Mercenary's Star

The woman's head tossed from side to side, her eyes shut tight in a face glistening with sweat and tears. She spoke between deep and desperate gasps for air, the words coming with a tumbling urgency. "Please don't hurt me please don't hurt me please..."

Vlade looked across her at Nagumo. "This is Carlotta Helgameyer, my Lord. She is one of the members of that self-styled Revolutionary Council you captured at Fox Island."

"I know, Vlade. I've seen her dossier."

"Then you know that she is also a respected professor on the faculty of this university. And she's been giving me names. Haven't you, Carlotta?"

"Please, don't hurt...yes...yes...anything...Please don't hurt me..."

Nagumo's eyes widened in surprise. "You've broken her so easily? I don't see a mark on her."

"Well, we've had her for a week now, my Lord. We first had to assemble a psychological profile based on her physiological reactions during the first interviews. That told us that Carlotta doesn't like...pain. Do you, Carlotta?"

Nagumo crossed his arms. "Who does?"

"Ah, but this is special." Vlade reached down to a small instrument stand and picked up what looked like a fencing foil with a heavy, complex grip—a neural whip. He fiddled with controls at the handle, and at the tiny clicking sound, the woman's eyes opened wide and her pleading rose in pitch and volume.

"Please...no...no...no...!"

He flicked the tip of the neural whip lightly across the woman's thigh, the touch wrenching a long shuddering scream from her. Vlade looked up at Nagumo, touched the blade to his own bare hand, and shrugged. "When I can get that...sincere a reaction with the power off, it's fairly safe to assume that the subject has been completely conditioned. You see..." He brought the blade down again, touching her stomach and eliciting another scream. "Carlotta has a problem in that she never knows whether the blade is going to be charged...so...or dead...or where it is going to touch her. When it gets to where the anticipation is as bad as any pain, well...she'll answer any question. And she'll answer it as truthfully as she can. Isn't that right my dear? We've been having a lovely conversation."

"And what have you learned?" Nagumo felt a mild revulsion for Vlade and his light-hearted patter. The man got results, but with what struck Nagumo as unprofessional familiarity.

"We've learned that there is considerable pro-rebel sentiment among the students and faculty right here in the University. Students have been distributing anti-Combine literature and rather sensationalist accounts of recent rebel actions throughout Regis. They've been openly recruiting for the rebel forces, talking about training an army under these mercenaries off in the jungle. The riot yesterday started with a student demonstration, you know, but that sort of 'spontaneous' gesture has to be carefully pla

"This woman was an organizer of the disturbance?"

"Oh, Carlotta has been very busy here in the capital when she hasn't been ru

"She's giving you names?"

"Oh, yes. She's been most cooperative. There is quite a sizable number in this cabal, isn't there, Carlotta? Prominent men in trusted positions in the local government."

"This is new?" Nagumo barked, but then paused to think. He knew that the relationship between Regis University and the Verthandian government was an odd one. The Verthandians took pride in the fact that their government leaders were trained for the job, that government itself was a logical and disciplined science, administered by trained professionals. The riots of the previous day showed that the citizens of Regis did not always approach politics with logic. Nagumo had thought that his enemy was the rebel army and the mercenaries they'd brought in to help them. Now the flames of rebellion were spreading, heedless of military defeat or the might of the Draconis Combine. Perhaps what they needed at this point was not a military victory, but a blow against some visible symbol of the revolution to demonstrate the occupation army's power.

If treasonous elements of the University and government could be turned into a public example, right now, this week...a purge to demonstrate the firmness of his will, then things might be quiet when Duke Ricol arrived. Certainly, it was better than hurrying blindly across the face of Verthandi, reacting to the moves and threats of a slippery, invisible opponent.

He turned to pick up a chair and brought it close to the silver table. Drawing a handkerchief from his pocket, he wiped dust and a stray splatter of something dry and brown from the seat, then sat down.

"Very well. Let's hear what she has to say."

* * * *

The dream began as it always did.

Lori sat in the cramped cockpit of her Locust,her hands on the controls, her body swaying with the rolling of her machine. Urgency drove her, though she didn't know what it was that had her heart racing, her pulse roaring in her ears. The landscape that flowed past the Locust'swindow was familiar...a wasteland stark and bleak, spires of ice and mounds of snow under a sky of midnight blue. It was Sigurd, a world of frozen seas and towering glaciers. The world of her birth.

Sigurd would forever be associated in her mind with cold, but as she pressed her Locustforward, she felt not cold, but heat. She could feel the sweat on her face and chest, could feel it trickling down her spine to pool in the small of her back. This was more than the usual heat of a BattleMech in operation, more even than the heat of an overload in battle. Through her ‘Mech's cockpit windows, she could see the reflected dazzle of flames close behind her. Fire!

Her hands twisted the controls and the Locustspun. A low, thick-walled house of logs, clay, and handmade bricks dissolved in flames like sugar in hot tea. It was her own home burning.

In the night, the soldiers had come. Now the village was afire and her home was burning. She could hear her parents and brothers as they screamed, could feel the hands of the neighbor who had snatched her back as she'd tried to run back into that hell of flame and pain. No... not hands. The straps of her harness were digging at her shoulders like the remembered grip of that neighbor.

Daddy!

She struggled, thrashing. Daddy was in the flames somewhere. She had to reach him, but there was someone in the way. It was a tall, lean man whose back was to her. He stood between her and the burning house, and something rested across his shoulder, something short, stocky and horrifying.

When he turned, she saw it was Grayson Carlyle. He stood below her just as she'd seen him that first day, in a city street on Trellwan, They'd been on opposite sides, then, she unknowingly fighting for a Kurita warlord, he leading the local militia in a desperate defense.

He set his eye to the crude sight of the inferno launcher and brought the weapon into line with her cockpit. His mouth twisted into its familiar, lopsided grin as he squeezed the trigger...

She sat bolt upright in bed, wide awake. The bed sheets were wringing wet, her hair plastered in damp tangles across her face and bare shoulders. She sat there a moment, breathing hard, taking in the dimly seen but familiar outlines of objects in her darkened cabin— the small terminal at her desk, her uniform locker, the nightstand by her bed. She crossed her arms across her breasts and sat there, trembling for a moment. It was only a dream. Only a dream.