"In the name of the Dragoons, I do."

  Kantov sighed heavily. He looked relieved, as if he were ofF the hook. His reaction was noticed by most of the panel, but Colonel Waco was the only one who didn't seem annoyed. Ambridge had to visibly compose herself before continuing.

  "Those gathered here will be the first to hear the decision of the commission, but you shall not be the last. ComStar will broadcast the findings and post them at all our Blessed Order's stations. Let the light of truth illuminate our lives."

  She paused to draw breath.

  "Now hear the unanimous decision of the commission.

  "The payment bond placed in the care of ComStar by Duchess Zamboulos will be forfeited in full by the Dragoons. All monies and goods rendered for services shall be restored to the duly authorized agents of the duchess or the government of the Free Worlds League. Further, additional compensation in the amount of one hundred million C-bills shall be paid to the complainant. These funds shall be gathered by a ten percent deduction from all mercenary incomes of the unit in question, which by Colonel Wolf's acceptance of responsibility, shall be taken to be Wolf's Dragoons in its entirety.

  "The officer responsible for the unit is placed under hiring ban for one year. Should he actively participate in a contract, either as a field commander or in a staff function, the ban shall be made permanent and he shall be declared a war criminal under the Ares Conventions, at which time the plaintiff may undertake civil or criminal prosecution at will.

  "If the unit and officers in question refuse to abide by these findings, the commission recommends that the signatories of the Mercenary Review and Bonding Commission Compact place the mercenaries under ban. These stern recommendations are in accordance with the response to a grave situation.

  "Colonel Wolf, do you accept the findings of this commission?"

  "Madame, the actions of any mercenary affect the reputation of all mercenaries. Though Wolf's Dragoons has long held a reputation for honest and distinguished service to our employers, our performance in this most recent contract has been dismal. This is not the way the Dragoons will conduct business in the future. What happened with Kantov's Battalion has happened. Nothing can change that. The commission has conducted a fair and impartial enquiry into the affair and has reached a reasonable verdict. I can do no other than accept the judgement."

  His voice was firm and calm, but I thought I detected an undertone promising that the issue was not yet closed.

  "Thank you, Colonel Wolf," Ambridge said. "I declare the proceedings closed."

  The commission members filed from the room through the same door by which they had entered. As the Marik party headed for the main exit, their chief counsel approached Jaime Wolf.

  "It was not our intent to involve you personally, Colonel Wolf. I hope you do not hold this against the Free Worlds League or the noble House of Marik. We only wished justice."

  The Wolf responded softly, "You've gotten justice, counselor. You'll get more."

  The counselor stiffened. "Is that a threat, Colonel Wolf?"

  "A promise."

  The counselor might have taken the Wolf's word as directed at him and his state, but I could see where the Wolf was looking. His eyes were on Kantov. Jaime Wolf ignored the counselor's mumbled leave-taking. When the room had emptied of all but Dragoons, the Wolf beckoned Kantov to him.

  "Kantov, you're from the Inner Sphere, but you've been with the Dragoons long enough to understand some of our less public customs."

  "Sure do, Colonel. And believe me, I'm grateful. Those prissy diplos got snowed by the Marik sissies. Might have been different if that Wacko wasn't pouring venom in their ears, too. I really appreciate your standing up for us."

  The Wolf cut off the torrent of words.

  "Do you acknowledge the Trial of Grievance?"

  "The what?" Kantov went pale beneath his swarthy skin and dark stubble. I smelled his sweat again. "You can't mean—"

  The Wolf smiled tightly.

  "As the challenged, you may choose to fight augmented or not. With our age and size difference, Dragoon custom will allow me to appoint a champion if you decline augmentation. But I assure you that if you select augmented combat, I will not demand BattleMechs of equivalent tonnage. You may use your Awesome."

  Kantov's Awesome was an assault class machine. It would outweigh the Wolf's heavy Archer by twenty tons. Twenty very significant tons that would give Kantov an advantage.

  "When you have made your decision, tell Lieutenant Cameron. He will inform you of my choice of battlefield. Until then, stay out of my sight."

  "Hold on, Colonel," said Colonel Parella, commander of Gamma. He sounded annoyed. "Ain't you overreacting a little?"

  The Wolf turned to face him. I would not have wished to be the object of that stare. "Your own place is not so secure, Colonel. Had you done your job, this problem would never have arisen."

  "You gave us all leave to run our regiments as we saw fit."

  "I have been known to make mistakes," Jaime Wolf said coldly.

  Parella's eyes narrowed. "Well, I think you're making one now."

  "Do you, Colonel Parella?" The Wolf hesitated for the briefest of moments. "You may be right."

  Turning on his heel, Jaime Wolf headed for the exit. I followed.

  "Colonel Wolf." My voice was hesitant and soft. I was confused, but hoped he'd think I just wanted to keep the words private. "I don't understand why you're taking Kantov's punishment, then challenging him. If-"

  "You need to look at the bigger picture, Brian. I have a lot more concerns than one regiment's problems. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't sort out Gamma's problems even if I beat the stuffing out of its members one at a time."

  "Then why the trial? Kantov's a lot younger than you and his Awesome is more than a match for your Archer.'"

  The Wolf laughed. "Don't worry, Brian. There won't be any fight."

  "You mean that was all for show?" I was more confused than ever. If the Wolf's challenge was supposed to show people that he didn't really approve of Kantov or his actions, his timing was off. There hadn't been any audience but Dragoons.

  Jaime Wolf shook his head. "The challenge was real enough. When I said that there won't be a fight, I meant that Kantov won't be around by the time of the trial."

  I stopped walking, shocked. It couldn't be. Would the Wolf would have some agent eliminate Kantov? Noticing that I was no longer at his side, he stopped and turned to me.

  "It's nothing underhanded," Colonel Wolf said, apparently divining the direction of my thoughts. "Kantov is a coward. He'll run rather than fight."

  I was relieved that my fears that the Wolf was less than I thought him were mere imaginings. I remembered the tenets of his books on strategy and tactics, especially those teaching that one must know his enemy well. The Wolf was the, master at knowing his enemies, an impeccable judge of men. If he believed that Kantov would run, Kantov would run. My faith in the Wolf's honor restored, we walked on.

  The Wolf had another surprise for me. "As soon as Colonel Blake finishes his review of the commission's report, have him forward the list of dismissals along with his recommendations on replacements to fill the open slots in Gamma."

  "Dismissal? Replacements?"

  "The bully boys in Kantov's Battalion had their chance. Those who weren't a party to the battalion's actions condoned them. The rot must stop with them. If the Dragoons aren't beyond an employer's reproach, we're no better than a bunch of pirates, and I won't lead a bunch of bandits. The Dragoons are better than that. We have to be."

  I was stuck by the fervor in his voice. "You say that as if you have something to prove, Colonel."

  "There's always something to prove."

  We exited the hall to face the assembled reporters.

  5

  The Wolf was proven correct; there was no Trial of Grievance. Kantov disappeared from his barracks and a week later Colonel Blake's sources reported him outward bound on a JumpShip headed for the Capellan Confederation. Kantov had found himself a new home with Olson's Rangers, a mercenary regiment more than happy to have an ex-Dragoon, even a disgraced one. From what I'd heard in the common hall, Kantov might actually raise the Rangers' level of morality. Several of Kantov's cronies left Outreach as well. Most headed for Capellan space with Kantov, but a few grabbed slots in the first unit that would take them. Within two weeks none of the people on my dismissal list was still on Outreach.

  I was glad, and not just because it meant fewer discharge files for me to handle. The Dragoons were well rid of them. But we still had to deal with Kantov's legacy.

  At first, the Wolf took his exile from combat well. He threw himself into work he said needed to be done. The sentence of the commission didn't prevent him from dealing with Dragoon business operations. When the Wolf wasn't doing business, he was overseeing the training facilities, adjusting class strategies, and reviewing the progress of almost everyone taking instruction on Outreach, from the transient spheroids to the training sibkos. He also spent a lot of time with the scientists and the teachers.

  I spent most of my time shuffling requisitions and proposals. Though I told myself all of it was important, I must confess that I paid more attention to the Blackwell communiques. I was a young Mech Warrior and Blackwell Corporation was now our primary weapon supplier—and new technologies are, after all, far more interesting than personnel transfers, grade rankings, and spare-part requests. I didn't understand a lot of the technical specifications for the new factories, but I appreciated the capabilities of some of the new machines that would be coming out of those factories. If I couldn't fight, at least I could keep up on the state of the art.

  The Wolf himself wasn't working, but the Dragoons certainly were. They needed to be. The commission's penalty meant we needed a lot of contract business to maintain the cash flow that Jaime Wolf demanded. He spent a lot of time within the marble-sheathed walls of the Hiring Hall. His attention to the organization of Dragoon contracts made sense to me. Having combat units spread over half the Inner Sphere made coordination vital. What I didn't understand was why he spent so much time glad-handing the unaffiliated mercs who came to Outreach.

  Their motivation was much clearer. They wanted the Dragoons' seal of approval on their units. Despite the commission's verdict, it had done little to diminish the Dragoons' reputation among the hireling soldiers of the Inner Sphere. If anything, our reputation improved. Maybe they thought us more human; they certainly saw that we were willing to admit to our mistakes and then rectify them. Whatever their reasons, the other mercs came and Jaime Wolf saw them.

  Those he approved were added to the Dragoons' recommended roster alongside such longtime subcontractors as the Black Brigade and Carter's Chevaliers.

  Sometimes I thought the Wolf wasn't as discriminating about the honor of those mercs as he might have been. I tried to be fair; after all, they were not Dragoons. But my worry over those units was nothing compared to the disgust I felt about some of the ragtag collections of MechWarriors that set up shop outside the Hall. They were Kantov's kind of people, and were using the draw of the organized contracting to offer cut-rate deals to prospective employers. I didn't understand why the Wolf permitted them onplanet. They drew customers away from our operation and those the Dragoons sponsored.

  "Unavoidable," the Wolf said when I asked him. "We need an open city for open commerce. Keeping them out would be discriminatory and lose us our reputation for fairness. As long as they pay their rent, they can stay. But they'll never see the other side of the mountain."

  "The other side of the mountain" was where the Dragoons trained, the greater continent on Outreach where once the old Star League had held its Martial Olympics. It was also known as the "Outback" to distinguish it from the "World," the smaller continent where we did our public business. The Outback had other uses now, not all of which I can tell you. Outsiders only visited it under escort. Even orbital overflights were forbidden under pain of attack. If Outreach was our home, the other side of the mountain was our private quarters.

  Of course we of Jaime Wolf's Command Lance got to the other side of the mountain, but not often enough. The Wolf's Command Lance was a reinforced lance of six BattleMechs that was structured for combat as well as staff functions. But with the Wolf's undesired furlough, we were all sidelined. Still, no one in the Dragoons goes very long without a chance to sharpen combat skills. Periodically the dullness of cityside duty was relieved by a training exercise.

  Such exercises gave me an opportunity to get used to my new Loki. At sixty-five tons, it was a far larger 'Mech than I had ever piloted. Had it been a standard combat configuration, I probably wouldn't have had any trouble. It was the equipment installed so that I could perform my duties as common officer that complicated the situation. My Loki had an extensive suite of communications and electronic gear, making it more functional for regimental command in a mobile battle than most spheroid command centers. If a spheroid comm officer were ever to observe its compactness and power, he would probably die of envy.

  I often found myself wondering how well Founder William would have handled the machine. As one of the original Dragoons, he would have understood OmniMechs far better than any of my generation or the adoptees. OmniMechs were Clan tech and, therefore, new to us, but the Dragoons had few of them as yet. To be allowed to pilot one was a privilege and an honor. I intended to be worthy of it.

  I can say without pride that my skills in the 'Mech increased with each session. If only I had been as confident of my skills outside the machine. As comm officer I handled an immense load of signals. For weeks I confused call signs and the units to which they belonged. With the Dragoons changing unit compositions and organizational structures on what sometimes seemed a daily basis, a certain amount of confusion was inevitable. I understood some of the restructuring, but other arrangements were clearly experimental. Occasionally, I suspected that the Wolf made some of the changes just to relieve his own boredom. Maybe he enjoyed watching me make mistakes.

  At least the Wolf was patient with me. I never rated extra duty more than twice a month. Other members of his staff were not so lucky. He drove them increasingly harder, always finding fault with their performances. Perhaps his frustrations owed as much to his inaction as to any failings on the part of his subordinates. Looking on, I often thought the staffers didn't deserve some of the chewing-out they got.

  They say a good commo officer is invisible, a transparent filter for his commander. Maybe so. I know there were times I felt like a mechanical fixture in the command center. Increasingly, that was the way Jaime Wolf treated me. Over the months I seemed to have become for him little more than an extension of the radio, laser, optic, and hyperwave commlinks spanning the distance between him and his troops. Wanting to be a good commo officer, I told myself not to worry, to take that kind of treatment as a compliment. I told myself that I didn't mind, and I believed it until the day he first called me William.

  I was shocked. And frightened. Had the strain become too much for the Wolf? I had heard that old people sometimes lived in the past, seeing their surroundings as some other time or place and speaking to those long dead. Was the Wolf so old that he was falling prey to such a weakness of the flesh? He had become snappish, another trait they say is common to the old. I didn't know what to think. Warriors do not normally have long life spans, and I had had little experience with old people.

  I sought out Stanford Blake, with whom I had come into extensive contact in our common service to Jaime Wolf. The senior intelligence officer had been helpful, more times than I could count, and I had come to rely on him when I was confused. Though he was older than me by far, I found him a good companion. He had an easy manner and had even told me to call him Stan, as long as there were no customers around.

  That day I found him studying the reports from Alpha Regiment's deployment in a raid on Brighton in the St. Ives Compact. The Capellans had offered a premium on the contract, paying for the entire regiment's services when the mission profile required no more than a reinforced battalion. Stan had told me that he suspected the Capellans had misrepresented the situation. Epsilon Regiment was pulling garrison duty on Relevow, a system only a jump away. The Capellans were renowned for their deviousness, and I suspected from the communiques I had been ordered to route to his console that Stan was trying to find some hint that the Capellans were setting up a sucker punch.

  "Any sign of trouble?" I asked as I tapped on the divider that separated his desk from the main ops floor. Even in my agitated state, I knew enough to be respectful of my superior's concerns.

  "Nothing yet," he murmured absently. He waved me in without looking up from his datascreen. I waited, unwilling to interrupt his thoughts. After scanning a few more documents, he flicked the screen to hold, leaned back in his chair, and gave me a grin. "What can I do for you, Brian?"

  "You've been with the Wolf since the start, haven't you?"

  "Yes." Stan surveyed me thoughtfully. "What's happened now?"

  His easy recognition of my agitated state bothered me, perhaps unreasonably. I heard the defensive whine in my voice as I spoke. "Who said anything happened?"

  "You did," Stan said, far too cheerily. "Whenever something happens that you don't understand, you open with some variation on that line about 'since the start.' Why don't you sit down and tell me what happened?"

  I sat.

  "Is it something about Jaime?" he asked.

  "Not exactly. The Wolf-"

  "Stop calling him 'the Wolf.' "

  I sat back, surprised. "It's what everyone in the sibkos calls him."

  "Well, they shouldn't be doing it either. But we can't very well issue an order for them to stop. Around here, where he can hear, call him Colonel Wolf or just Colonel. That was good enough for William."

  "But I'm not William!"

  He was taken aback by my sudden vehemence. "So that's it."

  "What?"

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36