I pressed the cool bottle to the back of my neck. “Someday this will all sort itself out. I’m just afraid it will be when I’m reading Mr. Handy’s memoirs.”

“Before then, my dear, I’m certain.”

A warning tone sounded through the ship, indicating that we had been cleared to leave Helen. Janella and I crossed to the exterior bulkhead and strapped ourselves into couches. I offered her some of my water as the Valiant started to roll down the runway. She drank and passed it back, then held my hand as we took off.

We both watched the world shrink behind us, then I gave her hand a squeeze. “Did you have to convince someone to come after me, or were you sent?”

She turned and a huge grin blossomed on her face. “Mason Dunne, is that a hint of ego? Did you want to know if The Republic couldn’t get along without you in such dark times?”

“Well, um”—I frowned heavily, hoping that would hold the blush down—“it would be nice to think that some folks thought I might be useful.”

“Actually, my love, it was assumed you were able to take care of yourself. The few news items coming out of Helen were heavily influenced by Commander Reis’ publicity machine. That made it look as if the GGF was strong enough to take the whole government down. People did some checking and realized that not only had we not heard from you, but the contingency support material that you should have been able to draw upon hadn’t made it either.”

“So you flew to the rescue?”

“I wanted to be here about three minutes after you left Terra.” She leaned over and kissed me softly. “Then, after the grid went down, I wanted to come to Helen immediately. Circumstances wouldn’t allow that, however, so I stayed on Terra and did all I could to avert the crisis.”

“How bad is it? The reports here have alternated between it being the end of the universe and a minor hiccup. To hear folks tell it, all the Houses have been swept away, the Clans are gone and if someone like Hanse Davion were alive today, he’d recognize nothing of the Inner Sphere he knew a century ago.”

She sighed heavily and I caught a strong dose of frustration in her voice. Janella did not do frustration well. Being as smart as she was, she could figure a lot of things out when she had all the facts. That particular sigh meant she didn’t have but a fraction of the data she wanted, which told me more than four months of news media on Helen.

“That bad, huh?”

She nodded. “The strikes that took out the HPGs were very well coordinated. Not only were they systematic and timed tightly, but they had sufficient force to overwhelm local security—when it existed. Moreover, they targeted key components on the devices that took them down or used computer viruses so the arrays can’t communicate with ground stations. In theory the tactics would allow for bringing them back up fairly quickly since they weren’t destroyed outright. They won’t have to be replaced, but repaired, and there is the big problem.”

“I don’t follow. If it was so precise a series of strikes, why aren’t repairs being made?”

“It’s a matter of supply. The HPGs really are a marvel of technology and were built to last. When they were designed they had some basic, highly durable components that have functioned for centuries without failure. The smaller things, like circuitry and memory, were added in a modular fashion, assuming that as technology progressed, new, better and faster parts would be put into them. The problem was, of course, that the Succession Wars stopped progress and degraded the industrial capacity needed to manufacture HPGs and new parts quickly. With damage to eighty percent of the alpha circuit, a lot of parts are needed.”

I nodded. Centuries ago, the Inner Sphere had melted down in a civil war that threatened to blast humanity back to the Transistor Age. High-tech industries failed or were converted to the production of BattleMechs. The ability to produce JumpShips and, apparently, the parts that went into HPGs, had been severely limited—right at a time when we could use both.

“So, if there were a supply of these parts, we could have things up and working?”

“Right after the software was fixed, yes, but there isn’t a supply of parts. People aren’t even sure if some of the power couplings and radiation conversion units can be manufactured. In theory we have the technical information about how they were made, but the factories that can do the work need extensive retooling for production.”

I shivered. “We can’t talk, we won’t be able to talk, save through messages hauled by JumpShips and relayed. What news, then?”

Janella shook her head as her smile died. “It’s not good, Mason, not good at all. Republic programs encouraged co-operation. They rewarded it and punished examples of old hatreds. With no communications, the carrot-and-stick approach no longer works. People are beginning to gather power to themselves. Minorities who think they were suppressed are reacting. What you found on Helen is hardly an isolated incident.”

“The Republic is coming apart?”

She gave me a frank stare with her green eyes. “Lover, I’ve been gone from Terra for three weeks. We’re bound for Terra now. Until we get there, we won’t know if there’s still a Republic or not.”

Inbound, Republic DropShip Valiant

Terra

Prefecture X, Republic of the Sphere

8 December 3132

It is a bit of an irony to think of any transport that can fling you thirty light-years in the blink of an eye as slow, but when you aren’t where you want to be, any delay seems enormous. It took us three days to get to the nadir jump point and find transport. From there we jumped to Northwind and were lucky enough to immediately transfer to a JumpShip bound for Caph. After only a small delay we headed on to Terra, and had another week to transit from jump point to world.

We did make good use of that time, and even got a lot of work done. Helen kept shooting us data right up to the point we left the system. Handy and Letitia had escaped capture. My last compatriot, Steve, had been snapped up two days after we left, but was useless in helping bring in his comrades. Reis made it very apparent that while he would continue looking for Handy, he considered him a minor functionary and certainly not worth the man-hours needed to find him. I was the key man, Reis knew it, and was happy to be rid of me.

There were two reasons for that. The first was that at a trial I could trot out my story and some journalist would start digging. I was certain there were things Reis’ people wouldn’t uncover that would have embarrassed him and, possibly, got me acquitted. That would be a major problem for him, so having me gone and convicted in the court of public opinion was just fine.

Second, and more importantly, Reis’ responsibilities had been expanded more broadly. The southern continent of Joppa wasn’t still under martial law, but all news suggested a “state of emergency” existed. Most civil rights had been returned and, not surprisingly, public opinion agreed to surrender little bits of them so they could feel safe. A number of events that I thought of as benign were canceled. That worried me, because Reis was just the sort to grab for as much authority as he could and would surrender it very slowly.

The only heartening news out of Helen was that there had been no more attacks. That was something. Given that The Republic was slowly coming apart at the seams, peace couldn’t be overrated, but the lack of resolution for the whole situation left me uneasy.