Secrets, fumed Elora. What do you know of secrets?
She leaned back and considered him. He had proved useful twice. But now?
“I see you are thinking about removing me,” he said without any sign of fear in his pale blue eyes. Elora hated him for those eyes. Her mother had spent years describing the man who had fathered her, until Elora had a perfect mental image of the raping sadist. The Clansman who had sired her had eyes this color. There the resemblance ended. He had been so large and physically powerful in her mother’s fierce reminiscences of the rape. This man lacked stature, which was perfect for his job of assassin. No one remembered a man who looked like this. No one remembered ordinary.
The Clan blood flowing in her veins might be dilute, but she had vowed to make up for that while still a young girl. Her mother’s hastily arranged marriage to a young landowner from Ventrale had provided her daughter with legitimacy and nobility, but Elora still railed against her fate. Not good enough to be Clansworn? Over and over she told herself that genetic engineering could not matter as much as determination. She would show them her greatness by turning over the entire planet to Kal Radick.
Of course, she’d received no response to the communiqué she’d sent via DropShip so many weeks ago. He didn’t know who she was, but she’d show him. In a way, it didn’t matter to her if he even acknowledged such a fine gift. Conquering a world using words and carefully spun schemes would be reward enough for her. She would know she had deposed Ortega and made a fool of Tortorelli, then grabbed power.
But if Radick offered her the planetary governorship in his new order, she would not turn it down. She would show him and the Steel Wolves that even a drop of Clan blood was enough to triumph.
This nothing in front of her had failed. It troubled her that he read her so expertly, but he had survived on several worlds using his wits.
“You have to prove your worth to me,” she said. “I would be a fool to waste a valuable asset. I would be equally foolish to permit a flawed one to survive.”
“I kill to make my living. I also find out things,” he said, grinning wickedly. “You’ve worked your way up in the Ministry of Information by character assassination and double-dealing.”
“This is the best you can do? All you needed to do was ask anyone in the Ministry. They all hate me—and all could give detailed recitations of every person I stepped on as I came to my current position.” She kept her face impassive as she saw the expression on his face. He thought he held a trump card.
“You’ve contacted Prefect Radick about giving him control of Mirach,” the man said. “Reports say Radick is no longer loyal to The Republic, and you plan to take advantage of this shifting allegiance. Mirach would be a different world under Clan domination.”
“You spin fanciful tales as well as fail in what should have been simple assignments,” she said.
“Your childhood was spent battling an inferiority complex. You were a bastard child with endless ambitions to prove herself, to have someone to respect, if not love, her.” His smile broadened even more. “I like that.”
“That I am a bastard of a Clan warrior?”
“That you have ambition. I hold no store by their genetic program.”
“Yes, you fought against them, didn’t you? That’s where you learned to pilot a BattleMech. But you were a coward who fled rather than engage in combat and were stripped of your command.” It was Elora’s turn to grin. “I find out things, too.”
“Just so we understand each other,” the man said. His smile had melted into a scowl now.
“I understand you well,” Elora said. “You failed to kill Leclerc, who is now in hiding and probably teaching MBA pilots to use their modified ’Mechs. That will make my coup that much more difficult to achieve. You also failed twice to kill the Baronet, so what information he might carry is still a threat.”
“His brother and the reporter, they were the ones to fear. Austin Ortega doesn’t know anything that can harm you.”
In a rush of intuition, Elora knew the source of the man’s background data on her: Hanna Leong’s files. After killing her, he had searched the woman’s files and read what she had discovered.
“Was there anything about an air transport crash?” Elora asked.
“What? I don’t understand.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” Elora said. She took a small pistol from her desk, aimed, and fired a single deadly shot into the man’s skull. He had misjudged her, thinking her only weapons were spoken and whispered.
One solved problem lay dead on her office floor. Now Elora needed to deal with other, more troubling unfinished business.
21
Palace of Facets, Cingulum
Mirach
3 May 3133
“Father, listen to me,” Austin Ortega said angrily. “They weren’t trying to arrest Manfred and me. They were trying to kill us!”
“I don’t think so, Austin. Not only had I told you to let the matter lie, you met him in secret. How would it have looked if the MPs had caught you, along with Manfred?” Sergio Ortega stared at his son, colorless eyes unfathomable. There was a hint of worry but not the way Austin expected. His father was more upset by the bad publicity of the Baronet being caught with a renegade officer than he was over the unfairness of it.
“They were military police, not civilian officers,” Austin said. “They killed the people in the Borzoi and set fire to the tavern to cover their crimes.”
“I read the official legate’s report on the incident,” Sergio said. “There’s no evidence that the MPs did anything wrong. It was the bartender, this Pavel Orndorff, who set fire to the place. They have surveillance video of it happening.” He shook his head sadly. “You could have been killed. You and Manfred.”
“I can take care of myself,” Austin said, trying to keep his anger in check. “You can’t treat me like a child.”
“You’re not a child, but you’re behaving like one. Just for one instant consider the possibility that I know more about what’s going on than you. If you keep blundering into business that’s not your own, I might not be able to save you.”
“I don’t need saving. Tell me what you’re planning. Why don’t you remove Elora? You know she doctored those surveillance tapes to show whatever she wanted. I’m sure, Father, that the bartender wouldn’t set fire to the place and kill himself. That’s a cover-up.”
Austin saw the shift in his father’s expression and didn’t like what it might mean.
“You can’t send me off-world or to Ventrale or wherever far away to get rid of me. I swear, Father, I’ll be back. You have to take me into your confidence.”
“You’ve shown you don’t deserve it,” Sergio said coldly.
“I do, Father. My fitreps in the FCL were always tops. I’m a quick study. I can find out what happened to Dale and Hanna if you let me.”
“You’ll do as you’re told,” Sergio said, his anger flaring now. “People have died needlessly because of your ill-conceived rendezvous. Leclerc is on the run and is hiding who knows where. That alone makes it more difficult for me to act against Elora and to stop the rioting.”
“This isn’t fair,” Austin said.
“There is no such thing as fair. I thought you’d learned that by now. You’re on my staff to learn. Keep quiet and do so.” Sergio shook his head once to forestall more argument. He leaned over and touched the annunciator button on his desk. The tall carved wood doors swung inward on their silent hinges.
Only the doors were silent. A gabbling crowd pressed through from the Armorer’s Chamber to shove against the Governor’s desk.