For a moment, Victor thought the female aerospace pilot following Miraborg might be his daughter, but the nameplate over her left breast pocket read "Janssen."
Miraborg fixed Morgan Kell with a savage stare. "You are Morgan Kell?"
The mercenary nodded silently.
"I am Tor Miraborg. Your son murdered my daughter!"
The anger and pain in the crippled man's voice made Victor cringe, but Morgan kept his face impassive. "Explain how my son, dead for a year and a half now, could have murdered your daughter."
Raw hatred washed over Miraborg's face. "Your son came between Tyra and me. His influence drove her away and made her accept a position with the Rasalhague Drakøns. My daughter died fighting the invaders."
Morgan pulled himself up to his full height. "Then your daughter and my son shared one last thing in their too brief lives. I received a holodisk from her not long ago, and she was kind enough to share with me and my wife some remembrances of her times with Phelan ..."
Miraborg's shoulders slumped forward and his chin dipped to his chest. "She talked to you?" he asked in a tortured whisper. "She recorded a holodisk for you!Why?" Victor recognized the question Miraborg dared not voice. She never communicated with her father and he doesn't know why ...
"Her disk came in response to one I had sent her," Morgan replied quietly. "I will let you see the message, if you wish."
The Iron Jarl shook himself, and the fire came back into his eyes and voice. "No. I want no part of your message. She stopped being my daughter the day she left Gunzburg."
He spun his chair and headed off through the crowd, leaving the slim, blond woman standing alone in his wake.
Anika looked up at Morgan. "Colonel Kell, I'm Anika Janssen. I was Tyra's wingmate. I was also her best friend." She glanced after Miraborg, then shook her head. "Ignore what he said. He's just a bitter old man. I knew your son and was with him and Tyra many times. I was there when they met. You have nothing to be ashamed of in your son. Phelan and Tyra were very good for each other."
The mercenary rested both of his hands on her shoulders. "Thank you, Lojtnant. I'm glad to know Phelan had friends."
Anika swallowed hard. "And, if you wouldn't mind, sir, I'd like to see that holodisk she made. Tyra and I never really had a chance to say good-bye. She took her Shiloneinto the invader flagship, right into the bridge. She did more to stop the invasion than anyone else in the whole Royal Kungsarmé, but the Iron Jarl won't acknowledge her heroism."
"I will have a copy of the disk to you by tomorrow morning." Morgan smiled warmly at her. "And thank you."
As Anika withdrew, a commotion at the door caught Victor's attention. Dressed in a black silk gown with red trim that might have been a parody of the Dragoon uniform, Romano Liao, Chancellor of the Capellan Confederation, was desperately trying to get one of the two Dragoons at the door to announce her. The hapless guards tried to ignore her at first, but when she punched one of them in frustration, the man reacted and drew back his hand to slap her.
A slender, dark-haired man slipped between them, facing Romano. The guard caught himself even as the younger man gently grabbed his mother's wrists. For a moment, Romano's face contorted with rage, but then she kissed her son on the cheek with a look of sheer adoration. Meanwhile, Tsen Shang, her consort, stepped forward to take her arm and lead her away.
Victor shook his head. No doubt she's as mad as her father was. It looks as though her son, Sun Tzu, can control her, but for how long?He looked over at Kai, who was watching Sun Tzu Liao trail after his parents. Both Kai and Sun Tzu are Maximilian Liao's grandsons, each one entitled to press a claim to the throne of the Capellan Confederation.
I don't think Kai wants it, but would that stop Sun Tzu from wanting to get rid of a potential rival?
At the far end of the room, the leader of Wolf's Dragoons mounted a dais. Behind him came another man in a Dragoon uniform, but he stopped as Wolf approached the podium at center stage. The rest of the Dragoon command staff filtered up onto the dais, but remained back along the wall.
Victor frowned. That's odd. Where's the Black Widow? I hadn't heard that Natasha Kerensky was wounded or killed.
Jaime Wolf smoothed his thinning gray hair. "Thank you all for responding to the summons that has brought us together here on Outreach. Some of you must have found it strange and yet you have sensed that my reason was not frivolous. Rather, I wish to speak to you about a problem that faces all of us and whose true depth perhaps only the Dragoons can know.
"Before I begin, however, I would like to present my new second in command." With one hand, Wolf indicated the younger man standing a few steps behind him. "Some of you may have known him as Major Darnell Winningham. His real name is MacKenzie Wolf, and he is my son. He will now replace Natasha Kerensky."
Wolf let the whispered reactions to his announcement rise like a wave and then die down again as he continued. "As you all know, the Inner Sphere has been invaded in the last year by an enemy possessing BattleMechs of extraordinary power. Recently, the forces of the Federated Commonwealth and Draconis Combine have had modest successes against these invaders. After months of trial and error, they finally managed to hand the invaders a defeat. Since then, the invaders, for all intents and purposes, have withdrawn into the shell of the worlds they conquered."
Someone shouted, "It's because we kicked their butts!" Victor couldn't identify the voice, but he found himself caught up in the defiant chorus of assent. We did hit them hard.
Wolf shook his head. "Can you really believe that so implacable an enemy is cowed by minor defeats? They withdrew because one Rasalhague pilot sacrificed herself by smashing her Shiloneinto the invader's flagship. At the very least, she killed the invasion leader and devastated the command structure of the enemy forces. If she'd missed ten meters up or down, left or right, the invaders would still be marching inexorably forward.
"If you are so naive as to think that two minor victories and a lucky stroke by a brave pilot could drive these invaders back, our chances for success are poor in our war against them."
"Our war?" It was Romano Liao's voice. "Of course! I knew it all along!" She laughed triumphantly and turned to lord it over the others. "You've just been waiting for our troops to take stock of these invaders. Now Wolf's Dragoons will stalk from their den and into the battle."
She looked up at Jaime Wolf. "Yours are the fiercest mercenaries in the Inner Sphere. With your help, we shall send these rimworld renegades running."
Wolf cut her off with a hard stare. "I'm afraid you have it all wrong, Madam Chancellor. The enemy we face is not composed of either renegades or bandits. The invaders will be back, probably in less than a year. We will have to be ready to meet them with everything we've got because we've seen only a small sample of their strength."
Wolf's voice and expression became grim. "After Radstadt and after the death of their war leader, they'll come at us at full strength. They'll ask no quarter and grant none. Ladies and gendemen, now begins what could easily be the last days of the Inner Sphere."
Epilogue:
Name of the Beast
JumpShip Dire Wolf, Transfer Orbit
Rasalhague, Wolf Clan Occupation Zone