Sebastian stood at the foot of his bed, and tugged at the cuffs of the uniform. The stylist had insisted it was perfectly tailored to him, but she’d evidently treated it with something to harden the fabric and stop it from wrinkling, and it itched wherever it met his skin.
There was a commotion outside the door, and Joshua Wolf swept into the room, two aides and a holocamera crew in tow.
If Rafael Moreno had been the cheap, plastic imitation of what a hero was supposed to look like, Joshua Wolf was the real deal. He did not look like an actor pretending to be a handsome, gallant, charming and intelligent soldier—it felt like he actually was those things, he inhabited those words to every last letter, oozed those qualities for his pores. Radiated them with every glance and smile. It was something almost alien, from a different world, another reality far removed from the Inner Sphere.
People talk about charisma, Sebastian thought, this is what they meant. Men were willing to fight for Jaime Wolf, the saying went. They were willing to die for Joshua.
‘You must be Lieutenant Gordon,’ he smiled and extended his hand, and as Sebastian shook it, he couldn’t help but feel he’d suddenly become the most important man in the galaxy. ‘Please accept our deepest and sincerest apologies for what happened. No hard feelings, I hope Lieutenant.’
‘Fog of war,’ he heard himself say.
‘Well, that’s very kind of you to say, Lieutenant Gordon, but let me tell you, we in the Dragoons take this very seriously. We like to believe we are professionals, the best. When we slip up, we don’t hide it, we admit our mistakes and fix them. So we’d like to make it up to you.’ He suddenly threw his arm around Sebastian’s shoulders and turned towards the holocamera crew. ‘Smile a little,’ he said very quietly, without moving his lips.
Sebastian blinked at the crew, and assayed a weak grin. The holocamera flashed. (Much later, that holo would appear again, in a hospital on Park Place).
‘Take a walk with me, Lieutenant?’ Before Sebastian could reply, he was being gently but insistently guided out the door, down the corridor, and outside. The crew trailed behind, obedient as little ducklings.
‘This way,’ Joshua smiled, and let go Sebastian’s shoulder. He set off at a leisurely stroll. After a moment of hesitation, Sebastian jogged a little to keep pace. ‘Ribs okay? Let me know if I’m going too fast. Now the camera crew is behind us, we can actually talk.’
‘About?’
‘Hell of a thing, living under a death sentence. You people—you’d think you’d have learned to put boundaries around war, fence it off a little.’
‘You have boundaries, where you’re from?’
Joshua gave him a slight, “nice try” smile, and ignored the question. The Dragoons never spoke of their origins. ‘Your CO was a little resistant to my visit at first. Anything I should know?’
‘Ah, that.’ Sebastian walked in silence for a few steps. ‘My … I was in love with a woman who is accused of defecting to the Jabos.’
‘Jabos?’
‘Janos’ boys. Our nickname for the … other side.’
‘A woman, huh?’ Joshua smiled a little, to himself. A faraway smile.
‘Go ahead and laugh,’ Sebastian said, disappointed in the other man in spite of himself. How you immediately wanted him to like you, to respect you, to listen to your ideas. How much it hurt when you felt he didn’t. ‘Hell, I’d laugh in your place.’
‘I’m not laughing at you Lieutenant—Sebastian. Can we use our first names? Call me Joshua, please.’ Joshua turned his head as they walked, and Sebastian was surprised to see no mockery there, only warmth and understanding. If it was an act, it was a convincing one. ‘Maybe there was a time when I would have, to be honest. But no. I’m the last one who should be laughing at how anyone loves.’
‘You?’
‘Love can be a tricky thing. It’s about sharing, not control. Real love isn’t, at any rate. We don’t try to control the ones we love, do we?’ He chuckled. ‘There’s someone out there who throws herself headfirst into every fight she can find, but I wouldn’t have it any other way, because otherwise she wouldn’t be who she is, she wouldn’t be the one I love. Not that I could change her, even if I wanted. It’s hard, but I just have to trust she knows what she’s doing—and of course she does. She’s the best. You follow me?’
‘No, not really,’ Sebastian admitted.
Joshua laughed again. ‘No, me neither.’ They walked in silence again, long enough for Sebastian to pay attention now to where they were heading, where they might be going. This was the way to the ’Mech park. In particular, a sort of hangar building had been erected while he was in the infirmary, tall and wide enough to house a lance of BattleMechs.
‘You said “is accused of defecting” Sebastian, not “she defected”,’ Joshua said suddenly. ‘You don’t believe she did?’
He thought about how to answer that one. Gave up. ‘I think it wasn’t so simple.’
Joshua grunted sympathetically. ‘No. Real life rarely is.’ They stopped before the new hangar building, which had great ’Mech-scale sliding doors, and a more human-sized one around the corner. Joshua hesitated before the door, hand on the handle. ‘You don’t seem so happy here, Sebastian. I’ve seen your record.’ He tilted his head towards Sebastian and whispered quietly enough for the camera crew behind them not to catch, ‘Ever thought of going mercenary?’
‘No,’ Sebastian said automatically, but now that Joshua mentioned it, well, why not? Even if Anton won, what future would there be for him in a regime run by men like Frank Streicher. He could find Melanie, they could leave together. Start a new life. ‘Maybe, when this is over,’ he said lamely.
Joshua patted him on the shoulder. ‘Well, if you do, look us up.’ He winked. ‘We shouldn’t be too hard to find.’ He opened the door a crack, stopped again. ‘The techs did the best they could, on such short notice, with what’s available. So, just for the cameras, be nice, okay?’
‘For the cameras.’
‘Hey, don’t give me that Sebastian. Yes, this is a PR stunt. But it’s also genuine—We do feel bad about what happened, and we do want to make this right. It can be both, at the same time. Things in this life are rarely entirely good or bad, true or false, one thing or another. It is what you make of it.’
It was pitch dark inside. Joshua flipped on a small torch, and used its pencil beam to illuminate a small patch of floor. Two strips of tape had been placed there in an X.
‘Just stand there,’ Joshua said, ignoring Sebastian’s questioning look with a grin. There was a bustle around the two as the camera crew divided, some in front of them, some behind. ‘All set?’ Joshua said. ‘Lights!’
Floodlights in rows along the high ceiling blazed, forcing Sebastian to narrow his eyes to slits. There was something there in the center of the hangar, a huge and vaguely familiar profile. He blinked a few times, until his eyes adjusted, and he could open them wide again.
It was the Taranis. Check that, it had been the Taranis, in its previous life. Well, parts of it had.
It looked moderately hideous, a twisted parody of what his family’s Thunderbolt had been. It had become what they called a “FrankenMech,” a bolted-together mishmash of parts from half a dozen different designs.
The left arm was a stump, with a laser cannon and missile launcher attached directly to the shoulder. The right arm now hung bare and weaponless. The humanoid legs had been completely replaced with vaguely birdlike, backward-canting ones, nearly half as thick again as the Thunderbolt’s original legs had been. Another tube had been added to the shoulder, beside the Delta Dart long-range rack.
Sebastian became aware he was staring, and of the camera crew filming him staring.
‘Be nice,’ Joshua repeated, again doing his ventriloquism trick of speaking without moving his mouth. Then, pitched more normally for the cameras to pick up, he asked, ‘Well, what do you think?’
‘Incredible,’ said Sebastian. ‘I’m speechless.’
‘That’s the spirit,’ laughed Joshua. He nodded towards a figure standing by the foot of the BattleMech. ‘Come meet our Senior Tech. She’ll take you through the changes.’
The Senior Tech was surprisingly young, Sebastian thought, maybe barely as old as he was. A very precise woman whose Dragoon overalls were spotless and wrinkle-free, with a head of hair pulled back from her face, each follicle aligned with millimeter accuracy, and a compad she held flat, perfectly parallel to the floor.
‘This is our Senior Tech, Bynfield’ Joshua introduced her.
‘Just Bynfield?’ Sebastian asked as they shook hands. ‘I know someone with only one name, too. Are you from Astrokaszy?’
A blank look. ‘Where is that?’
‘Aren’t you people from the Periphery?’
‘Ah,’ she extracted her hand. ‘Yes. Well, actually no.’
Sebastian nodded, as if that made sense. ‘Glad we narrowed that down there.’
Joshua was quietly chuckling at the exchange. ‘Give it up, Sebastian. You aren’t going to trick us into giving up our secrets that easily. The specs, Bynfield?’
The Senior Tech nodded. ‘Yessir.’ She gestured up towards the BattleMech. ‘First of all, let me apologize. We have not had time to paint it, and I do not think we will, but I believe your own support staff can manage this to your tastes.
‘The leg assembly came from a Ki … excuse me, a kind of assault ’Mech,’ she tapped the compad, then pointed at the stump of a left arm. ‘We could not find a TDR left arm assembly on short notice, but we did have a point-defense ball turret that was the right size. That puts a Harmon laser on the left side, similar in capability to your old Sunglow, plus we upped your short-range missiles to a six-rack.’
She shifted slightly, pointing at the new weapons tube high on the shoulder. ‘The heavier legs means you will move slower, but can carry more weight. We had a spare KaliYama Class 10, so we have added that on the top there, beside the launcher, giving you a new weapon system to compensate for the loss of the left-arm machineguns, in addition to the three torso-mounted lasers. That should help you in combat against opponents such as, just for example, an Awesome.’
Bynfield thumbed off the compad, and tucked it smartly under her arm. ‘Any questions?’
‘Maybe after I have a closer look,’ Sebastian said. ‘But it’s amazing, the way you’ve been able to stick these parts together, and get them to actually function, in so short a time.’
‘Yes, we are proficient at … adjusting the configuration of BattleMechs,’ Bynfield replied, with a hint of pride. ‘Shall I show you the cockpit?’
Sebastian and Bynfield did a few laps around the feet of the BattleMech, before taking a power lift up to the cockpit and running Sebastian through the controls. Colonel Marik and Force Commander Adeyemi were talking with Joshua when they came back down, relaxed but serious, masters of the situation. The holocamera crew circled them, lenses drinking in the tableau.
Joshua looked up and smiled as Bynfield and Sebastian stepped off the lift and wandered back.
‘All good? Fantastic. I’m afraid that’s it for me. Sorry to hear we won’t be fighting side-by-side from now on. But good luck, Sebastian. We’ve had some hard times, and let’s be honest, they’re about to get a whole lot harder,’ Joshua shook his hand, firmly, and placed his other hand over top in a warm clasp. ‘But our future’s about to change. I’ve got a feeling.’
Sebastian waited beside Gerald and Adeyemi as Joshua and his aides walked away, turning once at the doorway for a last wave, before disappearing outside and into a waiting convoy of Dragoon vehicles.
It felt as though a little light had leaked out with him.
‘What did he mean about not fighting together, sir?’ Sebastian asked Gerald.
‘Mm? Oh, haven’t you heard? Now that the Jabos are running from Sophie’s World, we’re shifting to the coreword front,’ Gerald smiled. ‘To Berenson. Home of your old friends, the Fifteenth Marik Militia.