By Temptations and By War mda-7 Read online

  More importantly, it made no difference to the Capellan people.

  Evan waited until footsteps gave way to the whine of powerful turbines, and then until the last echoes of the hovercraft were lost back down the long access road. He watched the heavens rotate on the axis star, a parade of celestial beings. Thinking. Planning.

  “We have always been alone,” he finally whispered into the dark summer’s night.

  But that was not necessarily the case.

  Not anymore.

  PART ONE

  The Politics of Destruction

  1

  Path Toward Redemption

  “Prefect Tao’s relocation to New Aragon should not be considered any kind of estrangement between himself and the Prefecture’s governing body, which will remain on Liao. We all accept the need for shifting resources to match our new strategic demands.”

  —Lord Governor Marion Hidic, Recorded address from Liao, 12 January 3134

  Celestial Palace

  Zi-jin Chéng (Forbidden City), Sian

  Sian Commonality, Capellan Confederation

  8 March 3134

  Footsteps echoed in the outer corridor. Mai Uhn Wa nodded to himself. He sat cross-legged on his thin mattress, feeling the cold stone floor through a half inch of meager padding and his threadbare prison dungarees. Gooseflesh puckered his bared forearms.

  He faced the gray cinderblock wall at the rear of his isolation cell, hunching forward in concentration. A few strands of graying hair fell across Mai’s face as he dabbed more of his homemade stain onto the wall’s porous surface. His ink was rancid pork fat rendered down by slow cooking under the light they never turned off, mixed with soy and the red juice he pulped out of beets. A strip of cloth torn from his prison dungarees acted as his brush. Wrap it over the end of two fingers, dip into the dark stain, and then dab carefully. One day’s work completed two or three ideograms.

  He’d worked halfway through his second when his cell door slammed back and a pair of Maskirovka agents entered. Mai Wa did not flinch at their arrival, or even turn to look. Whatever was to happen would happen with or without his participation.

  “More of your grandiose delusions?” Michael Yung-Te asked, disbelief coloring each word. A shrugged pause. “On your feet, Mai Wa.”

  Snugging the cloth strip tighter against his discolored fingertips, Mai Wa continued to stain a dark line across the wall’s light gray facing.

  Yung-Te stepped farther into the room. He scuffed his boot against the side of the thin mat. “I said get up.” His tone was darker this time. Angry.

  A second request? How novel. Almost enough to convince him to obey. Instead, Mai Wa put finishing touches on the ideogram for “loyalty,” then straightened to survey his work.

  “The highest and most important ideal in any MechWarrior’s life is loyalty,” he whispered softly.

  That was the opening tenet of the sixth dictum of the Lorix Order, a quasireligious philosophy endorsed by the Capellan state. It was also among the strongest principles endorsed by Capellan Warrior Houses, the elite military enclaves of the Confederation: Imarra… Kamata… Dai Da Chi… Hiritsu…

  Ijori?

  As always, thoughts of the fallen Warrior House led Mai Uhn Wa back to his recent attempts to resurrect it on Liao, and to the disastrous timing of the ComStar Blackout. Ijori Dè Guāng. The Light of Ijori. If he’d only had six more months.

  “Mai Wa—” Agent Yung-Te warned.

  The Mask agents still hadn’t forced him away from his work. Sensing that this visit was something beyond their normal interrogation and reeducation attempts, Mai Wa now set his wooden cup of stain to one side and folded his strip of cloth next to it. He rose slowly to his feet, favoring his right side with the taped ribs and electroshock burns. Neat columns of ideograms very nearly covered the entire wall. Starting as high in the upper right corner as Mai Wa could reach, they scrolled from top to bottom and right to left in the ancient tradition. The first five dictums, all complete, and the start of the sixth. With effort, he would find just enough room to finish them.

  “Such determination would have been admirable put in service to the State, rather than against it.”

  Mai Wa turned and half bowed toward his keepers. “I am a traitor,” he agreed. “I serve the Confederation.”

  Michael Yung-Te was in his late thirties, with black hair and a lean, angular face. Ambition burned behind gray-blue eyes. He was fast approaching that timeless quality some men of Asian descent were fortunate to gain. His associate looked older, with the sunken-eyed expression of a man who was part of too many secrets, too much senseless violence. Your basic agent of the Capellan secret police. Both wore Han-styled charcoal gray suits and high-necked, stiff white shirts. Their mandarin collars were closed at the throat with a triangular Confederation crest.

  “You’ll serve as an example to other would-be traitors,” the older agent said, but his voice lacked the usual dogmatic conviction.

  Mai Uhn Wa looked at both men with a faint stirring of curiosity. A tense smile crept at the right side of his face. The left no longer worked so well, even with the cheekbone reconstruction. “Will I?” he asked.

  Yung-Te reigned back his associate with a raised hand. “No marks,” he reminded the other man, who stepped forward and kicked Mai Wa’s bowl against the wall, splattering reddish-brown stain along the lowest cinderblocks. Several large spatters smeared across the ideogram for “loyalty.”

  “An untidy end,” Mai said softly.

  Oh, yes. This was something different.

  Mai Uhn Wa limped into the Chamber of the Celestial Throne with head bowed and ankles shackled together by a short length of polymer chain. His bare feet whispered against teak flooring, the black wood lacquered so heavily that it reflected the entire room like a dark mirror. Heady incense lingered in the air. Sandalwood, he tasted. And jasmine. His prison dungarees rubbed roughly against his skin, but at least they were freshly laundered and pressed with military creases.

  One did not appear before the Chancellor of the Capellan Confederation, Soul of the People and God Incarnate of Sian, in anything less than the best their station allowed.

  His Maskirovka escorts paused awkwardly at the threshold, unbidden to enter but uneasy with leaving their charge alone. A half dozen shuffle steps into the chamber, Mai Wa stopped as well. The Mask agents finally bowed and retreated, closing the large, bronze-faced doors behind him.

  Still, he waited.

  “Approach me, Mai Uhn Wa.” The command was subtle, shadowed, but no less forceful for being spoken barely above a whisper.

  Mai raised his head and took in the austere beauty of Daoshen Liao’s throne room. The walls were paneled with red-grained bamboo, suggesting a ring of flames around the entire chamber. A carved frieze ran down the left-hand wall, depicting ancient warriors on an eternal march. On the right only a few simple charcoal sketches hung as decoration, drawn by the hand of The Ascendant Sun-Tzu Liao, Daoshen’s father, if stories were to be believed.

  A runner of red carpeting shot through with gold threads led from the bronze-faced doors to the foot of the dais. Gold: the prerogative of the emperor in ancient China. Mai avoided it, keeping to the right-hand side as he approached the Celestial Dais with all due humility.

  His life, and purpose, might very well hang by such a thread.

  A suit of Chinese armor, from the Nán Bei Cháo dynasties of ancient Terra, stood on display at the corner of the dais, a beautiful piece of physical history, as was the chair at the center of the dais, the Celestial Throne itself. The Chinese zodiac wheel formed its upper backrest, a reminder of the diverse nature of mankind, and each leg ended in a dragon’s claw. Carved from one solid piece of mahogany, the red and brown wood grain promised both strength and character.

  And on that throne, half hidden in shadow, sat Daoshen Liao.

  For the third time in his life Mai Wa looked upon the Chancellor of the Capellan Confederation. Although he had mentally prepared hims
elf for this interview a hundred times over, it still surprised Mai that his eyes found the Chancellor only when it seemed that Daoshen wanted to be noticed.

  Sian’s living God rested back into his throne with arms draped over each massive rest. Coiled. Ready to strike. The Chancellor’s head was shaved clean. His mustaches were long and jet black, braided at each end and weighted with a tiny golden bead where they came even with his shoulders. He wore a golden Nehru jacket with a green mantle fastened across his shoulders, and green silk pants decorated with red and gold serpents along the outside seam. Nearly two meters tall, and reaching past gaunt for emaciated, the Capellan leader was anything but frail. He …radiated.

  Truly invested with Divine Will or simply secure in his own power, that was for Him to know.

  Mai Wa went down to his knees, then stretched full length onto the floor of the Celestial Chamber, prostrating himself before the Chancellor. “I serve the Confederation,” he said.

  “Attend, Mai Uhn Wa. Set your feet beneath you, and stand once more as a man.”

  Mai’s hair, damp but clean, fell into his face as he slowly climbed back to his feet. He pulled it back over his shoulders, untangling ropy strands from the wispy beard prison had given him.

  Daoshen Liao hunched forward slightly, peering intently at Mai Wa, green eyes burning with an inner fire. Mai could never know what the Great Soul was searching for, and so stood up under the scrutiny with as much military bearing as he could muster. Daoshen smiled, thin and without humor. “It is Heaven’s Way to conquer without striving, to get responses without speaking.”

  “To induce the people to come without summoning,” Mai quoted automatically, then realizing that he had just interrupted the Chancellor. Daoshen might have been making a private joke. And the passage… but there was no path left to him but to finish it. “To act according to plans without haste,” he finished softly.

  “You have studied Lao Tse and his Tao Teh Ching. Recently?” Daoshen’s voice was nearly devoid of inflection. But his words, at least, conveyed a sense of interest.

  Picking his words, and his tone, with great care, Mai nodded and said, “I have been fortunate to enjoy the hospitality of the State for many months, Illustrious One. We are granted the magnificent benefit of two recreations. One is the study of proper Capellan philosophies.”

  “The other?” asked the Chancellor.

  A glance at the suit of ancient armor. “The study of history. I have availed myself of both.”

  “But have you learned anything?” Daoshen asked, and his question was very obviously rhetorical. “On your return to the Confederation,” he continued, “I declared you a traitor to the realm. You offered no defense. The Maskirovka, finally, would like to set your trial date.”

  Daoshen paused, waiting for a denial. “I am a traitor,” Mai said. “I serve the Confederation.” He was guilty the moment the Chancellor declared it. A trial was mere formality.

  “How do you serve the Confederation?” the Chancellor asked. “How did you serve me?”

  “Majestic Wisdom, I have always sought to further the Capellan nation. When I strayed, when I did not return to the Confederation as ordered, I did so only for the chance of bringing you greater glory.”

  “When you first served on the world of Liao, you obeyed my father without fault.” Daoshen did not sound as if he were cross-examining Mai. He went on carefully and methodically. “You were instrumental in the new rise of pro-Capellan sentiment.”

  That had been nearly thirty years before, just after the new century. Mai Wa’s first mission to the birthworld of House Liao. Chancellor Sun-Tzu had ordered a number of young officers to foment unrest within The Republic. Mai Wa’s successes saved a lackluster military career, earning him a promotion. His future suddenly looked bright.

  That had all come crashing down, however, the next year.

  “I was not there for the Night of Fury,” Mai said, ashamed. He’d been pulled back for specialized training. Had he been there when the first assault wave landed on Liao, he believed he could have—would have–made the difference. Instead, The Republic rallied, and so began a violent, two-year conflict.

  “Later, I was attached to the Fifth Confederation Reserves. We saw action on Wei, Hunan, Styk. I was not called on to accompany your father.”

  His plans ruined, Sun-Tzu traveled to Liao in an attempt to broker peace, a rare expedition from Sian for the aging Chancellor. His arrival did little to calm the angry sea of resentment harbored by Republic stormtroopers, though. They attacked. And Sun-Tzu fell. Capellan forces rallied long enough to effect a full retreat, but they did not come away with the Chancellor’s mortal body for there was none left to claim. By all accounts Sun-Tzu ascended that day, becoming a divine being. Charged by His spirit, Confederation forces struck back hard enough to force a new peace with The Republic.

  The world of Liao, and so many Capellan worlds, however, remained in Republic hands.

  Daoshen nodded, agreeing with all spoken and unspoken. “You accepted discommendation.”

  “I did. And indefinite leave from the military.” The memories were fragmented after so long, but still there. Mai Wa remembered those painful years of hard work and contemplation, struggling alongside farmers on the planet of Jasmine. Exploring the ruins outside of Lhasa, “I found the old Ijori stronghold.” One of the Warrior Houses lost to Word of Blake’s Jihad. Only four of the original eight now survived. “Spent seven years studying their philosophies, their strategies, their victories and defeats.” Finding in them a purpose that filled the void left after Sun-Tzu Liao’s ascension, he’d petitioned for a return to active military service.

  Which was how Mai Wa first found himself before Daoshen Liao, in 3126, summoned into His Presence and tasked again with delivering the Chancellor’s dynasty birthworld.

  “You were to help return home our lost people,” Daoshen said.

  Mai nodded, his eyes casting for the floor again. “Yes, Generous Soul. In return you offered to grant me my single wish: the resurrection of Warrior House Ijori. But my efforts failed. The student uprising I inspired at the Liao Conservatory was defused by the Paladin Ezekiel Crow.”

  “To act according to plans without haste.” Daoshen reminded him of the earlier quote from Lao Tse.

  “I was eager,” he agreed. “I moved too quickly.”

  “And you disobeyed my command to return!” Daoshen’s voice hardly rose above normal levels of conversation, but the power behind his words slammed into Mai Wa as if driven by sledgehammer blows.

  “I did. I hoped to create an uprising that would finally sweep away The Republic. I devoted every effort, calling on resources developed as far back as the first Liao campaign.” Mai felt hollowed, empty. At the time, it had felt so right. A divine purpose. “I devoted my life toward that end.”

  “You were supposed to devote your life,” Daoshen said, very coldly, “to me.”

  Mai nodded. “I am a traitor. I serve the Confederation.”

  “You are a traitor. You may yet serve the Confederation.”

  The reprieve—faint, but there—stirred faith back into Mai Wa’s soul. The old warrior looked up to Daoshen Liao, Soul of All Things Capellan, and dared to hope.

  “Yes,” Daoshen allowed, awarding him one regal nod. “Your past failures—even your treason—may yet be put behind you, Mai Uhn Wa. Today is the eighth day of sān-yuè.”

  March eighth? The twenty-first anniversary of… “Your father’s Ascension.” Daoshen nodded. It was no coincidence. “Liao.”

  “Liao,” the Chancellor agreed. “Birthworld of my father’s line. It is time to begin again. Your long ties to Liao, the on-planet assets you still possess, your array of protected aliases—perhaps you can still serve the state.”

  “Chancellor. That is all I ask.”

  “All? You were more forthcoming during our first interview.” Daoshen Liao obviously read the desire still written across Mai Wa’s soul. “The true prize awaits you, Mai Uhn Wa. Do
not fail me.”

  “No, Celestial Wisdom.”

  Daoshen’s wrath, should Mai bring it upon himself again, would fall swiftly and certainly. Which was only right. The taking of Liao could only be one step in a much larger parade, and if plans did not go as foreseen, as they so often did, Mai Wa expected to be one of the first casualties. The Chancellor offered him a chance for redemption, but he did not guarantee anything.

  As if reading his mind, though, Daoshen nodded. “What I can do for you, I will. There are old debts, promises, that may help smooth the way.”

  Mai Wa bowed from the waist. “I serve the Confederation.”

  “As do we all,” Daoshen said, staring off into the distance, smiling at a future only he could see. “As do we all.”

  2

  The Campus Cabals

  The unidentified DropShips burning in toward Terra continue to refuse all attempts at communication. The Tenth Principes has mobilized and their aerospace assets will intercept in approximately sixty minutes. After the recent fighting on Achernar, on Northwind—we can only imagine what has now come home to Terra and what will eventually befall The Republic of the Sphere. Why are we so afraid of the dark?

  —Mace O’Ronnell, Stellar Associated, 29 March 3134

  Yiling (Chang-an)

  Qinghai Province, Liao

  Prefecture V, The Republic

  24 April 3134

  Evan Kurst staggered over to a storefront wall and held it up for a moment. The night air felt cool against his flushed skin. Wiping his hands on the outside of his jeans, drying them, he then adjusted the straps on his backpack, trying to make it look natural. A half dozen books, a load of laundry for the laundromat, a few days’ groceries; those would have been nothing for a fourth-year student at the Liao Conservatory. Military-grade power amplifiers weighed a bit more. And you really did not want to get caught hauling them around the Liao capital of Chang-an.