Hilton Head Island, Terra
21 June, 3028

"Is there any more manner I can be of service?"

The words were spoken with a harsh, biting accent that resembled that of a backwater Lyran speaking English for the first time. It was even further pronounced here, though, but was coupled with a lilting, strung-together rhythm that made the words even more difficult to puzzle out. But Adept Chapapaderong had improved dramatically. Back when he'd been fresh off the refugee-ship from the Periphery colony he'd called home up until the year before, his entire knowledge of English had consisted of 'Yes' and 'No'.

"It would be 'any further manner I may be of service', Inash. At least when you're speaking professionally or formally." He said, holding the lift's door open with one hand so it wouldn't close before he could offer the friendly correction.

Chapapaderong grimaced, and offered a slight bow of thanks for the correction. Once upon a time, he would have prostrated himself entirely and begged for forgiveness in the weirdly mashed-together dialect of French and German his planet had spoken. It had taken months for him to be broken of that habit.

Julian couldn't help but feel guilty whenever even the most tangential link to that previous habit arose. Inash still saw the Order in general, and Julian in particular, as his family's savior. All ComStar had been able to do was rescue the half-demented survivors of the old colony after most of the stronger Daimons had moved on. The Order was utterly undeserving of his praise. The Explorer Corps had only stopped-off in Un-pour-tous as a recharge-point while they tried to find where Wolf's Dragoons had come from.

"I understand, Primus." Inash said.

Julian Tiepolo let his hand come off the lift's doors and smiled a farewell at Inash. Before the doors had even fully closed, Inash had rotated in place and unshouldered the centuries-old Mauser 960 rifle he'd kept at port-arms out of respect for Julian. The ancient weapons were a status-symbol for the Hilton Head facility's guards. But they also were a purely practical choice of armament. In order to access the facility, an assault force would have to come through the extended hallway Inash and his subordinates were stationed at. That assault would be extremely costly and take a very long time. Long enough-it was hoped-that further reinforcements could be summoned from the ComGuard barracks below.

As the lift hummed into life, Julian could hear Inash barking orders out for the other pair of permanent guardsmen-who unlike him weren't cleared to know who entered or left the facility-to return to their stations. He could feel the stomping and pounding of their power-armor frames in his stomach as much as he could hear it in his ears until the lift had dropped him an entire floor.

Julian hated the perpetual secrecy so much of the Order's work was kept in. But it was a necessity he had long before been convinced of. Even within ComStar, he had encountered enough corruption of both the mundane and supernatural variety as to know just how valuable secrecy was. It was bad enough that the Houses, if they knew of the stores of 'LosTech' the Order kept hidden from them, would fall all over each other in fighting to claim it. He did not want to think of what members of the Order who'd been suborned by the Dark might do if they knew what the ComGuards training facility on Hilton Head Island truly concealed.

He leaned against the rear of the lift as it slowly descended through the necessary twenty-seven levels. For the first time in what felt like months, he let himself relax and just breathe. The air in the lift was recycled and stale, but just having the opportunity to be alone and mostly unobserved felt like a nice break.

Another massive war had seemed to be on the horizon with Melissa Steiner's marriage to Hanse Davion and the union of her Commonwealth with the Federated Suns. But the organization-and subtle publicization to Davion and Steiner informants!-of the Kapteyn Accords had nipped that worry in the bud. The nascent 'Federated Commonwealth' might be able to rattle its sabers provocatively, but it faced too many different avenues of threat to focus its ire on the Draconis Combine.

Hanse Davion might be 'The Fox', but he was too much a Davion to abandon his House's centuries-long feud with House Kurita. Especially as neither the Capellan Confederation nor the Free Worlds League had done anything that would raise his anger against them.

Finally, finally, there was the real possibility of a break in the perpetual Succession Wars and a chance for him to weed out the rot within ComStar. The threat of mutual destruction the two opposing alliances presented wasn't perfect by any means, but it was a decided improvement over the previous situation. Particularly if they both suffered, as they would, from internal dissension.

The Free Skye Movement in the Lyran Commonwealth could be counted on to oppose both Katrina Steiner and any further integration of her realm with Hanse Davion's. The still-restless provinces of Rasalhague in the Combine served as a useful distraction for Takashi Kurita. The Free Worlds League was the Free Worlds League-internal dissension there was a given, and Maximilian Liao's paranoid streak already ensured the Capellan Confederation focused much of its resources internally.

War between the powers was impossible if those powers had to constantly vie with internal opposition and rebellion. It might still be destructive and deadly, the Combine and the Confederation in particular were not well-known for their restraint in handling such matters, but in the aggregate less would die and less vital infrastructure and technology would be destroyed this way than would if the Houses themselves went to war again on the scale they had.

At least, that was what he insistently reminded himself every night before he went to sleep. On those nights he could actually get to sleep. They seemed to be getting more and more infrequent.

Which was what had driven him to come here again.

The lift came to a smooth halt. Before the doors could begin to open, Julian slapped the red halt button three times in quick succession, and then pressed the proper sequence of floor numbers. The lift dinged, but gave no other indication anything had happened.

To aid the computer in its job, Julian tilted his head back and focused his face on the pinhole-camera in the upper-right corner of the lift. He'd tried holding his breath before on the assumption that perhaps even those subtle movements would throw off the facial recognition software, but he'd quickly found out it made no difference.

"Primus Julian Tiepolo, alone, to see level twenty-eight." He said, enunciating every word. He hated having to repeat himself to the machine.

Nothing happened for almost a full minute. Just long enough for him to begin dreading that the mechanical voice would come back with a 'your message could not be understood' response. But just as he was beginning to grow certain that such a thing was coming, the lift shuddered to life once again.

He could feel it slowly creep its way sideways for a number of meters before the more familiar downward sensation began again. He'd always admired the staggered vertical passageways that made up the lift system in the Hilton Head Island Complex. It was overly complex and prone to mechanical breakdowns, yes, but it was also just so darned convenient when compared to the single-tube, single-building lifts that were used above ground in the more public areas of ComStar's administrative center.

The lift stopped, and opened its doors to reveal the unlisted 'level 28'. Unlike the hallways of the rest of the facility, these still shone with bright and shining stainless steel trim. No Mechwarriors had leaned against the wall and left the telltale scrapes and stains from the cooling vests, and no harsh chemicals had ever needed to be used on the floor to try and recapture its original sheen. Level 28 was a closed environment. Disturbed only irregularly and immediately cleaned afterwards by small robotics which could be depended on never to speak of what they saw in the course of their cleaning.

"Welcome, Primus." The tinny, slightly-feminine voice of the computer said as he stepped out.

He would give an arm and a leg to have a human secretary like he had above ground. Once again, the concerns of secrecy took priority over the concerns of human interaction. The last time there had been two conscious people on level twenty-eight had been when Rusenstein took him there after resigning.

It was more secure this way, but it gave him the same cold, impersonal feeling that the ICU of a hospital would.

"Hello Eunice." Tiepolo said, shaking his head at the silly name and the sheer weirdness of speaking to a computer as if it were a person.

'Eunice' wasn't just a computer, though. Painstakingly transplanted piece-by-piece from the devastated Unity City by Jerome Blake himself-or so the story went-the Unity Intelligence System was the most powerful computing machine in the Inner Sphere. Supposedly, it had been the Cameron's solution to managing an interstellar Empire where the composite pieces had a tendency to hate each others guts. It could singlehandedly read, analyze, and collate data from HPG traffic throughout the Sphere into a basic intelligence outline and force assessment in the time it took for ROM to prepare an incomplete report on a single system.

A fact that had allowed him to realize just how inaccurate the reports he was getting from ROM were.

"Would you like a status update, Primus?" 'Eunice' asked.

"No, that won't be necessary." Tiepolo said as he began to pace the hall, letting one hand float along the paper-smooth walls.

It had been only a dozen hours since he'd last been briefed by 'Eunice'. A dozen worry-filled, stomach-twisting hours that didn't say anything good about how the coming weeks would feel. When it came down to it, he had a basic idea of the status of things even without the periodic reports. He had ever since 'Eunice' had relayed to him the message from Guardian Pluto.

He hoped the Guardian was alright. He dared not make any explicit moves in support of her until he could narrow down who the corrupted ones in ComStar were. Delivering what she needed to the University of Geneva had been risky enough. Anything more would only put her in further danger.

As guilty and ashamed as it made him feel, he could justify putting average people into danger by manipulating the Houses against each other and themselves. But if there was going to be a future of humanity, he couldn't so much as risk one of the Guardians. They were too important. A person simply didn't compare.

He hated himself for that judgement, but he knew it was correct in the grand scheme of things.

"Open the central processing room please, Eunice." Tiepolo asked as he reached what looked like the end of the hallway.

There was a pause. A loud ka-chuk sounded as four rectangular corners of the wall removed themselves from the end and retracted into the sides of the hallway. In a larger-scale imitation of them, the rest of what looked like a wall followed suit, sliding into the nearest corner of the wall with an almost relaxing hiss of mechanical noise.

The room beyond was almost disappointing after such theatrical exposure. While it opened up somewhat and provided a wider floor-space than the hallway offered, the walls and floor were virtually identical to those present in the hallway. The only immediately obvious difference was the morass of wires, tubing and conduits that were strung across the ceiling so thick as to make any guess as to what the actual ceiling looked like a purely academic exercise.

He entered. Years of experience meant that when the hidden door slammed itself closed directly behind him, he only jumped a little bit. One of these days, if he lived long enough to reach old age, that was going to give him a heart attack.

Dull, white lights interspersed in the wiring of the ceiling slowly fluttered to life. All of them focused on a small circular spot in the middle of the room where the floor's regular, flat pattern was interrupted. Etched into the floor in its place was a circular cut that would almost have been invisible on cursory inspection.

It became more noticeable when it twisted in place, and slowly extended upwards. In small sections, the cylinder bore upwards and then locked in place with every step, slowly building its way towards the ceiling. As it emerged, coolant-vapor radiated off the outside of the pod that was contained within. A handful of the wires and conduits that had hung loose from the ceiling were pulled tight, and the entire setup locked into place with a bone-rattling thunk that sounded like something one would hear from a 'Mech, not a lesser machine.

Julian took a long breath of the coolant-tinged air, briefly transported back to his earliest days in the Order trying to keep cobbled-together HPG facilities working smoothly. He shook himself out of the memory as quickly as it had come. Stifling a yawn, he forced himself to cross halfway around the cylinder.

The preservation fluid inside the pod tinted everything inside an unnatural silvery-blue color. The skin was odd enough, looking like a very unhealthy gray pallor from outside. But once again it was the hair that struck him as the most surreal. It was like something out of the most ridiculous and youth-oriented discotheque on Solaris VII.

Inside the pod, the Guardian's hair seemed to blaze in an almost painfully bright neon-blue, every strand illuminating itself against the off-white background of the pod's back. As he watched, the strands slowly drifted in the slow micro-current the cycling of fluid produced inside.

Just like every other time he saw such an unnatural setup, he was struck by the desire to start pulling wires and disconnecting tubes. Just as with those other times, he didn't act on the impulses. As he understood it, they had to be very careful when they unhooked Duchess Mercury from the HPG system.

"I'm sorry." He said once again to the inanimate body. He imagined many Primuses before him had said the same things. At least he might soon be in a position to do something more than just say words.