Then it isn’t just me. Nor is it just a personal matter. It’s hurting troop morale. Yet still Erik felt the need to apologize for Aaron. “The Duke holds me to very high standards.”

“He holds everybody to high standards, but most people under his command get the carrot. You just get the stick. My opinion.”

“I’m not just somebody under his command. I’m a Sandoval.”

“That’s exactly the problem, Commander. You’re both Sandovals, and your conflict is a family conflict. But it’s spilled over into your professional conduct. If you had a junior officer whose family problems intruded into their battlefield performance, would you allow it to continue?”

“No, of course not. I’d insist that they resolve it, keep it outside their duty hours, or I’d reassign them.”

“Well, there you go.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“It never is.”

“I can’t ‘reassign’ my uncle, and I can’t resolve this problem, either.”

“But you reassign yourself every chance you get.”

He considered. It was true, he’d long welcomed assignments that took him out of his uncle’s direct sphere of influence, spending as much time away from the capital on Tikonov as possible. He’d been avoiding confrontation with the Duke. And when he couldn’t avoid it—

“I’ve allowed this to go on, haven’t I?”

“As I said, you’re not at your best around him, either.” She laughed. “Look, the Sandovals are big players—money, power, position in The Republic, ties to the Davion crown and all that. But family loyalty doesn’t seem to be a strong suit. Seems like the Sandovals spend more time fighting each other than they do fighting their enemies. And it seems to me that he shouldn’t expect your loyalty just because you have the same last name.”

“But I am loyal. He’s done a lot for me over the years.”

“From what I can see, you’ve done a lot for him, too. Family is irrelevant to that. You deserve respect for your accomplishments. Hell, Erik, you’re not just an officer or a noble, you’re a MechWarrior. We sit in the high seat. People should give us respect. Even dukes. Even uncles.”

She was silent for a minute. Finally, she said, “Why do you even care what he thinks, Erik? What is he to you?”

Erik licked his lips. “I don’t know. He practically raised me, or more exactly, I was raised in his house. He helped earn my citizenship, taught me to be a man, how to carry myself like a noble.”

“So you owe him? Fair enough, but what about you? What do you want? Power? Riches? Glory? A title of your own?”

Erik sighed. “All of that, and none of it. What I really want… I-I want to be my own man. I want to steer my own destiny. That’s all, really.”

Angie chuckled. “I’ll drink to that.”

“Morning, Clete.” The guard at the spaceport maintenance facility barely looked at Cletus Wyoming’s security pass as she waved it under the scanner and handed it back to him. Why should she? It was just the same as it had been, five days a week, for the last three years.

It was strange, he thought, as he hung the ID lanyard back around his neck, that it was the last time he’d ever go through this little ritual. Cletus Wyoming was exactly one day away from a very early, and rich, retirement.

It had been no surprise when, an hour before, a text message calling him in to work early had arrived on his ’puter. He’d been sitting at the kitchen table in his small apartment, dressed and waiting impatiently for it, since before dawn.

The people who had hired him had told him when he’d be called, where he’d be going, what he’d be doing. They’d given him the lunchbox that he carried in his left hand, externally identical to the one he’d carried to work every day of those three years. Internally it was the same too, except for the fake vacuum bottle packed with a powerful high-explosive charge. A built-in detonator could be armed by twisting the cap.

As Clete walked across the asphalt toward the waiting maintenance truck, he knew it would be taking him to the Union-class DropShip looming on the pad a mile beyond the maintenance building. He knew exactly what last-minute adjustment would be his excuse for going aboard, and he knew just how he’d route himself through the ship’s engineering compartments to pass near the fuel-expansion couplings. He knew precisely where he’d plant the bomb from his lunch kit—a place that would guarantee a secondary fuel explosion that would cripple the ship, if not destroy it outright.

He jumped into the passenger seat of the electric truck and nodded at the driver. The truck accelerated quickly down into a service tunnel leading to the Union’s pad. They’d be there in less than two minutes. He would be in and out in five.

Then Clete would feel a flu bug coming on—one that would require him to leave early and never come back. When thirty-five hundred tons of fully loaded DropShip came crashing back down, he didn’t want to be anywhere close by, and he certainly didn’t want to be anywhere he could be found.

The greenish lights of the tunnel flashed past, and the whir of the truck’s motors bounced off the walls. The air was pungent with oil, paint, and solvents. Most days it smelled like hell. This morning, it smelled like perfume.

Clete pulled the brim of his cap down over his eyes and leaned back in his seat. “Drive faster,” he said.

Capital Spaceport

Merrick City, New Canton

Prefecture VI, The Republic

9 October 3134

The limousine spent five agonizing minutes at the spaceport gate, while a pair of scowling, black-uniformed security guards with automatic rifles scrutinized their paperwork. Crosstown traffic had been heavy, as expected, and time was short. It galled Aaron to run like a scared rabbit, but he’d be a fool to put himself in danger over false pride. He sensed the Prefect was up to something, and Aaron didn’t want to give those intentions even a hint of legitimacy by overstaying his welcome.

Ulysses Paxton was listening to his headphone. He turned to Aaron. “They just had somebody do a last-second swap-out of a balky guidance module, but they’re fueled, preflighted, and ready to lift off as soon as we’re aboard.”

One of the guards finally passed back their clearances. “This looks to be in order. Have a nice trip.”

Paxton nearly growled as he snatched the papers back and signaled the driver to move on. The tires squealed as they headed across the apron toward their waiting DropShip. It was a Union–class, an eighty-meter-plus sphere sitting on four massive landing legs. She wasn’t a luxury craft—her quarters small and unpleasant for such an important passenger—but her hull was heavily armored, and weapons bristled from turrets around her waist and on her nose. Huge sliding doors covered two loaded ’Mech bays, including the Duke’s personal ’Mech, and a third bay that could hold a pair of escort fighters.