Part 746: Let's Read Ghost War - Part 5
Let’s Read Mechwarrior Dark AgeA Brand New Era, A Brand New Saga!
GHOST WAR
a BattleTech novel
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR
MICHAEL A. STACKPOLE
Part 5
Chapter 10
When I last updated this, our “hero” Sam had just been captured by the Republic’s Space Police. So of course the best way to start Chapter 10 is learning that everyone’s favorite sociopath is wearing a clown costume.
quote:
Consider it: white, puffy, big cuffs, lots of big, bright polka dots. You can see why I didn’t want to mention it, but since it was the object of much mirth among my captors, omitting it would leave much unexplained.
Ok. Clothing is important. Clothing can help set the scene. But the odds of Sam’s clothing being in any way relevant to this chapter is pretty much nil. The other members of his ecoterrorist group are also wearing clown costumes but the whole thing is a set-up so Stackpole can mock the local Space Police Captain (Reis, if you recall, or ‘a guy Sam hates for doing his job’ if you don’t) saying his medals and the like are more clownish than a literal clown suit.
The Knight of the Sphere is here too so of course Sam immediately sexualizes her. This will make more sense in a bit, but as I noted before Stackpole has a habit of describing all of his female characters in incredibly sexually-charged terms. We’ve already met this one and he still takes the time to call her literally jackbooted Space Nazi uniform sexy. No, sorry, ‘stunning.’ The word he used was ‘stunning.’ Also ‘skintight.’ And ‘bare midriff.’
Oh, and we learn that Sam’s been beaten up, which you’d think would be more relevant given that this is a first person narrative, but I guess having an eye swelling shut isn’t in any way painful.
Bad Space Cop immediately begins mocking “Our Hero” for his failure, Sam smartasses at him and gets slapped in the head. I’m not supposed to be rooting for Reis here, but I am. He’s just a Space Cop trying to do his Space Job and Sam the Space Asshole is making that very hard. The Knight then reveals she’ll be taking Sam off to Space Gitmo. Sam immediately pleads with Reis to remain in custody with the local authorities but Reis smugs it up and lets the Knight take Sam. Which is pretty much exactly what Sam wants.
So, it turns out all of Sam’s terrorist contacts are dead or captured, the other ‘planned attacks’ never happened, and Sam’s boss “Mr. Handy” has been murdering everyone Sam met and has used the raid on the armory to clean house and go into deep hiding.
Anyway, Sam gets taken off for ‘extradition,’ and once he’s onboard the Knights of the Sphere dropship Lady Knight Lakewood begins making out with him.
Chapter 11
So, we learn that Sam Donnely’s real name is Mason. Mason Dunne. He’s a Knight of the Sphere (sort of) and he’s been out of contact for four months. Of course the Republic hasn’t been getting his Space E-Mails with the HPGs not working so none of them have gotten Mason’s reports. Being a Stackpole
quote:
She knelt before me and released my feet, then placed her hands on my knees and stood. “We have a lot of work to do.”
I know it’s not intentional, but still. C’mon.
So yeah, the reason why Mason has been describing Janella in highly sexualized terms is because they are, in fact, lovers and not because he’s a creepy asshole (wait, no, he’s still a creepy asshole). Mason then takes the time to explain in even more detail how the Knights of the Sphere work (poorly). Janella is a Knight Errant which means she
quote:
Lady Janella Lakewood is a Knight of the Republic and serves as a Knight-Errant—traveling to worlds, unraveling problems, acting somewhere between a diplomat and a tactical reaction force.
She’s also a Space Lawyer, which I happen to think is the much more interesting job description. It’s a pity this book wasn’t
Mason wanks on and on about the Knights of the Inner Sphere, and then finally reveals that he is a Ghost Knight. The Ghost Knights exist entirely off the books. Officially Mason is a “forestry researcher” just scientifically important enough that nobody would bat an eyelid at a consultation. In theory. So we then learn that the fucking coffee shop Mason bought his space coffee from a few chapters back is actually a ~*~Super-Secret Republic of the Sphere Contact Point~*~ which ID’d him by voice and made sure to slip a tracking bug into his order because he’d requested it.
So yeah. Starbucks works for Devlin Stone.
They then leave the planet because, y’know. Stopping terrorists isn’t that important.
We then learn that the collapse of the HPG grid was a systematic series of attacks that overwhelmed the local security of every HPG in the Inner Sphere simultaneously while also leaving no clue as to how it happened or who the attackers were. So obviously it was the last gasp of the Word of Blake.
By which I mean it’s utter bullshit.
So yeah, the HPG grid can be repaired, but the parts are in short supply and it will take a long time to make more. They do mention that 80% of the Alpha Circuit is down, but don’t mention any of the more rural circuits so presumably they could just take the secondary, less important HPGs offline and ship the parts to get the important communication lines up and working again but
Janella then drops the bombshell that the Republic may have collapsed by the time she and Mason get back to Terra. Because sure it will.
Chapter 12
Summarizing the first six or so pages of this chapter:
Mason and Janella arrive on Terra. Janella gets lead off, Mason gets brought to his room, and finds Victor Steiner-Davion (totally not a Word of Blake operative) waiting for him and if you thought the wankery was bad before, you haven’t seen anything yet.
quote:
Victor Steiner-Davion wasn’t a big man—in fact, he was quite small, but the force of his personality filled the room. When my gaze met his steady gray eyes I could see life burning fiercely in them. His white hair and beard were trimmed and the hand holding the glass was rock steady. He looked much as I remembered him—as I had always seen him.
Then I noticed the cane beside the chair. He’d used it after having his right hip replaced several years earlier. He’d worked hard at rehab and had given the cane up in time for his hundredth birthday, so going back to it wasn’t a good sign. I noticed the slight sag of his shoulders and the deepening lines around his eyes.
He was beginning to show his age.
Victor Steiner-Davion is someone people either love or hate, and many love to hate him. […] painted a strong picture of the man who was born to the throne of the most powerful of the Successor States and had it all crumble around him. Attacked from without by the Clans, betrayed by his family, he watched the nation his father had built through war and alliances just erode. He survived the murder of his first and greatest lover, Omi Kurita, the death of his son, Burton, and the death of his second love, Isis Marik.
Well, I guess it’s a good thing he’s dying then because at least it means he won’t live to see the Federated Suns run by a literal madman and his
Victor immediately gives Mason shit for making his report (read: the first 11 chapters of this novel) read like the first 11 chapters of this novel instead of reading like an actual report. Say what you will, but I still can’t bring myself to hate Victor.
Anyway, Victor isn’t sure about the Word of Blake theory for the HPG disruption, since the few WoB communities still around in the Free Worlds League have voluntarily reduced themselves to stone-age technology “in the hopes of discovering a new form of technology that will be liberating and uplifting.”
What.
Anyway, Mason questions whether it’s Daoshen Liao, and Victor muses that Sun Tzu’s son is “smarter than his father” and “tainted by his aunt’s madness.” Also he’s an illusionist, and Space Wizards are bad news. But Victor also doesn’t think any of the successor states had the troops or knowledge necessary to disable the HPG network, and that the Clans were in no position to do the job.
So who could it be?!
