What was he going to tell the Duke?
The guards outside the door to Room 6 saluted crisply, fists to chests, which Nagumo acknowledged with a curt nod. He gestured for his escort to remain there, in the passageway, then stepped through the massive door as one of the guards swung it open for him.
Dr. Vlade and two assistants were inside, their backs to him as they bent over a stainless steel table oddly out of place in the faintly dank and septic gloom. At the sound of the door, Vlade turned and smiled broadly. "My Lord, thank you for coming."
"What do you want, Vlade?"
He didn't have the time to watch Vlade play in his sub-basement funhouse. The place stank of blood, sweat, and stark terror. Filth crusted the floor under Nagumo's immaculate boots.
"My Lord..."
"Make it fast, Vlade," he said. "I've got work to do."
"Of course, my Lord. I wouldn't have called you down at all. This interrogation was purely routine, you see...but I've stumbled across some fascinating information I thought you would want to hear for yourself, right away...rather than waiting for my report."
"Well?"
His chief interrogator gestured to the table, which was nearly as wide as it was long. Vlade's current guest was there, lying spread eagled by rope restraints at wrists and ankles.
"Well, my dear," Vlade said in a kindly, almost fatherly manner. He tilted the table top up and locked it in place, bringing its prisoner upright to face Nagumo. "Won't you tell the Governor General what you told me?"
The woman's head tossed from side to side, her eyes shut tight in a face glistening with sweat and tears. She spoke between deep and desperate gasps for air, the words coming with a tumbling urgency. "Please don't hurt me please don't hurt me please..."
Vlade looked across her at Nagumo. "This is Carlotta Helgameyer, my Lord. She is one of the members of that self-styled Revolutionary Council you captured at Fox Island."
"I know, Vlade. I've seen her dossier."
"Then you know that she is also a respected professor on the faculty of this university. And she's been giving me names. Haven't you, Carlotta?"
"Please, don't hurt...yes...yes...anything...Please don't hurt me..."
Nagumo's eyes widened in surprise. "You've broken her so easily? I don't see a mark on her."
"Well, we've had her for a week now, my Lord. We first had to assemble a psychological profile based on her physiological reactions during the first interviews. That told us that Carlotta doesn't like...pain. Do you, Carlotta?"
Nagumo crossed his arms. "Who does?"
"Ah, but this is special." Vlade reached down to a small instrument stand and picked up what looked like a fencing foil with a heavy, complex grip—a neural whip. He fiddled with controls at the handle, and at the tiny clicking sound, the woman's eyes opened wide and her pleading rose in pitch and volume.
"Please...no...no...no...!"
He flicked the tip of the neural whip lightly across the woman's thigh, the touch wrenching a long shuddering scream from her. Vlade looked up at Nagumo, touched the blade to his own bare hand, and shrugged. "When I can get that...sincere a reaction with the power off, it's fairly safe to assume that the subject has been completely conditioned. You see..." He brought the blade down again, touching her stomach and eliciting another scream. "Carlotta has a problem in that she never knows whether the blade is going to be charged...so...or dead...or where it is going to touch her. When it gets to where the anticipation is as bad as any pain, well...she'll answer any question. And she'll answer it as truthfully as she can. Isn't that right my dear? We've been having a lovely conversation."
"And what have you learned?" Nagumo felt a mild revulsion for Vlade and his light-hearted patter. The man got results, but with what struck Nagumo as unprofessional familiarity.
"We've learned that there is considerable pro-rebel sentiment among the students and faculty right here in the University. Students have been distributing anti-Combine literature and rather sensationalist accounts of recent rebel actions throughout Regis. They've been openly recruiting for the rebel forces, talking about training an army under these mercenaries off in the jungle. The riot yesterday started with a student demonstration, you know, but that sort of 'spontaneous' gesture has to be carefully planned and organized."
"This woman was an organizer of the disturbance?"
"Oh, Carlotta has been very busy here in the capital when she hasn't been running around in the jungle with her rebel friends, haven't you, Carlotta? But she's had lots of help. Members of the University faculty, even some respected people on the Council of Academicians itself have been organizing meetings, spreading sedition."
"She's giving you names?"
"Oh, yes. She's been most cooperative. There is quite a sizable number in this cabal, isn't there, Carlotta? Prominent men in trusted positions in the local government."
"This is new?" Nagumo barked, but then paused to think. He knew that the relationship between Regis University and the Verthandian government was an odd one. The Verthandians took pride in the fact that their government leaders were trained for the job, that government itself was a logical and disciplined science, administered by trained professionals. The riots of the previous day showed that the citizens of Regis did not always approach politics with logic. Nagumo had thought that his enemy was the rebel army and the mercenaries they'd brought in to help them. Now the flames of rebellion were spreading, heedless of military defeat or the might of the Draconis Combine. Perhaps what they needed at this point was not a military victory, but a blow against some visible symbol of the revolution to demonstrate the occupation army's power.
If treasonous elements of the University and government could be turned into a public example, right now, this week...a purge to demonstrate the firmness of his will, then things might be quiet when Duke Ricol arrived. Certainly, it was better than hurrying blindly across the face of Verthandi, reacting to the moves and threats of a slippery, invisible opponent.
He turned to pick up a chair and brought it close to the silver table. Drawing a handkerchief from his pocket, he wiped dust and a stray splatter of something dry and brown from the seat, then sat down.
"Very well. Let's hear what she has to say."
* * * *
The dream began as it always did.
Lori sat in the cramped cockpit of her Locust,her hands on the controls, her body swaying with the rolling of her machine. Urgency drove her, though she didn't know what it was that had her heart racing, her pulse roaring in her ears. The landscape that flowed past the Locust'swindow was familiar...a wasteland stark and bleak, spires of ice and mounds of snow under a sky of midnight blue. It was Sigurd, a world of frozen seas and towering glaciers. The world of her birth.
Sigurd would forever be associated in her mind with cold, but as she pressed her Locustforward, she felt not cold, but heat. She could feel the sweat on her face and chest, could feel it trickling down her spine to pool in the small of her back. This was more than the usual heat of a BattleMech in operation, more even than the heat of an overload in battle. Through her ‘Mech's cockpit windows, she could see the reflected dazzle of flames close behind her. Fire!