Chapter Eighteen

The House of Assembly was an echoing confusion of voices and battlesuits.

Warriors got into and out of their armor, clashing the frontal plates. Helmet speakers amplified their shouts in metallic dissonance.

The coffered ceiling was still decorated with a Pageant of Trade from the days when Frekka had been an independent trading port ruled by a syndicate of merchants. Frescoed Syndics frowned down on the warlike babble.

Occasionally one of the levies would light his cutting arc. That created a snarling dazzle and thunderous orders to, "Shut it off or eat it, dickhead!" from the armored professionals overseeing Marshal Maharg's examination.

Other warriors argued face to face with the staff officers who trailed along behind Maharg. The officers were hard-faced men who jotted down notes and explained what the marshal's cryptic remarks meant to the levy he had just examined.

Almost every warrior had a complaint. Some spoke in disbelief, some in anger; and not a few in a desperate hope that surely they could be raised a little in the roster, their suit was surely better than a sixth ranking ( . . . fourth ranking . . . seventh ranking . . . ) wasn't it?

The officers never raised their voices, except to be heard over some exceptional commotion; and they never took any notice of the complaints except to deny with the cool firmness of marble slabs that there would be any change in Marshal Maharg's dispositions.

Some men would have argued further, but the professionals following the staff officers wore battlesuits. These escorts gave every indication of being willing to end a problem within seconds of when it started.

The marshal finished with the warrior to the left of Arnor and, beside him, Hansen. He looked at Arnor and asked, "Name?"

"I'm the Champion of Peace Rock," said Arnor with an obviously manufactured assurance. "Obviously I have the right to demand the front rank in the name of Lord Waldron, but in view of the circumstances, I'm willing to accept a s-sec—"

Arnor's flood of confidence waned under the pressure of the marshal's gaze. "Ah," Arnor concluded in a softer voice, "a third-rank posting."

Maharg's eyes were brown and as hard as polished chert.

"Buddy," he said with the air of a man repeating what he'd said to every damn warrior he'd examined this morning, "if you'll let me do my job, then you can get around to yours when the time comes at Colimore. Now, get in your suit but don't switch on the bloody arc."

"You ought to list the levies separately from the household," Hansen said.

He pitched his voice to carry, but he kept the tone as cool as that of Maharg's staffers. "People are going to get their backs up about ranking anyway. There's no reason to make it worse by maybe three steps each time."

The marshal turned with no more haste than the first boulder of an avalanche. "And just who the hell are you, buddy?" he asked.

One of the armored professionals stepped around the staff officers—in case of need.

"I'm the guy who just gave you good advice for the next time," Hansen said. His right arm was at his side. He leaned on his left hand against the thorax of his battlesuit.

Maharg was a tall man with broad shoulders. He wasn't paunchy, but his waist was thicker than that of his father.

Of course, I knew his father as a much younger man.

The marshal's complexion was just dark enough to suggest that his father Malcolm was an octoroon; his eyes hinted that his father's quirky intelligence had passed to the son as well.

"There won't be another time," Maharg said. "Not after what we're going to do at Colimore."

Hansen shook his head gently. "There's always another Colimore," he said. "Peace doesn't happen. It's something you make and keep."

Maharg turned away. "Close up your suit," he said to Arnor, peering from his open battlesuit. "Take a couple steps forward."

An expert—Maharg was certainly an expert—could determine a battlesuit's quality from visual examination. If there were any doubts, the artificial intelligence of any battlesuit could provide either a relative or an absolute ranking of any other suit within an observation range of several kilometers.

Maharg wasn't examining the armor alone. He was checking the way each suit behaved when its owner was wearing it. Hesitation, awkwardness; overcompensation for the inertia which servo motors did not quite eliminate—all would be evident to the marshal's practiced eye in a matter of a few seconds and a few steps.

Hansen watched the current demonstration as critically as Maharg and his staff officers did.

Arnor had good armor. Had he wanted it to, his battlesuit would have earned him high rank in a household that was less of a backwater than Peace Rock.

But that was the point: Arnor didn't want to duel his way to a position, even if that meant bruising, half-power contests instead of arc weapons at their full lethal intensity.

The Peace Rock champion was skillful enough. He stepped forward, then pirouetted on one foot; a tricky maneuver even on a surface as solid as this floor. Despite that, each of Arnor's movements started with a jerkiness which indicated mental uncertainty rather than a power-train lag in his armor.

"All right," said the marshal wearily. "You're done for now."

He turned to an officer who carried a notebook made of boards planed thin and bound with leather thongs. "Call him a five and put him in White Section," Maharg said. "And get his damned name, will you?"

The officer flipped a board over and dipped his writing brush into the pot of oak-gall ink attached to his belt.

"And what," the marshal continued, sliding his eyes over Hansen and onto Hansen's armor, "do we have here, smart guy?"

"Put on your own suit, Marshal," Hansen said, still leaning on his armor, "and I'll show you exactly what we've got."

Maharg ran his fingers over the battlesuit's forearm, then worked the elbow joint from the outside. The bearing surfaces slid like fitted diamonds.

The marshal snapped his fingers and gestured, still concentrating on the suit's finish. Hansen moved his hand and stepped aside obediently so that Maharg could examine the frontal plate.

Maharg looked at Hansen. "I wonder, smart guy," the marshal said in a tone that would have brought the armored bodyguards to attention again if the words had not been spoken so softly, "just where you got this suit?"

"I took it from a rover who didn't need it any more," Hansen said evenly.

"That's right, Marshal," Arnor put in as he climbed from his battlesuit. "I saw him."

Everyone ignored the Peace Rock champion.

"He thought I was a smartass," Hansen continued, his eyes on Maharg's eyes and neither man blinked. "I thought he'd lived long enough already."

Maharg ran his fingers over the faceplate and thorax, the parts of a battlesuit that normally received damage in combat. He glanced down at the legs to be sure that neither of them had been burned off and patched with the inevitable scarring and degradation of performance.

He looked at Hansen again. "Were you wearing suits when you killed him?" the marshal asked.

"He was," said Hansen.

Maharg began to grin. "You are a smart sonuvabitch, aren't you?" he said, but this time there was a certain respect in the words.

He rang his knuckles off the thorax plate. It gave no more than the stone wall behind it would have done. "Pretty good piece of hardware," he said. "Pretty damn good, I'd say."

Hansen also relaxed. "Thing is . . . ," he said.

He ran his fingers across the epaulet plate, found the point he wanted. "Here," he went on. "Feel the join line? And the same just above the hip joints."

Maharg placed the tips of two long, shapely fingers at the point Hansen indicated. Arnor and the staff officers watched; Arnor in curiosity, the others in amazement.

Maharg's lips pursed. "That's not bad," he said.

"It's not bad," Hansen said, "but it's not in a class with the rest of the workmanship, believe me."

He gave the marshal a hard, professional smile. "But yeah, it's a good suit. It's a real good suit."

Maharg patted the battlesuit again while he continued to look at Hansen, curious now rather than challenging. "You wouldn't happen to know something about team tactics, would you, smart guy?" he asked at last.

"As much as anybody in this room does, I guess," Hansen said. He smiled, but he could feel all his muscles start to quiver with the prospect of imminent action.

"As much as any of the levies do, you mean," corrected the officer with the notebook.

Hansen raised an eyebrow. "Is that what I mean?" he said.

"Right," said the marshal in sudden decision. He nodded to the officer who had spoken. "Patchett," he said, "take over here. I may or may not be back before you're done."

"What?" said the staff officer. "Ah, yessir, but—"

Maharg had already switched his attention back to Hansen. "Do you have a name, smart guy?" he demanded.

"Hansen."

"Is that what it is?" Maharg said without particular emphasis. "Bring your suit, then, Hansen. You can wear it or I'll get a crew to carry it for you to the practice ground, it's all one with me. You and I will each lead a three-man team, and we'll see just what you do know."

"But sir!" Patchett interjected. "Where should we place this Hansen?"

Maharg scowled over his shoulder at his subordinate. "I'll know when I've seen him on the field, won't I, Patchett?"

He grimaced and added without enthusiasm, "After all, somebody's got to lead this lot of stumblebums we've levied."