Therein lay the entire problem. Erik Sandoval-Groell was holding the HPG—and River’s End itself—hostage against the garrison’s behavior. Stempres had chosen to side against the Republic, and he had enough clout to drag Achernar’s top political leader along under duress. Everything was falling apart as the Republic continued to fracture into disparate factions.

It left a cold void hollowing out Raul’s stomach to think about it. He couldn’t sit any longer. Shoving his chair back, the MechWarrior paced the long way around the table to get some water. He poured for the Colonel first, ice clunking into the bottom of the glass, and delivered it, pointedly ignoring their guests. A second glass for himself, which he sipped leaning back against the sideboard. The crisp, clean water could not wash away the sour taste in his mouth.

“Colonel.” Michael Eus seemed determined to keep his ambassadorial voice calm and confident. “Colonel Blaire, we simply must reach an agreement that Achernar is better protected, at the moment, with Lord Sandoval’s assistance. Now, can we count on you to work with us? Or not?”

With Legate Stempres no doubt on hand to relieve Blaire in the face of any negative response, the colonel nodded reluctantly. “Achernar must come first,” he agreed.

The bargain struck, Raul assumed his duties as advisor—hardly needed in the face of such overwhelming pressure—were no longer needed. “With the Colonel’s permission?” he asked, abandoning his water glass and taking long strides toward the door. For the first time since his drunk with Tassa Kay, he felt the acute need for something a touch stronger than water. And were he to stay any longer, he might say something that he’d have plenty of time to regret after Stempres bounced him off active duty.

Which might not be a bad way out of this mess.

Which would only go to prove that citizens had no stronger investment in the Republic than residents.

Oh, yes. He needed something very much stronger than water.

His walk from the base command post to his BOQ room left Raul miserable as well as upset. The day’s humidity had spiked over forty percent thanks to the previous days’ rainstorms, and then the temperature had hit a new high of forty-two centigrade. His uniform clung to him like flypaper, bunching up around his waist and sticking to his back. Sweat beaded on his forehead and left a salty rime on his upper lip. He stomped up his front steps and unlocked the door to his dark apartment, paused near his vidphone, but then gave it up for the bottle still sitting out on his kitchenette counter. Two fingers poured into a water glass. The amber liquid swirled around in the bottom like liquid smoke.

“So did you think about calling me just a moment ago, or her?”

Raul nearly fumbled the glass, ended up grabbing it with both hands as he turned to find Jessica Searcy waiting in a dark corner, sitting on a folding chair rather than at the table or on the utilitarian couch.

“Jess! Where have you been?” Raul set his glass next to the sink. “I tried to reach you all yesterday.”

Rocking up to her feet, standing almost motionless, she folded her arms and nodded. “I know. I screened your calls.” She must have seen his confusion in the evening light spilling through the still-open door. “I was home, Raul. Watching the trivid. They’ve been running the fall of Kyle Powers on every station. Truthfully, I’ve been drawn more toward the preparations. You know. Choosing the support forces. Gearing up your machines. The speeches and the private words. How long have you been wanting to kiss that woman?”

Raul found the lights, switched them on even as Jessica’s question reached a cold hand into his gut and twisted him up. She looked awful, hair pulled back into a simple band and eyes dark from lack of sleep. Not the polished resident from River’s End General. In the aftermath of battle, Kyle Powers’ death, and Erik Sandoval’s move against the capital, Raul had forgotten about the video teams on hand for the challenge.

Jessica, it seemed, had been thinking of little else.

“Jess, I can’t even begin to tell you how surprised I was at Tassa’s move. I honestly didn’t see it coming.” He moved toward her, but she held up a hand to freeze him in place.

“You kissed her back.”

Raul nodded. “I did.” There was no denying it. He’d wanted to, and so he had.

“I thought…” he began, then shook his head. “It doesn’t matter what I thought. And to answer your first question, I don’t know. I guess I felt an attraction toward Tassa the day she arrived on Achernar, three… four days before the Steel Wolf assault.” Raul remembered that late afternoon meeting—had it only been three weeks ago? Tassa had promised to be on Achernar “As long as it takes.” And then the Steel Wolves followed—

Jessica took three quick steps forward and slapped him. She looked awkward doing it, unsure of herself the way she frowned at every move. Medical school and residency had never prepared her for this. She reacted woodenly, as if this was something she had simply been instructed to do from the Guide to Feminine Behavior.

Raul saw it coming, began to flinch away but then forced himself to stand there and take it. Jessica had put more force behind the blow than he expected, watching her hesitant motions. The side of his face stung warmly, and his right ear rang.

Something tickled his chin and Raul swiped at it, the back of his hand coming away with a smear of blood. He winced and a stab of pain cut at one side of his mouth. Jessica’s engagement ring had cut the corner of his lower lip. He nodded, and a surreal side of his mind almost prompted him to ask her, “So, we good?”

He didn’t.

“You embarrassed me in front of the entire planet, Raul. How do you expect me to react?”

All their arguments and fights over the last few years, and this was the first one that rang with any sense of permanence. The slap notwithstanding, Raul saw it in Jessica’s haunted eyes. “However you feel you have to.”

There were likely a dozen other comments he could have made that would have gone over better. He just couldn’t think of them right then. Raul had a feeling that he had missed a great many such opportunities in the last few minutes—in the last few days, or even weeks. Important opportunities to make things right. To change the events which had unfolded in the wrong direction. But he couldn’t go back.

Jessica proved that to him as she stripped the ring off her finger, picked up his hand and placed it in his palm, and then calmly folded his fingers over the circlet.

“Good-bye, Raul.”

He stood there, watched her cross the floor and exit through the open door. The perfect end to a terrible day. Raul fought down an urge to run after her, knowing it would do no good, and instead turned back to the kitchenette and his depleted liter of Glengarry’s Best. He picked up the glass and dashed its contents into the sink, wasting every drop. Before he could think better of it, he also upended the bottle and allowed it to drain. He didn’t need the drink anymore. Raul had been looking for a bit of numbness.

He’d found it without the bottle.