5

When newly acquired states have been accustomed to living freely under their own laws, there are three ways to hold them securely: first, by devastating them.

The Prince, by Niccolò Machiavelli

 

 

Belletaria
Venicio County, Kimball II
16 September 3134

The Gyrfalcon swayed from side to side in its peculiar, strutting gait as Star Colonel Noritomo Helmer high-stepped it along the rubble-choked boulevard, leading his column through the city that had been Belletaria. He remembered a line from one of the ancient texts he had smuggled into his sibko barracks as a child and hidden inside his mattress. It was a book on mythology.

And when she opened the box, all the evils of the world were released.

He and a sibmate had read such books at night, whispered about them while lying next to each other at rifle drill or while making camp on extended maneuvers. The myth of Pandora had been fun to argue. About whether such a curse could have had any other result. About whether or not Pandora had been an attractive woman.

But one thing they had never discussed was the idea that their Clan would ever visit such a nightmare on an unsuspecting people.

These were not the warriors Noritomo remembered training alongside.

Belletaria had been a medium-sized city on Kimball II. One hundred and fifty thousand people. Large portions of the city had been burned—residential areas, mostly—put to the torch by a determined Firestarter. Ash choked the sky, casting a gray pallor over the ruins. A few fires still smoldered, though most had finally burned out or been extinguished in last night’s rainfall.

But what the fires missed, Malvina Hazen’s handpicked “relief force” had taken apart with ruthless efficiency. Assault ’Mechs leveled the industrial sector, kicking through warehouse walls and wrenching over large cranes used to pull cargo off the barges that plied trade between the river cities. The barges had been sunk. Lifters and trucks were shoved into the river. The assault machines had then joined a couple of modified SalvageMechs and some heavy tanks to raze the downtown area where Noritomo now walked his Gyrfalcon. Apartment buildings had ’Mech-sized holes in them where the sturdier machines had simply walked through. Other buildings were nothing better than piles of rubble and splintered lumber. The commercial center of Belletaria, some forty-eight square blocks, had been leveled by artillery fire and then systematically flattened as the ’Mechs and tanks spread out in a line and marched, stomped, and rolled forward in a juggernaut of destruction.

All his fault.

Galaxy Commander Hazen had instructed him to take Kimball II. It was to be the jewel in her crown. A population of nearly two billion and the local headquarters for Ceres Metals, this rich Republic world was one of six targeted by the Jade Falcon desant. Her “gift” of it to Noritomo was a measure of confidence in one of her senior warriors. But he had made one strategic mistake, and gotten mired in a brutal ground campaign that caused him to miss the rendezvous for the assault on Skye. Malvina Hazen would not soon forgive him that.

Throttling down, slowing the Gyrfalcon until he paced to an uneasy stop, Noritomo banked the fusion reactor. “I am stepping outside,” he said, the voice-activated mic broadcasting to his battered unit.

Star Captain Lysle Clees argued. “This area is not secure, Star Colonel Helmer. I don’t recommend it.”

Her intentional use of a contraction, debasing the language, had its desired effect. Noritomo paused. Then, “There is no one left to worry about, Star Captain. I will descend.”

No one left. It was a desperate salve against the devastation. The Jade Falcon relief force had announced their intentions from orbit, giving people twelve hours in which to begin their evacuation. Perhaps only a few thousand had actually been killed. Perhaps a few hundred. The assault force had moved on to the next city, ready to visit more destruction if planetary leaders did not capitulate at once. Their warning this time was a mere six hours.

Noritomo pulled off his neurohelmet and unplugged his cooling vest from the circulation system. The helmet he left on his seat. The vest he wore for its thin layer of ballistic cloth. Lysle’s warning should not be completely ignored.

It was the work of a moment to unbutton from the cockpit and scale down to the ground. Smoke from last night’s fires lingered, stinging his eyes, leaving a wood smoke taste in his mouth. Two suited Elementals waited for him. Their hulking forms dwarfed Noritomo. He nodded to Lysle, unable to see her eyes through the reflective faceplate.

Lysle unlocked her helmet, pulled it off, and held it at her side. She was one of the Clans’ genetically bred infantry, tall and heavily muscled. The large woman’s blond dreadlocks uncoiled in a snakelike mane, like another creature of myth Noritomo half remembered from the book.

“I do not like this, Star Colonel.”

Noritomo nodded. “I do not like a lot of things, Lysle.” He knew her for one of the more moderate warriors under his command. There were things he could say in front of her that were safe. There were things that were not. He struck out for a large pile of bricks and broken ferrocrete that—he guessed—had been a bank. The two warriors slowly walked around it. “Seven months ago, this seemed like such a straightforward mission.”

Seven months. When they were still inside the Clan occupation zone, mustering for the long march under the watchful eyes of Galaxy Commanders Beckett Malthus and Aleksandr and Malvina Hazen.

The Elemental kept pace, taking one long stride for each of his two. “Strike through Lyran space and into The Republic of the Sphere,” she said, nodding. One lip curled up in distaste. “Smash the Steel Wolves if we could find them.”

“And carve out a foothold for future Jade Falcon operations.”

That had been the unvoiced mission directive for the desant—what amounted to a large reconnaissance in force. Noritomo had been part of Malvina Hazen’s forces, and close enough to both her and her brother to know that they were the true mission commanders with Malthus in place as the Khan’s faithful watchdog. He had also been close enough to the twins to see the differences in each leader’s style. Aleks believed in traditional Clan practices, bidding forces against the local defense and putting into power a provisional government that would honor the Jade Falcon conquest without the need of a large garrison force.

Malvina, as she proved on Chaffee, on Ryde, followed a more violent approach. Terrorize the locals, slash at them with the fear of total destruction, and afterward you could take what you wanted and they would never dare rise against you. Before the advance force ever took a single Republic world, in fact, Malvina’s personal affection for the history of the great Mongol khans, for the Chinggis Khan, had bled down into several unit commanders. Restrained for so long by an uneasy truce, held in check inside the Clan occupation zones, their dreams of conquest and glory overrode any sense of moral obligation to the conquered people.

The people of Kimball II understood that now.

“One mistake,” he repeated aloud his earlier thought. He crouched down and dug a handful of Republic notes from under a rock. They still had a band around their middle with the bank’s seal on it. He tossed aside the bundle of currency. Ahead, the breeze scattered loose bills across a small blacktop parking lot like autumn leaves. “We should have taken Kimball IV and used it as a staging world.”

“And still meet the Galaxy Commander’s timeline for the assault on Skye?” Lysle asked. She shrugged. “How many military victories are won in hindsight, Star Colonel?”

“If we had applied Malvina Hazen’s tactics. If we had struck hard enough to leave the planet reeling.” If Noritomo could have brought himself to use terror as a weapon, throwing off twenty-eight years of traditional Clan military doctrine. “ ‘A new age demands new thinking,” ’ he quoted. “Is that not what Malvina said?”

“Are you trying to convince me, Noritomo Helmer?” Lysle stopped him with a bulky, armored arm barring his path. “Or yourself?” She nodded forward, where two soot-covered teens, a boy and a girl, scrounged through the rubble of the next building. A market. They dug out canned food, mining it like gold, ignoring the currency that blew uselessly around them.

The girl spotted them. Likely she had been the lookout. It would be hard to miss the short line of ’Mechs and armored vehicles halted only half a block over. But rather than flee, hunger and shock drove her to her feet. She hurled a can in the direction of the two warriors, as if they could be threatened by canned produce. It clattered and rolled across the ground a full thirty meters short.

Lysle Clees extended an arm toward the girl. The Elemental suit’s built-in laser would reach across the distance much easier than a thrown can. “Malvina Hazen would kill that one for her show of defiance.”

Noritomo placed a hand on the weapon barrel. He knew he could never budge Lysle, not even with his full body weight against the myomer strength of the infantry battlesuit. Only his rank let him push aside her arm with ease. “That is not the kind of war I wish to fight,” he said.

“Nor I, Star Colonel. But Aleksandr Hazen died on Skye. This may be the only kind of war that will be left for us.”

As if Pandora would have listened to a voice of reason. Someone must have told her, “Do not open the box.” But she did. She made that decision for everyone, whether they wanted it or not. Was she sorry afterward? The myths rarely went so far as to discuss what happened after. What kind of changes were wrought from such actions.

“Does not matter,” he decided, answering Lysle as well as himself. “We have our orders to return to Glengarry. We will see what Galaxy Commander Hazen has decided. Kimball II is no longer our concern.”

With the girl staring after them, and the thrown can still lying on the ground between them, he knew this world was going to be somebody’s concern. Noritomo doubted that person was going to have an easy time of it, and all because Malvina Hazen had opened the box. Which begged a question from him.

Once opened, could it ever be closed again?