Part III
“The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.”
-Attributed to R. Buckminster Fuller
Chapter 14: A Bad Day
The thought crept into Kit’s mind that she might actually score a point. She was tired and sweaty and frustrated and she had channeled all of it into a reckless assault which she had not seriously expected to meet with any success. And yet the ferociousness of her attack seemed to have taken her opponent by surprise; Naila was backpedaling rapidly and in a few more steps would run out of
piste to retreat.
That was what Kit was thinking about right up until the moment Naila’s blade thwacked on the top of her mask, and even for a few moments after as her brain rushed to process what had happened.
Kit ripped her mask off and stood bent over double, swearing at herself in between puffing, exhausted breaths.”Be honest with me,” she said, “Am I getting any better?”
Naila smiled at her indulgently, shaking out hair compressed by her own fencing mask and looking like she had barely gotten her heart rate up. “Yes! You don’t hold the sabre like you’re swinging a hatchet anymore. So that’s something.”
As a child, Kit had seen a couple of the samurai-themed period holovid dramas of the type the Draconis Combine’s entertainment industry churned out endlessly, bloody, moody affairs she was probably-definitely too young for, and had become briefly fascinated by swordplay. She discovered that on many other worlds Combine space, schools had kendo clubs, but her school on the backwater planet of Outpost did not. She had complained to her grandfather that it was unfair that other children got to play with swords and she didn’t, and he said that if she looked at it as “playing with swords” it was best that she didn’t get to do it, which did nothing to make her feel better about the injustice. By the time her parents had left the Combine for Galatea she had mostly forgotten about it. Her knowledge of the type of fencing that Naila practiced was limited to a hazy idea of white outfits and the phrase “
En garde.”
Still, when Naila had offered to introduce her to the sport, Kit had readily accepted. After seeing Naila’s skill in their simulated ‘Mech duel, she had a vague hope that participating in a combat-inspired activity with Naila might make some of the Marik officer’s ability rub off on her.
So much for that idea.
The fitness center in what passed for Deloy’s business district had two fencing strips. Naila had pronounced the electronic scoring equipment “basic at best,” there was no one to referee, and after weeks of practice Kit was still finding it difficult to wrap her head around the rules of “right of way.” (The whole thing struck her as slightly ridiculous, and made her try to imagine a ‘Mech battle where the two sides took turns.) None of that mattered much, since whenever she and Naila sparred there was never the slightest doubt about who was winning.
“You’re very persistent. Very determined,” Naila was saying, probably not meaning for it to sound as patronizing as it did.
“Had an old CO tell me something like that,” Kit said sourly.
“If I’m being honest, though, I think this may not be the sport for you. But it has nothing to do with skill. It just doesn’t necessarily… play to your strengths.”
Kit quirked an eyebrow at her.
“Do you mind if I do a little psychoanalysis?”
“Was that a class at Princefield?”
Naila laughed and shook her head. “No, so take this for what it’s worth. The thing about fencing is that it’s very… narrow. And I don’t just mean the piste. The rules, the equipment, everything is designed to take something that was actual combat and put it in a civilized little box. There’s room in that box for a mental element, for strategy… but the range of tactics is very limited. There isn’t much room for
improvisation.”
“Improvisation?”
“Right. Like the way you… improvised tactics in our simulator duel.”
Kit blinked at her, then scowled. “You’re saying that I’ll never be good at fencing because fencing makes it too hard to cheat.”
“That’s an ugly word,” Naila said, “One I was trying very hard not to use because my mother used to tell me I would get in trouble by being too honest.” She grinned. “Call it what you like, it worked well for you in that exercise with the Garde.”
The plan hatched by Kit and the Marquis had worked even better than they had hoped. The militia had chased her in circles around the desert believing she was Everett while the rest of the Kats had taken exercise objectives and pickled off straggling militia units easily. Of course, the version of events that had made it to the press made no mention of the ruse, creating the Marquis himself with actually humiliating the GP - adding to his heroic reputation after his “victory” over the supposedly Capellan raiding force. Kit tried not to let that irritate her.
Merc does the work, employer gets the credit. Old, old story. The two women returned to the locker room, where Kit changed out of her borrowed fencing jacket into civilian clothes. Naila was back in her FWLM field uniform. Kit wondered whether the other woman even had anything else in her closet. “You know,” Naila said, “Ever since you saw off those Capellans, and then the exercise, I’ve had a spike of interest in militia wanting to give the sim pods a try.”
Kit scoffed. “I don’t know whether to say
sorry or
you’re welcome.”
Naila shrugged. “It gives me something to do, since my advice on military matters to the planetary government isn’t in high demand.”
“Do any of the ‘Mech-mad hopefuls show any signs of promise?”
“One or two might not be hopeless,” Naila chuckled. “There’s one in particular who certainly picks up anything on the technical side quickly. I actually had him walk that raider
Hawk around the base last week and he managed not to fall on his face.”
“Glad to hear all the time Sid and I spent getting the thing walking again was well spent,” Kit said sardonically. The deal the Kats had made with the GP for the use of the militia’s repair facilities was so far turning out to be rather one-sided. Half of the Kats’ ‘Mechs were still shot up from the skirmish with the mystery raiders because the militia wanted her to prioritize resurrecting the salvaged
Phoenix Hawk.
“Using it to give the wannabes some real seat time was my idea,” Naila said. “The militia brass just want it to be able to march in a parade for League Day.”
Kit remembered a conversation with Sid about the Kats’ contract on Caleraigne amounting to parade duty, and vaguely wondered whether she should be offended that they were apparently not going to be invited to participate in the actual parade, when she was distracted by the flatscreen hanging in the corner of the locker room.
It was tuned to a news commentary program, where a panel of talking heads were discussing the same thing that was being discussed on every similar program Kit had seen recently: the possibility of Calseraigne joining the Duchy of Andurien. The topic had dominated the attention of the world’s press for weeks.
But the Marquis had never had the chance to publicly announce the plan as he had told Kit, Naila, and the militia officers he intended to.
Someone in the meeting had leaked.
Kit had never been comfortable with keeping the Marquis’s secret, but she had accepted it as part of her job. She was much less comfortable with the idea that one of the other people who had sat around that table - someone else the Marquis had taken into his confidence - apparently couldn’t be trusted. Especially since one of them was the only person she had met on Calseraigne so far who had seemed entirely trustworthy.
Kit glanced over at Naila. The other woman seemed to have taken no notice at all of the commentary show. Kit chewed her lip and pondered whether she was frustrated enough to do something she knew was likely to make a bad day worse.
“Naila, what’s your take on this?” she asked, nodding at the screen, where a chyron read MARQUIS TO ADDRESS ASSEMBLY TODAY.
The Marik officer glanced up and shrugged. “I don’t know why you’re asking me. Nobody in the planetary government has, and it’s my job to advise them.”
“You’re dodging the question.” Kit winced at the sound of her own voice. The statement sounded more accusatory than she had intended. Truthfully, she had blurted it out in surprise. From the moment they had met Naila had seemed nothing but direct and forthright, a quality Kit had come to appreciate more as the situation on Calseraigne had become less and less clear.
“Sorry,” Kit said hastily. “It’s just that I’ve been relying on you to help me keep up with the politics in play here, and we haven’t talked about it… since word got out, I mean.”
Nailed paused as though considering her words carefully. “I can understand the Marquis’s reasoning. Even if we don’t fully understand the reasons for the Capellan raid, it shows they’re looking at Calseraigne, and if the resource project on the seabed is as successful as everyone seems to expect, then this planet is going to become a more valuable piece of real estate.” She sighed. “I wish the Marquis had made the leaders of the Assembly aware first, though. He’s clearly going to do whatever he thinks is best, in the end, but I can’t help but feel that we shouldn’t have been the first to know.”
“Do you feel strongly enough about it that you decided you had to let the Assembly know?”
A part of Kit regretted the words as soon as they were out of her mouth. That part got bigger when she saw the wall go up behind Naila’s eyes. It was like looking at an entirely different person than the woman she had come to think of as a friend.
“How I feel has nothing to do with it, Kit,” Naila said quietly. “If it was my duty in my capacity as an advisor to the planetary government to inform them of what the Marquis was planning to do, I would do it.”
“I’m not questioning your commitment to your duty,” Kit said, raising her hands as if she could climb over the barrier she felt rising up between them. “But you said
if it was your duty. Did you tell them or not?”
Naila stared at her for a moment. “If you must know,” Naila said at last, “To be honest, I debated with myself whether I had an obligation to inform the Assembly. But I was still trying to make up my mind when the story broke.”
Kit chewed on that. “So it was someone else in that room.”
Naila nodded. “Realistically, General Bollier or his aide. I can never remember that man’s name.” She shrugged. “Of course there’s also the Marquis himself, but I don’t see why he would tell us all to keep it secret until he could inform the Assembly and then leak it himself.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Do I get to know why this is so important to you? I get that the Marquis is your employer, but he isn’t paying you to be offended on his behalf.”
“It’s not that,” Kit said. “It’s…” Kit ran her fingers through sweaty red-brown hair in frustration. “Naila, I’m worried. Something is going on here, besides the obvious political bullshit I mean. Everyone is up in arms about what the Marquis is going to do, and nobody was even supposed to know about it, and he decided to do it because of a Capellan raid that wasn’t even really the Capellans, and someone already tried to kill him and maybe me too…” Kit knew she must sound unhinged, but she couldn’t stop the words from pouring out of her.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Naila said, throwing up her hands. “Back up. What do you mean, it wasn’t really the Capellans?”
Kit looked around. The locker room had emptied. They were alone. “I started to have doubts when I got a close look at that
Phoenix Hawk,” she explained, “And when I talked to the pilot at the hospital I became sure of it.”
Naila blinked. “You talked to him? When? Not even the
Garde got a chance before he died.”
The floor seemed to heave under Kit’s feet.
“He’s dead? When?”
“It couldn’t have been more than two or three days after our meeting with the Marquis when we got the news he was conscious. You
talked to him?”
Kit nodded. “Right after that meeting with the Marquis. I BS’d the doctors, said the Marquis sent me. I didn’t get much useful info out of the bastard… or any, really. But there’s no way he was Liao. And when I left him, he was a long way from death’s door.”
“What I heard is that he caught a severe infection and faded fast,” Naila said, furrowing her brow. “These things do happen I guess, and the medical treatment on a world like this is hardly the best in the Inner Sphere.”
Kit took a deep breath.
Now she’ll really think I’ve lost it. “Or someone wanted to make sure he didn’t talk to anybody.”
She had expected Naila to laugh. Instead, the Marik officer sat down on a bench and stared into the middle distance. “If he wasn’t Capellan, then what was he? Who benefits from a useless raid with no target? Or are we still just not seeing the target?” Kit couldn’t tell if her friend meant for her to try to answer these questions or if she was just thinking out loud, but she was overwhelmed with relief that Naila seemed to be taking her seriously at all.
At that moment Kit heard her communicator beeping from a pocket in her gym bag. She pulled it out and read a message that made her groan.
Naila looked up. “Problem?”
Kit sighed. “Not compared to what we’ve been talking about. Looks like one of my boys had a bit too much fun here in town last night and I need to smooth some ruffled feathers.”
“One of the less glamorous parts of a CO’s job,” Naila observed with a sideways smile. “I’m envious.”
“You’re welcome to sub in for me on this one,” Kit shot back.
“No thanks, I’m sure I have something to do back at the
Garde base.”
“Of course,” Kit said dryly as she picked up her bag. “Look, Naila: I want to thank you for taking me seriously on this. And for…” She paused awkwardly and then powered forward. “What I mean is, I haven’t always had the easiest time making friends, and you’ve always been fair and honest to me, ever since we met at the Marquis’s reception.” That night felt like a standard year ago now instead of just a few local months.
Naila extended her hand. “I’m sure you and Émile Gamelin would get along famously if he just took time to get to know you,” she chuckled. “Have fun smoothing,” she added as Kit shook her hand. “With any luck, you’ll be done in time to see the Marquis’s speech.”
Kit was headed for the door when the other woman called after her. “Kit? Try not to worry. We’re going to figure this out. And whatever happens, remember I’m on your side.”
