But if Evan believed that he had done right, didn’t he also have to accept that everything Mai Uhn Wa had done was only what the veteran officer and rebel leader believed the best path to a free Liao?

“Evan,” Mai greeted, nodding respectfully to Jenna to let her know that her company was best applied elsewhere.

He also dismissed another of the junior officers, leaving only Feldspar, Tsung, the two former Ijori Dè Guāng members and a man with insignia of the Fifth Triarii. Evan recognized him as Legate Ruskoff’s aide, Lieutenant Nguyen. He’d been in the Phoenix Hawk, and had fired more out of disgust and shock over the actions of the Principes Guards than in true support of throwing off The Republic yoke.

Evan had not been surprised to hear that Mai had guaranteed Lieutenant Nguyen and his BattleMech release should Nguyen wish to leave. A Phoenix Hawk was a venerable design, and nothing to be thrown aside lightly in the aftermath of the battle. The Capellan cadre needed equipment, supplies and warriors. But even more, they needed unity. And that they might just have now.

“Shiao Mai.” Evan began to nod, then bowed formally, a change that surprised both himself and Mai Uhn Wa. “Thank you for this morning. Hahn… all of them… appreciate it.”

“We show our strength in remembering the sacrifices of those before us,” the older man said, stroking one hand down his gray beard. Dark, hard eyes surveyed each man in turn. “Liao was once a strong and united world. It can be again. It will be again.”

It startled Evan that his mentor’s thoughts closely paralleled his own, though it shouldn’t have. Evan had learned from Mai’s study of history, just as he had learned from the military academies.

He had also pushed back against both, mentor and military, never fully accepting either into his life. Maybe it was time to change that.

“It might be,” he agreed. “If we can accept our differences and put them aside for the greater good.”

Nguyen shifted from one foot to the other. “I’m not so certain that I agree that a Confederation vision for Liao is the greater good,” he said, reading Evan’s words literally. “No matter what Governor Lu Pohl now says.”

Evan followed Nguyen’s glance to Gerald Tsung. Whatever the man’s feelings, he kept them well hidden. “We really have her behind us?” he asked Mai directly, meaning no insult to the Governor’s Aide.

“We do. Yes.” Mai spoke slowly, eyes clouded as he mentally chewed on Evan’s earlier statement. “She has defied Hidic and cast her strength behind a return to true Capellan rule, calling on all residents and citizens to assist Confederation efforts with any and all means as a show of their loyalty.”

Which would put the most pressure on landed nobles, who would lose everything if the Confederation returned and judged them not enthusiastic enough. The Maskirovka would quickly ferret out those who had worked against local efforts. Perhaps that was where Michael Yung-Te was off to. Yung-Te would find the Cult of Liao a great deal of help, if Mai Wa decided to grant the agent access.

“It is not an easy path,” Nguyen said. “In my head, I know that The Republic has been a better steward of this world and its people. I accept that its open form of government is a better system.”

“And what does your heart tell you?” Mai asked. But he was looking at Evan as well.

The lieutenant sighed. “That the people… our people,” he amended, “that they will only suffer more under the forced occupation of The Republic. And that my oath to the people supercedes my oath to the Exarch.”

Not an easy choice to make. Not for anyone. “It is time to put the past behind us,” Evan said to Nguyen and Mai both, but in different contexts. “Liao needs us all.” He bowed his head. “The heart knows where it belongs.”

“And that,” Mai said, satisfied, “is the essence of family.”

Thunder Mountain

Sian

Sian Commonality, Capellan Confederation

11 August 3134

Dagger Di Jones did not care for the Capellan Confederation. She hated Sian, and she was ready to stick her knife into Daoshen Liao’s throat.

“I have heard the shout for pan-Capellan unity. It echoes across half a hundred worlds, and shakes the foundation of The Republic down to its faulted core.” Daoshen clasped slender hands behind his back, voluminous sleeves falling down to cover them.

The two of them waited at a pair of bright steel doors, polished enough to reflect lasers, she’d have guessed. Funhouse images of the two of them stared back, standing at the beginning—or the end, depending on how you liked to think of mirrors—of a short corridor.

With a start, she realized that the images were actually mirror perfect. It was the difference between them that made it comical. Di Jones had angry red hair trimmed short, and brown eyes quick and active. Daoshen Liao had a dusky complexion, dark, dark hair worn loose around his shoulders and falling over his face, with eyes of polished, inscrutable jade. She also looked shrunk down next to Daoshen’s two-plus meters, and heavier than she should against his ninety kilos (sopping wet and rocks in his pocket as well as his head).

“It echoes. It echoes.” Daoshen liked to mark the passing time with the sound of his own voice. Di wasn’t even certain what they waited for. He had given no order, and there was no button to press. “It has even called to my father, who graces our efforts with his favor.”

Cracked bread. The phrase shook Di, recalled to mind a world she had tried so very hard to forget, one whose dust she had kicked from her boots twenty years ago. It just fit Daoshen Liao so well. Flaky and burnt on the outside, dried to crumbs within. A brittle husk that cracked under the lightest pressure. She damned the lunatic again for reminding her.

And Bannson, for sending her.

The inbound trip on the Corporate Raider–a joke in plain sight, Bannson liked to say—had been long and tedious. Checkpoints and searches. Redundant layers of security that any pirate navigator worth her salt could bypass with one in-system pirate jump. On the ground it got no better: Death Commando escorts, frequent changes in her schedule with no interview given, interminable periods of waiting in small sitting rooms after which a new flunky came to ask her for her business with the Chancellor. At first she gave them Bannson’s name only. Ten visits later she gave them the toe of her boot and a helping throw out the door.

Bannson didn’t like the way she did business, he could send one of his stiff-suited toadies next time. Hobnobbing with the powerful wasn’t her thing. But give Di a ’Mech, and she’d storm hell for Bannson.

Give her a few minutes with the knife tucked up her sleeve in a hold-out scabbard, and she’d carve an expression of interest on the Capellan leader’s slack features. She wondered how he’d look with just one eye.

Half as well as he does with two.

She smiled, and the Capellan Chancellor craned around to glare. “You doubt that my father returns?”

Yes! “I doubt that my employer has an opinion. I am here to pass along a report, and, no offense, get the hell home.” She started to dig the data crystal out of her pocket again, but he turned away. Again. No one would take the bloody thing. “My employer is very upset that his… reward… has not been offered.”