Help.
From the person least likely to give it. And the one she should be least likely to ask.
24
Ascending Jove
Achernar Militia Command
Achernar
18 March 3133
Achernar’s sun was barely a hint on the northeast horizon, a pale smudge hardly discernible against the black of night when Raul Ortega arrived in his jeep at the command post staging grounds. Warehouse and hangar doors had been rolled open, spilling yellow fluorescent light across the blacktop in deep, yellow pools. Headlamps and spotlights on two score of military fighting vehicles brightened up the staging grounds to an artificial dawn. Technicians and logistics corps ran everywhere, servicing equipment and turning out every last tank, battlesuit and VTOL.
Tassa Kay and Clark Diago met him near the pool of utility vehicles, coming up together as Raul shucked off his jacket and stripped from a jumpsuit to the cockpit-ready gear of fatigue shorts and a gray cooling vest. The pre-dawn chill bit at him, puckering his lean arms with gooseflesh. Clark clapped Raul on the shoulder, gave him a stiff shake.
“The old man wants a word.”
Tossing his gear into the jeep, Raul slapped some warmth into his arms and then nodded Diago ahead of him. “Your team ready to go?” he asked Tassa, falling into step with her.
She thrust her chin at the two nearest of eight military VTOLs. “Both of those are loaded—overloaded, in fact—with gear and good men. You are certain that this will work? This is not your newest attempt to deny me a separate command?”
“Deny you? Tassa, I’m counting—desperately counting—on you making rendezvous with…” Raul trailed off at her poorly hidden grin. Suckered. He licked his lips. “Just don’t go haring off after Erik Sandoval before I give the word, all right? And remember, that’s a fifty-tonner you’re in today. Don’t expect it to hold up like your Ryoken, and bring it back in as intact as you can.”
“You still don’t trust me.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know you.”
“You know me,” Tassa said. And this time her words carried on more than one frequency.
Raul smiled, but not with the same amount of interest he might have once.
The two of them had stepped lightly around their brief liaison since Tassa’s recovery under Jessica’s care. Raul knew that—while the passion was there between he and Tassa Kay—there wasn’t the emotional bond he truly wanted. In between planning sessions and on-site reviews these last few days, Raul had tried to mention that to her. Talk to her. Tassa had shrugged off his attempts, working first at becoming healthy and then gearing herself up for today’s battle.
Though he still wasn’t certain whether to feel relieved or slighted that she had set him aside so readily.
Bright, hard white lamps drew them through the maze of vehicles and personnel to the militia’s Tribune-model mobile HQ. Colonel Blaire waited for his three MechWarriors under a rollout canopy, studying a contour map of River’s End and the surrounding area. The old officer carried himself in full field uniform today, with sidearm and sword. You couldn’t tell, until he tried to walk, that he balanced on a prosthetic leg. Once the task forces moved off on their objectives, there wouldn’t be a fighting man left to command inside the base perimeter. Blaire would follow Raul’s larger force, offering them the direct benefit of thirty-six years of military experience.
Raul had readily accepted. He knew they’d need all the help they could get.
Blaire glanced up from the map, on which he had drawn force lines and time indexes for every stage of the day’s maneuvers. “It’s a very dangerous game we’re playing today, Raul.” He shrugged. “Ah hope you’re certain.”
A smirk twitched at the corner of his mouth. “You can court-martial me if it doesn’t work. Sir.”
“Give me one of your kay–det grins, Captain, and Ah’ll wipe it off with low-wattage laser. You’re the one sitting in the jaws of the trap. If it doesn’t work, you’ll be dead.”
Raul smiled fully, though no humor touched his dark eyes. “There is that.”
The colonel gave each one of them a once-over, then nodded his approval before pulling Raul aside. “You know what we’re up against and what we have to do today. If you need to make any last-minute changes to the force allotments, now is the time.”
He didn’t think twice about it. He barely thought once. “I trust each member of the task force with their part today, Colonel.”
“All right. Ah trust you, and that’s good enough. Post,” he ordered the younger man. To Raul’s back, he said, “And you make Kyle Powers proud of you, Captain.”
Raul nodded, but kept quiet. Jove waited.
Powers’ Jupiter waited on the far side of the Tribune, standing on wide-spread feet next to the paired Legionnaires. While not at full capability, with two autocannons out of commission and still suffering some targeting glitches, the one-hundred-ton assault ’Mech nevertheless loomed over both nearby machines, in height and in raw, physical presence. It was painted in the same colored bands as before—a layering of tans, yellows, and faded reds. Raul’s gaze was still drawn first to the great red spot that swirled in a storm over the right breast of the BattleMech.
Which may be how he missed Jessica Searcy at first glance, standing at the foot of the Jupiter.
“Jess?” Raul stopped flat in his footsteps.
Setting aside the way his heart pounded against his chest, he could not help but think there was no way his fiancée—ex-fiancée—should be here. Not with the base locked down on full military protocol. When Tassa walked on by, trading a nod of encouragement with Jessica, shock won out over decorum. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Her sharp, answering glare barely kept from cutting into his skin. “Tassa cleared me onto the base. Civilian contractor, temporary warrant officer commission.” He hadn’t noticed the small, golden caduceus shining on the collar of her paramilitary jumpsuit. He did now. “I’ll be in charge of a M.A.S.H. truck. You soldiers have a way of keeping doctors busy.”
M.A.S.H.? Jessica was on board for the maneuvers? “I really wish you weren’t here.” Also not the best way to reopen a conversation. “I can… appreciate what you are trying to do here—lord knows we’ll need your skills before today is done, but I don’t need to be worrying about you out there.”
“Don’t you mean, you don’t need to be worrying about me, too?”
Raul held no illusions about whom Jess was referring. She wasn’t going to make this easy on him. And it was no less than he deserved. But, “No. I don’t mean that at all. Counting every crewman, infantryman, and specialist on the field today there will be over two hundred warm bodies, and I can’t afford to worry about any of them. I can only trust them to be there, doing their jobs, because this is how we’ve all chosen to serve.”
She nodded. “Then you can trust the same from me. Yes? Isn’t this what a citizen does? Take that extra step?”
Hearing his own argument thrown back at him, and now of all times, left Raul speechless for several seconds. Was she doing this to impress him, or prove something to herself? Either way, it wasn’t necessary. Tassa had proven to him over the last month that you did not have to be a registered citizen to carry yourself with honor. And if comparing his fiancée with a one-time liaison was not a way to tie himself into knots right before battle, Raul wasn’t sure what else qualified.
“Jess, you’ve been a citizen your entire life in any possible way that it matters. You’ve always had the right side of that argument. Why are you doing this now?”