Cleaning his blade one last time against the basin’s edge, Torrent returned the wicked little knife to its scabbard at the small of his back. Grabbing a damp towel hanging nearby, the star colonel draped it over his scalp and rubbed away the remaining gel as he stepped back into his office. Nikola Demos stood defiantly near his desk, arms akimbo, staring at the diminutive projection of Galaxy Commander Kal Radick. She had pulled her gleaming black hair severely back from her face, giving her a hard, hawkish profile. Her dark blue eyes held no warmth for the orders she sensed—even from just a short lead in by the Steel Wolf leader—were coming.
“This change in priorities comes at an awkward time and through no fault of your own. Star Colonel Fetladral concedes that his victory shall be your victory. Your victory, Star Colonel Torrent, is mine. Anything you might accomplish on Achernar will only add to our honor. You have my greatest confidence.”
Nikola Demos turned as the holographic message winked out, recycled, and then began again with the Steel Wolf icon floating ominously over Torrent’s working desk. “His greatest confidence? Great Father! What about the occupation force?”
“Shifted to support Colton Fetladral,” Torrent acknowledged as he thumbed off the holovid player. He moved with a slow economy of motion, deliberate and controlled. “We are abandoned.”
“Can we still win?” Nikola jumped right for the neck, seizing hold of the problem and dragging it to the ground. “Can we take Achernar?” She pressed her mouth into a thin, hard line.
Torrent felt his lip curling again. “Before or after Erik Sandoval’s Swordsworn gutted your foraging unit?” He felt the white fury building up within him again. Overriding the impulse to lash out, knowing that Nikola Demos had, in fact, set a sound escort for the B’her Valley raid, Torrent moved behind his chair and exercised his muscles against the back rest.
“We might,” he said slowly, evenly. Although they could never hold onto Achernar if Aaron Sandoval pushed out against them from Tikonov. The Steel Wolves would have opened up the world for the Swordsworn to take. “Perhaps. If we can split the alliance between Swordsworn and Republic.”
“How will you do that?”
Torrent relaxed his grip on the chair back, turning his mind away from Erik Sandoval and the Swordsworn’s ambush even as he turned away from Nikola to grab his uniform jacket off a hook. “By destroying the man who forged it,” he said. Sandoval would be dealt with, in time. Before that, Torrent would deal with Knight-Errant Kyle Powers.
Achernar Militia Command
Achernar
The world shook and Raul Ortega bolted upright in his bed. Achernar’s furious, late-morning sun slammed into the window of Raul’s base-assigned quarters, slashing by the cheap, vinyl blinds to stab blinding pokers into the forefront of his brain. Light birdsong and the rolling crush of heavy trucks—those were his first coherent impressions of the morning. His tongue felt thick and gritty. His mouth tasted like the birds had nested in it. There was no good reason to wake up feeling so awful, but about a dozen poor reasons.
Each one had come served in a shot glass.
The door rattled in its poorly hung frame as someone outside pounded again, gave up, and simply barged into his room in the company of more painful sunlight. “Dogs and togs, MechWarrior. Going to be a busy day.” Tassa Kay.
Raul groaned, fell back to his pillow in a flop that, he felt, conveyed his sense of enthusiasm for Tassa’s early company. He pulled the top sheet over his head, which lasted all of five seconds before his visitor stripped his bed in one brutal yank. Raul scrambled to cover himself, then realized that he had gone to bed in slacks and socks and a white undershirt.
“I do not have the time or patience to play, Ortega. Get up or get left behind.”
More awake this time around, Raul blinked some moisture into his eyes, noticed that Tassa also looked a little less polished than normal. She had pulled her hair back into a severe tail, secured by a leather tie. She wore camouflage pants and a black tank wrestled over firm breasts. Her eyes were well shielded by a pair of leather-wrapped, reflective aviator’s glasses, the kind that rested right up against the brow and let in very little light.
Memories from the previous night came staggering back as he stumbled from his bed in the studio-style apartment to the kitchenette sink. Cold water slapped against his face and on the back of his neck helped put them back in order. He had matched Tassa Kay shot for shot, trading tips, technical facts and history in between rounds of Glengarry amber. Even half-drunk, Tassa had said very little about herself. Raul remembered something about her meeting Evan Kell of the famous—or infamous—Kell Hounds. More about her fighting alongside Exarch Redburn. She had seemed curious—pleasantly so, even—when Raul told her about Jessica Searcy and their differing opinions on duty to the Republic, and…
And why was she here so damned early?
“What happened?” he asked, knowing that Tassa had not volunteered for wake-up duty. “The Wolves?”
“Round-about,” she said. “More like your Swordsworn. Erik Sandoval stirred up a hornet’s nest last night. Sir Powers is taking a formal call from Star Colonel Torrent in about fifteen, and he wants us there.”
“They’re not my Swordsworn,” Raul reminded her, gathering up a fresh uniform and slipping into the small closet of a bathroom to change. He listened through the cracked-open door as Tassa filled him in on Erik’s ambush, the destructive tactics Sandoval had favored against support units, and Torrent’s likely violent response.
“All right,” he finally said, emerging from the bathroom with a toothbrush clenched in one hand. “So Erik caught the star colonel’s forces in an ambush, using overmatched firepower. Sounds like sound military doctrine to me. Why would the Steel Wolves be insulted?” He scrubbed the first layer of paste from his teeth and tongue.
“Clan warriors limit damage to civilian and support forces whenever possible. It is considered the epitome of skill to take their target with the fewest possible forces, concentrating on opposing leadership and important front-line units. Sandoval’s assault borders on treacherous—even cowardly—tactics. In Torrent’s eyes,” she added as an afterthought.
“What do you think he’ll do?”
Leaning back against the standing locker, Tassa massaged her temples. “What would you do?” she asked. “You have suffered a large military set-back. Additionally, you feel that your personal honor has been smeared in the process. How do you regain your equilibrium?”
Although part of Achernar’s older Latino population, Raul had never subscribed to the same level of machismo honor as so many of his counterparts. Still, he felt he could place himself into Torrent’s shadow enough to draw a few conclusions. “I would challenge Erik Sandoval to a duel. Hombre-en-hombre.” Except that that was thinking too much with emotion, and not a head for strategy as well. “No,” he decided. A chill shook him. Leadership and important front-line units. “I would challenge Sir Powers.”
“Count on it,” Tassa agreed. “And we have about ten minutes to be there when it happens, if we want a chance to get in on it.”
Raul spit into the kitchenette sink, rinsed his brush out with tap water. “You think that Powers will accept?”
“Jousting is back in style, or have you not noticed?”
He had. Raul used a handful of cold tap water to slick his dark curls back. Icy trickles bled down his neck, but he trusted to Achernar’s bright sun to dry him off before the two of them made the command center. Grabbing some dark glasses for himself, he nodded toward the door. “I still think it’s a risky proposition, even for a Sphere Knight.” He half blocked the doorway with his shoulder. “Unless there’s something more?”