The Last Charge Read online

  So she polished and cleaned. And remembered. When she polished the legs, she thought about how the Mad Cat moved, its wide stance and low center of gravity giving it surprising maneuverability for its size. When she polished the arms, she remembered the weaponry, so many more options than she’d had with her old machine, the Koshi that Alaric Wolf had destroyed. He had been about to step on her with this very machine when the tide of battle had shifted just enough to move him away.

  She reviewed that moment over and over, wondering if that had been a stroke of luck or of extreme misfortune.

  Then when she polished the cockpit…when she polished the cockpit, she thought of power. And she thought of using that power to blast Anastasia Kerensky out of existence.

  She always spent the most time on the cockpit.

  “I need a sturdy machine more than I need a shiny one.”

  The voice startled her. She had been too enthralled by the ’Mech to notice the presence of its owner.

  He was slender and not especially tall, with a frame built for slipping quietly in and out of places. He didn’t look like a ferocious warrior—unless you looked at his eyes. Those eyes, slightly hooded with a trace of shadow beneath them, had a way of looking down at anyone, even those who stood taller than Alaric. His eyes did not admit the possibility of anyone being his equal.

  “The techs do not need me to help make the machine more sturdy,” she said, once she had recovered from the surprise of his presence. “I am left to make it shiny.”

  Alaric looked at his machine from head to toe. “It is not enough. I will find you something more. Something that better contributes to our effort.”

  Verena knew he was not seeking her opinion on the matter, but she spoke anyway. “Put me in the cockpit of one of these,” she said. “I could give you a lot of help that way.”

  Alaric turned away from his ’Mech to look squarely at her. Was there a smile of amusement creasing a corner of his mouth? Or maybe it was derision.

  He reached for her hand, and Verena let herself believe it was a gesture of friendship, maybe even more. There had been that brief moment once….

  But then he spoke and chased her illusions away by focusing on her wrist.

  “Your bondcord is entirely intact,” he said. “Not a single strand snapped. And you have been in my service for less than a year. You have fulfilled your duties well, but not well enough to change your status yet.” He let her hand drop. “You do not become a warrior so easily.”

  “I already am a warrior, quiaff?”

  Alaric’s expression did not change. “Neg. You are a fighter. And a skilled one at that. But you are not one of us yet, and so you are not a warrior.”

  The argument had been lost before she had even started it, so Verena let it go. “You know that I will perform any duty I am assigned.”

  Alaric ignored the comment, as if it was too obvious to acknowledge. He took another look at the ’Mech, then walked over to the head technician for a few muttered words. Then he walked, taking short, quick strides, out of the hangar.

  Just before he disappeared, he made an abrupt gesture with his hand. Verena had been watching for it, and she followed him out.

  * * *

  “Would it be considered impertinent if I asked how folding your clothes contributed to Clan Wolf’s triumph on the battlefield?”

  Alaric smiled, a real smile this time—though, because it was Alaric, still tinged with a hint of cruelty. “As a matter of a fact, it would. Bondservants do not question their roles.”

  She was in Alaric’s personal quarters. If she was to be his personal valet, it seemed like a simple job, as he had few belongings and all of them were already in perfect order. Uniforms hung in a tight closet, and a small white drawer held the rest of Alaric’s clothing. He had a desk, a terminal and a chair, all white. The bed was similarly Spartan.

  She looked at the bed, then looked away, then wondered if she had looked away too quickly. Then she stood firmly and wiped all discomfort from her mind. She was not a child. She and Alaric had done what they had done on La Blon, and that had been the end of that. Their relationship had evolved since then, and the past should remain distant.

  “From this point on, when I am here, you should be too,” Alaric said. “You will prepare my food, clean my quarters and help me in any other way I require. When I am not here, you can continue with your duties in the ’Mech hangar. You should work harder at picking up some of the technicians’ knowledge while you are there.”

  Verena nodded. “May I ask if this is a reward or a punishment?”

  The cruelty in Alaric’s face deepened. “You have been thinking like Inner Sphere humans for too long. The destiny of the Clan is what is important, not your own individual status. Concern yourself with doing your duty.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  She stood in the room and waited. Alaric did the same. She subtly shifted her weight from one foot to another, looking for all the world like she was standing at attention. Alaric did the same.

  “Are there any duties I should be attending to right now?” she finally asked.

  “Yes. You should get some comfortable clothes for me out of the drawer. And you should listen.”

  Alaric began removing his uniform as Verena opened his drawer. He only had about four items of clothing that looked at all comfortable, so her decision was easy.

  “You have not been on the battlefield for a year, and that is not going to change,” Alaric said. “But you should know more about what we have been doing. You have abilities, knowledge. You should be contributing them to our effort.”

  Verena stood up, holding a dark shirt and slightly lighter-colored pants. It felt like her spine was expanding a little—she felt taller than she had since Alaric had put the bondcord around her wrist.

  “You are making me your servant,” she said, “so I can be your adviser.”

  “I have advisers,” Alaric said. “I am not going to make a bondservant equal to them. However, if we talk about combat operations while we are in my private quarters, it is possible that it will have a good result.”

  Alaric was ready for his clothes, and Verena handed them over. She shifted her weight from foot to foot again, this time a little quicker. Visions popped into her head, of ’Mechs on rocky fields, in forests, on plains. She saw formations, troop movements, firing arcs, all of it rushing through her head.

  In most places, the move from ’Mech scrubber to chambermaid would generally not be described as a promotion—maybe a lateral move at best. But to Verena, it felt like a gift, the return of a part of her that had gone unused for almost a year. Her body was not returning to the battlefield yet, but her mind was, and she was more than ready.

  “Things are going to become more complicated,” Alaric said as he got dressed. “We have done well here. We are getting attention from the people who brought us here, and not all of it will be welcome.”

  Verena listened and tried not to grin.

  4

  Scripps, Gannett

  Marik-Stewart Commonwealth

  15 February 3138

  It was important to remember that the universe was mostly nothing. After that, it was fiery balls of hydrogen, then clouds of unorganized dust. After those formations, the next most common thing in the universe was godforsaken rock.

  An unending supply, it seemed. Trillian Steiner had been on many planets, and occasionally she had the chance to look down at an unfamiliar planet as she landed on it for the first time. She would stare down at the colors and wait for them to coalesce into something recognizable and maybe even interesting. She would see browns that looked like rocks only to find out she was looking at the top of a dying forest. A beautiful patchwork of color from the air became nothing more than parched farmland and swaths of tall, gray grass.

  When she was above Gannett, she saw gray, an almost uniform gray, interrupted here and there by dull green. She waited for the bland colors to sharpen or brighten, or for them to resolve int
o something more visually arresting. But nothing happened. What looked like a plain gray rock from high above showed itself to be a plain gray rock on ground level. A few stubborn trees, gnarled from the effort, had managed to push through the rocky surface, but most of the time the stones had successfully kept all life at bay.

  Gannett was not, by any means, the most valuable jewel in the now-shrinking crown of the Marik-Stewart Republic. But it was a border world, and it was in the way. And the journey to glory often required some unpleasant side trips.

  Still, she wished she could be somewhere else. She had been picking over the leavings of the former Free Worlds League for long enough. There were other matters that deserved her attention—Fortress Republic was still an opaque mystery in the middle of the Inner Sphere, and the unpredictable leadership of the Combine always needed watching. But the archon wanted her here, so here she would be, above unpleasant, unhospitable ground.

  At least there was a DropShip port, and a good thing too—trying to find a decent landing spot on the jagged ground would not be easy.

  The good news was that preliminary reports indicated she wouldn’t have to be on this planet for long. The Clan Wolf troops were making better progress than Duke Vedet’s forces had on this planet, and the Marik-Stewart Commonwealth did not seem inclined to fight a pitched battle for this rock. If the Wolves continued their current pace, Trillian could not imagine the Marik troops holding on for much longer.

  This planet would be another victory for the archon. With a new victorious commander at its head. Meaning more work for Trillian to keep everyone in their place—a good reason for her rather than anyone else to be here.

  17 February 3138

  “Don’t get me another appointment,” Trillian said. “I don’t want another appointment. I want to talk to the bastard, then I want to get the hell off this planet!”

  “I’ve been told the Star colonel apologizes profusely for not being able to make any of the previous meetings,” said Klaus, her aide-de-camp.

  Trillian drummed her fingers on the gray plastic desk, annoyed at Klaus’ exceptional level of calmness. He was just standing there, looking not irritated in the least. She asked herself if it would help her mood if Klaus put a fist through one of these blank walls, and after consideration she thought yes, it would.

  “Would you punch one of these walls for me?” she said.

  Klaus barely glanced at the walls. “No, sorry. They’re sturdier than they look. My hand would break before they would.”

  “Then find something that you can slam through the walls, and get in here and do it!”

  “I’ll get right on that,” he said. But he didn’t move.

  Trillian took a breath. “The apologies you’re supposed to convey to me. Did they come from Alaric directly?”

  “No. They were conveyed to me through his people.”

  “Great. Have they seen him at least? I mean, is there someone out there who can definitively say that Alaric Wolf is actually on this damn planet somewhere?”

  “All evidence suggests that yes, the Star colonel is nearby,” Klaus said dryly. “He’s just had events come up over the past two days.”

  “Does he understand that I’m here on behalf of the archon? That I’m effectively here in the role of his commander?” Trillian took another look at the wall. It didn’t look that thick. Might just be plaster. She could probably take it.

  Then she looked away, stayed in her chair and listened to Klaus.

  “I’m fairly certain he wouldn’t recognize that fact,” Klaus said.

  “He’s not here for his health! He’s here because he made a deal, and I’m representing the person he made the deal with! I’d think he’d want to talk to me!”

  “You’re free to present that argument to the Star colonel when you see him.”

  Trillian slapped her desk. The noise was anemic and quite unsatisfying. “Why aren’t you more irritated by all this? You’ve been sitting around on this pissant planet just as long as I have, you’ve been yanked around by Alaric just like I have. Get angry!”

  “You’re angry because you’re being treated worse than you expected. I, however, am being treated exactly as I expected,” Klaus said, his face all even lines, his body still. “I knew the score going in. I’m not thrilled to be here, but I was prepared to have to wait.”

  “You’re right—I should have seen this coming. Never underestimate the arrogance of Clanners is lesson number two of Inner Sphere politics.”

  Klaus took the bait. “And lesson number one?”

  “Peace is an illusion.”

  Klaus nodded.

  “All right, we have to do something,” Trillian said. “I’ve been on this rock for two days and I can feel it making me stupid. There has to be something, some lever I can use to make Alaric put his ass in a chair and talk to me. What is it? What can I use?”

  For the first time in the conversation, Klaus sat. His back, though, remained straight.

  “Don’t try to force him,” he said. “There’s no threat you can level that he’ll take seriously. He’s not going to perceive you, or any army you can call upon, as a physical threat. You also can’t threaten to back out of whatever deal the archon made with him. He thinks—and he’s quite correct—that if the archon was willing to risk bringing him into this war, she’s not going to cut ties with him lightly. Trying to pressure him with talk you can’t back up isn’t going to help.”

  “Right,” Trillian said. “Stick bad, carrot good. What do we have in the way of carrots for a man like Alaric Wolf?”

  “Well, if we happened to have Anastasia Kerensky packed away on our DropShip somewhere, that would help,” Klaus said. “That would help a lot.”

  “Now you tell me.”

  “But that’s the question. What can we offer that Alaric wants?”

  18 February 3138

  He wasn’t tall. He wasn’t especially broad. From the neck down, he wasn’t physically imposing at all.

  He was fit, of course, and Trillian had no doubt he was quite strong. But in his brown and gray uniform, he looked trim and rather ordinary.

  From the neck up, it was a different story. His eyes, set back a bit in his skull, were steady and imperious. His jaw was angled and firm, his cheeks were hollow and hungry. He looked through Trillian when she walked in, and she did not believe he really looked at her the entire time they spoke. His eyes, and most of his attention, were focused on something beyond her—something, Trillian thought, that was quite large indeed.

  “What should I call you so that you will feel you have been treated with a due amount of respect?” Alaric Wolf said by way of introduction.

  “‘Lady Steiner’ is fine, Star Colonel,” Trillian said.

  “Fine. Lady Steiner, I realize that you have been waiting to meet with me for three days since your arrival. I am sure you can appreciate that the job of planetary conquest is often complicated, and there have been many demands on my time.”

  Trillian noticed Alaric did not include an apology for the delay in his remarks, but she didn’t expect one. The important thing was that this meeting was happening, and she was one step closer to getting off this planet.

  “I understand,” she said. “You’re doing the job you were brought in to do—and quite well, I might add. You have the archon’s thanks for the quick work you are making of this planet.”

  Trillian might just as well have offered the thanks of a local butcher for all the impact it had on Alaric. His face did not change a bit.

  “I am told you have equipment,” he said.

  “Almost,” Trillian replied. “I have access to equipment. Naturally, I can’t just go flying around on a DropShip full of spare ’Mech parts.”

  Now Alaric’s face changed. Creases appeared near the corner of his mouth. Clearly, what Trillian had said differed from what he had believed. She hoped that was the case—Trillian had carefully sculpted her message to Alaric to be both completely truthful and entirely deceptive. />
  “I need parts, not promises of parts. If you have nothing, we will make do with our own supplies.” His eyes fell to the terminal screen on his desk. He seemed to believe the meeting was concluded.

  “Ah, but we’re closer to my supply lines than we are to yours. I could get you supplies much quicker, if you told me what you needed.”

  He didn’t look up from his screen. “Your supplies are inferior to ours. They may be useful in a pinch, to make field repairs, which is what I thought we would discuss. But we are not yet so hard up for supplies that we need to special-order parts from the Lyran Commonwealth.”

  “Okay. That’s that, then. I suppose I’ll be off to Danais—if you don’t want the parts I have at my disposal, then I’m sure Duke Vedet would be glad to have them.”

  Alaric finally looked up. There was something new in his eyes, an expression Trillian couldn’t quite read. But at least it was something different. She thought maybe she was doing something right, so she leaned forward and spoke faster.

  “You realize that you and the duke will likely be fighting side by side as this campaign continues. Do you really want to go into the field with an army that is comparatively underequipped? How do you think you’ll do next to them? How will it look if his forces are outperforming yours?”

  Alaric didn’t answer right away. He leaned back in his chair, and then Trillian recognized the expression on his face. Amusement—but not a good kind. It was the amusement of watching a puppy chase its own tail.

  “Duke Vedet Brewster,” Alaric said, “is a businessman who knows far more about constructing ’Mechs than commanding them. He could have all the supplies you are promising and my army would outperform his—even if we were on foot and armed only with infantry weapons.”

  “You can’t believe that.”

  “Lady Steiner, I think you will find that it is not worth your while to attempt to tell me what I do or do not believe. Your duke does not understand war. That is why he was struggling here, why his forces were mired by the primitive defense mounted by the Marik forces. Your archon does not need forces with better equipment. She needs more warriors. So we are here.”