victor thought, that we did not choose wrongly, and did not fight in vain.

  His data screen pinged, distracting him from his reverie to announce a file arriving. He checked the address from which the file had been sent, and smiled. The sender’s true name—which appeared nowhere in the document—would have shocked respectable people and would have shocked The Republic’s intelligence services even more had they known that Victor Steiner-Davion was in correspondence with its owner.

  But Victor had lived for a long time. He had been a MechWarrior during the turbulent, bloody years before the founding of The Republic. In his youth, and even in his middle age, he’d associated with any number of people whose names and dossiers would have made law enforcement and intelligence services distinctly nervous. And quite a few of those people still owed him favors.

  The information contained in this particular file had been bought with the price of several of those favors. But Victor considered the favors well spent. At his age, he wasn’t likely to find another reason to need them, and the information was good to have. The work he was doing now was like building a mosaic. He had in his possession a great number of small pieces, each one individually nothing—but when put together in precisely the right fashion, they would make the picture plain.

  Collecting all the tiles for the mosaic was the easy part, he reflected, at least if you happened to be him. You only needed sufficient money—or a sufficient number of favors owed—and sufficient patience, combined with decades of practice at standing back and taking the long view. Anyone could have done it, given those qualities.

  The next part, though, would be much harder. He had to present his mosaic in such a way that even the dimmest Senators and Knights and—especially—Paladins could see and understand the picture he created. Not to single out any individuals, but if the truth were told, some of his comrades-in-arms had always been more notable for courage and fighting skill than for brains.

  So he couldn’t just lay out the evidence and let the facts speak for themselves. He had to lead his audience step by obvious step to the right conclusion. This would be his legacy to The Republic of the Sphere, one last act performed for the sake of the dream of Devlin Stone, and it had to be done just right. The forthcoming election could hinge on how well he did his job, on how many of the Paladins understood what he now knew.

  It was more than simply arranging the facts and ideas; he had to find the exact right words and tone, and put everything in the right order. He’d never been much of a man for talk, and not much of a diplomat either, although the newsreaders now called him a statesman—a reward, he supposed, for having lived so long. He was a MechWarrior first and always, and the task of moving others to his way of thinking through convincing argument was a far different task than piloting a ’Mech.

  It was late. Eventually the words and the sentences blurred together, and Victor dozed, sitting upright in his chair. Then he slept more deeply, as the ch
air—a marvel of modern design and medical engineering—adjusted its contours to his slumbering form.

  Morning came, bringing with it daylight streaming past cracks in the closed curtains, and he woke with a start to a cheerful voice saying, “Good morning!”

  Both the voice and the good cheer belonged to Elena Ruiz, the housekeeper (though he and she both knew quite well that she was more nurse than housekeeper) who looked after his suite of rooms. She was a pleasant sight for an old man’s eyes, even in her plain white uniform—dark hair, olive skin, and a face always open and ready to smile. Her greeting was followed by a blaze of light as she drew the curtains mercilessly open, letting in the bright desert sun.

  Victor responded with a good-natured grumble. “Woman, they pay you to keep me healthy, not to kill me.”

  “Hah,” she said. “You’ll outlive all of us. And if you slept in your bedroom like most people, you wouldn’t have to worry about me opening the curtains in the morning.”

  “I was working,” he said. The display on his data screen was on and glowing, bearing out his words. He frowned briefly. The display should have followed his lead and gone into sleep mode sometime last night. It must have been brought back to life by some vibration or bump to the desk.

  Victor shut down the file. He would work on it again later, after the coming of night once more brought privacy. Then he turned to Elena Ruiz.

  “Now—what’s for breakfast?”

  2

  Sheratan, Prefecture IV

  20 October 3134

  Knight-Errant Robert Goldberg saw his first political advertisement on Sheratan within minutes of his arrival at the main planetary DropPort. The display on the wall outside the DropPort’s vehicle rental office said FOUNDER’S MOVEMENT—KEEPING THE DREAM ALIVE! in glowing orange letters that practically jumped off the poster.

  After that, elections and electioneering were everywhere he looked. The streets of the city were gaudy with neon-and-laser billboards, and tri-vid ads flashed and rotated atop newsstands and information kiosks. The displays said things like PEACE AND SECURITY in bright green, superimposed on images of a bucolic, tranquil countryside and bustling, unworried cities. The images were accompanied by voice-overs between the musical numbers that played over the audio system in the vehicle Robert had rented at the DropPort: “In these troubled times, mutual trust and fellowship are more important than ever. When you vote, reach out—”

  The music eventually segued into the midday newscast. Still listening, Robert left the city, heading for the country estate where Paladin Otto Mandela was staying during his sojourn here. The estate belonged to one of the local bigwigs—a veteran of Stone’s Revenants from the old days, now turned prosperous gentleman farmer—who had graciously made it available for Mandela’s use.

  Robert’s journey took him out into the open countryside, where a lightly traveled winding road took him through acres of rolling green pastureland dotted with sheep and dairy cattle. He spared some attention for the newsreader of the hour, a woman with a pleasant voice. The title “Knight of the Sphere” sounded glamorous, but the reality was sometimes less impressive. Functioning as part of the Exarch’s private courier service was only one of the not-so-exciting tasks involved.

  The newsreader said, “And it’s time for the top planetary news of the hour. With election day close at hand, voter unrest continues in urban areas. In Pittston, supporters of local Founder’s Movement candidate Ella Geraldo broke up a rally for Prosperous Unity opponent Dan Harwicke with taunts and heckling. When Harwicke attempted to address the crowd, estimated at some three hundred, he was drowned out by shouts of “Appeaser!” and “Clan-Lover!” and “No More Sellouts!”

  “Interviewed later on this station, Harwicke said only that he was disappointed that some of his fellow Sheratanites could not tell the difference between independent traders like Clan Sea Fox, with whom he freely admits to having done mutually profitable—and legal—business in the past, and violent and territorially ambitious groups such as the Jade Falcons and the Steel Wolves. Meanwhile, in—”

  The news went on, a depressing tally of political meetings disrupted by one local faction and election headquarters vandalized by another and riots instigated in the streets of depressed neighborhoods by a third. The first planetwide elections since the dramatic collapse of the HPG network had signaled the end of what people were already referring to as The Republic of the Sphere’s golden age, and the electorate on Sheratan was bitterly divided. People were not taking the ongoing crisis well.

  Under the circumstances, Robert thought, it was not surprising that there had been a mostly bipartisan call for an official observer to be sent from the government of The Republic—preferably, an observer who also had the authority to settle any arguments that might arise. Paladin Otto Mandela was an ideal choice. He had worked on disputed elections before, and had made a name for himself previously in investigations of brutality and corruption on various worlds.

  Nor was anybody likely to call either his honesty or his devotion to The Republic into question. Mandela, for all his fidelity to fairness and the rule of law, was still willing to demand that his accuser meet him in single combat, ’Mech to ’Mech, and repeat the accusation there.

  Robert turned off the main road, following the directions he had picked up at the DropPort. The narrow farm road he traversed provided him, not surprisingly, with views of more sheep and more cows, as well as an occasional field planted with crops Ortega didn’t recognize. He wondered if the tall grain was meant for human consumption or for livestock fodder, and realized that he might never know.

  He could always ask, he supposed—if he didn’t mind looking ignorant in front of the locals, which he was willing to do when the situation demanded it, but not out of mere curiosity. He was still getting used to the confidence others placed in him as a Knight of the Sphere, and he had no intention of jeopardizing it.

  At the end of the road, he came to a low, sprawling farmhouse—an estate, really—built of the buff-colored local stone and roofed in slate. He parked the rented vehicle out front. The man who came out from the building’s capacious attached garage to meet him looked not so much like his expectation of a chauffeur/mechanic as a farm worker with an occasional sideline into taking care of things with engines.

  “You the man from Terra, supposed to come see Paladin Mandela?”

  “Yes.” Robert felt relieved that he was expected. He’d sent a radio message as soon as the DropShip came within communications range of Sheratan, but one never could tell these days. “Robert Goldberg.”

  “He’ll be inside. You go on in—I’ll put the car in the garage for you.”

  “Thanks.” He handed over the keys and entered the house.

  The rooms within were shadowed and cool, making a pleasant contrast to the bright day outside. A short entrance hall led to a large, open-plan room, its floor of dark, polished wood scattered with wool rugs in muted natural colors. One wall held an enormous fieldstone hearth, cold now in the summer; another was made up entirely of windows. The floor-to-ceiling glass panes afforded a view of lush green hills and the inevitable livestock.

  Paladin Otto Mandela, an imposing man with skin the color of dark coffee and grizzled hair cropped close to his well-shaped skull, rose from a chair by the window. He held a tumbler of amber liquid in his hand. At the sight of Robert, he set the drink down on the nearest end table and strode briskly forward.

  “Lord Robert.” Mandela’s eyes were bright and eager. “What word do you bring for us from Terra? Does Damien Redburn have something for me to do besides watching the Sheratanites vote and making certain that everybody is too scared to cheat?”

  “You could say that,” Robert replied. He reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out a stiff rectangular envelope with a holographic seal. He proffered it to Mandela. “He’s set the date for the election.”

  The Paladin took the envelope and slit it open with a thumbnail. He perused the contents, a
nd his eyebrows went up. “December twentieth? Why the rush?”

  Mandela had a point, Robert thought. By law, Damien Redburn was required to step down as Exarch no later than the end of calendar year 3135. Holding the election on the date Redburn had chosen would mean inaugurating his successor on the fifth of January of that year. It didn’t count as stepping down early, under the strict interpretation of the law, but it came near enough. Robert shrugged.

  “I’m just a Knight,” he said. “The Exarch doesn’t tell me stuff like that. All I officially know is that I’m supposed to deliver the formal announcement and tell you that the Exarch requires your presence in Geneva.”

  Mandela raised an eyebrow. “How about what you know unofficially?”

  “Not much more. If I had to guess, I’d say that the Exarch was hoping to take all the assorted factions by surprise. He means to hold the election before they have a chance to get their political machines running in high gear.”

  “Hmph,” said Mandela. “It’s a good thought. Damien isn’t stupid, and the damned factions are going to kill everyone if something isn’t done about them first. Here, so far it’s only rioting and dirty tricks—it could be worse. But on Terra—” he shook his head “—on Terra, the factions mean business. They have dozens of different ways to follow Devlin Stone’s vision, and each of them thinks they’re the only ones who have it right. Believe me, if I wasn’t here, the situation would be far worse. Don’t let the fact that there aren’t any armies involved yet fool you.”

  “I heard the news stories while I was driving out from the port. The situation sounds . . . complicated.”

  Mandela snorted. “That’s an understatement. Anywhere you’ve got two people on Sheratan you’ve got at least three political factions, and the locals can’t even vote for town dogcatcher without having two protest marches and a riot about it first.”