INSTRUMENT OF

DESTRUCTION

Operation Revival

Clan Invasion of the Inner Sphere

3050

No warrior truly understands the instrument of his destruction until it is too late.

—Saying of the Howling Tundra sibko, Clan Ghost Bear

CHAPTER ONE

Overlord-C-Class DropShip CGBS Sharp Claw

Docked to Black Lion-Class WarShip CGBS Bear’s Den

Holmsbu Zenith Jump Point, Free Rasalhauge Republic

17 May 3050

As a warrior, Star Commander Richard Bekker constantly swam through an ocean of danger, skillfully slipping through the deadly sea like a shark gliding through dark waters. Breathing it like it were air.

He had been reared in the Howling Tundra sibko, and the crèche’s motto was never far from his mind. A Trueborn warrior saw so much danger that he often missed the specific danger that would be his doom. That was the essence of the sibko’s warning.

Richard was determined never to make that error.

Nevertheless, when he looked down on the cargo deck from his zero-gee perch on the narrow catwalk crowded up against the DropShip’s interior bulkhead, he did not see his destruction. All he saw was a tactical problem to be solved. It was not that Richard was ignorant of the terrible risk—he was not a block-headed fool. But he lived every day with death, and worse, the possibility of defeat.

This was no different.

The DropShip’s techs were busy elsewhere, preparing for the jump to hyperspace. Richard had the cargo deck all to himself, the cavernous space silent save for the rush of ventilation and the thrum of machinery rattling the deck plating.

The dim glow that filled the cargo hold was dirty and jaundiced, filtered through light fixtures painted with dust and welding smoke. The air tasted bitter and metallic on Richard’s tongue. It felt greasy between his fingers.

He leaned forward, his hands resting on the waist-high handrail, anchored by a boot tucked into a steel loop welded to the catwalk. The walk ringed the space’s interior, providing maintenance access to the hold’s high bulkheads. In the corner opposite Richard, it broadened into a mezzanine where parts and equipment were stored.

From his vantage, the mezzanine sat just to the right of a roll-up garage door used to offload cargo. Opposite that door, anchored to the interior bulkhead on Richard’s left, was a quartet of towering racks that held a hundred kinds of ammunition.

Anchored to the deck between the reloads and the garage door was a vast sea of material: tarp-covered crates and shrink-wrapped pallets, steel drums and plastic totes, jeeps and trucks and forklifts. Everything an army on the move might need. There was even a huge Fire Moth arm pushed up against one of the bulkheads.

Not a cubic millimeter of space was wasted—except where technicians, sweating and cursing, had cleared out the cargo beneath the mezzanine. In the center of that empty space someone had taken a white piece of chalk and had drawn a circle ten meters in diameter on the ship’s rust-colored deck. It did not look like much.

But it was a battlefield.

Richard had told himself that he had come here to learn the cargo hold’s secrets, to harvest every last tactical advantage. In truth, he was here to imprint this place, this moment on his memory. Because his victory today was all but assured.

A judgment he believed right up until the moment he heard the voice behind him. “I knew you would be here. I knew it.” It was a woman’s voice, high and smooth and pleasing to hear. Corinne.

Richard was a seasoned battlefield commander, a man who prepared for sudden disaster at every turn and so he was rarely surprised, let alone startled. But Corinne’s inexplicable appearance had startled him. His hands tightened on the railing, his knuckles going white.

It was a little thing, and nine out of ten people would not even have noticed it.

Unfortunately, Corinne was the tenth person.

“I am sorry to disturb you,” she said, letting him know that she had seen that tiny moment of surprise.

Of vulnerability.

How had she crept up on him?

She must have pulled herself along the deck, hidden by the cargo. She would have worked her way to the catwalk and leaped, soaring silently upwards in null gravity, hitting the underside of the walkway exactly right so she could wrap her hand around one of the railing’s stanchions and arrest her motion without bringing forth the slightest morsel of sound, not a grunt as her body hit, not a creak as the walkway shifted with her weight, not even a relieved exhalation when she was finished. Then, she had worked her way over the railing.

All without drawing his attention.

She is truly accomplished in zero gee.

For the first time since he had learned of Aaron Hall’s death, he felt a flutter of unease stir in his gut.

He turned towards her and a slow, easy grin curled across his face. “I have never before found your company disturbing, quiaff?”

She laughed softly, her dark blue eyes twinkling despite the dim light. Corinne had always enjoyed the game, the battle within a battle. It was one of the things he liked best about her.

Her hair was golden blond and it had been long, shoulder length, but he saw that she had cut it short, disposing of the ponytail that might give an opponent a handle to wrench her head around in a hand-to-hand fight. Corinne would not willingly give an enemy even a single advantage.

Richard admired her for it.

Like him she was tall and strong, but neither warrior was a block of muscle. The blue uniform coveralls Corinne wore hinted at a body that was lean and quick.

He remembered that body under his hands, the taste of her mouth on his. He had coupled with her many times. In the Clan’s engineered culture, sex was not tied to reproduction, so it was not burdened with any of the bizarre taboos that plagued the citizens of the Inner Sphere. Sex was a gift freely given between warriors.

Richard had heard other men say Corinne was the same in bed as she was on the battlefield: imaginative and ruthless.

But Richard had never found her so. With him she was passionate, yes, but he never felt like she was trying to defeat him. With him, she was almost…tender. It was a Spheroid word whose meaning Richard did not fully understand. Tender meant gentle…but somehow it did not also mean weak.

There was something more between he and Corinne, some…familiarity, no doubt borne of their shared experience in the Howling Tundra sibko.

For a moment she stared at him with eyes the color of pelagic waters. Then she stepped next to him and turned to face the chalk-drawn circle, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with him as she looked out over the cargo deck. “I am afraid you may not find this meeting as pleasant as some of our other encounters.”

He laughed. “Corinne, you should know by now that I enjoy a good fight just as much as a good rut.”

“What I know,” she said gravely, still looking out at the cargo hold, “is that you do not like to lose.”

Of course, he was not going to lose. Corinne’s silent appearance on the catwalk had worried him, but he was still confident of victory. He knew what was coming and he was prepared.

Sometimes, in the Clans’ zeal to breed warriors who were both strong and fierce they failed to breed warriors who were smart. Like the other Clans, Clan Ghost Bear was burdened with some number of soldiers who were little more than brave morons.

Richard was not one of them.

He had seen this moment, this exact moment, the instant he had heard of Star Captain Aaron Hall’s fate. Beta Galaxy had received emergency tasking to jump back to Damian, a world rising up against its rightful conquerors. Hall had been racing back to the Sharp Claw in a jeep when he had lost control of the vehicle, skidding across a rain-slicked road and slamming into an oncoming truck. The Star Captain had been killed instantly.

Even now, Richard shuddered to think of his commander’s fate. It was a terrible way for a warrior to die, empty of meaning.

But that random death had brought him to this place.

Aaron Hall’s death had made Richard the acting commander of the 48th Striker Trinary. Of course, Corinne had immediately challenged his ascension to the rank of Star Captain. Because Clan Ghost Bear was at war, Star Colonel François Cote had forbade the use of augmented combat to settle the dispute. Having denied Corinne her prerogative as hunter to choose the type of combat, he had granted her the choice of venue. And she had chosen to fight Richard here on the cargo deck, a half-hour before the captain of the Bear’s Den called his crew to jump stations.

Corinne had, no doubt, selected the time because the WarShip and the DropShips riding her would be in free fall. She clearly hoped to use zero gee to counter Richard’s advantage in strength and speed.

All this, Richard had foreseen the very moment he had learned of Aaron Hall’s death.

“You will not beat me,” he murmured.

“No warrior truly understands the instrument of his destruction until it is too late,” she said.

He chuckled. “Of course. I very much doubt Star Captain Aaron Hall foresaw that his destruction would come in the form of a wayward jeep.”

“I was not speaking of Aaron Hall. I was speaking of you.”

Him? How could she mean him? He turned to peer at her.

“You do not believe me,” she said. “You think that you will defeat me and even, if by some strange fluke, you lose, it will not be your destruction, quiaff?”

“Aff,” said Richard, unable to keep a trace of amusement out of his voice.

Corinne nodded like she had expected that answer. “I will destroy you, Richard. It gives me no pleasure, but I will do it.”

Richard frowned. “I am stronger than you, faster than you. The better MechWarrior. I have never once lost a fight to you, not once in all the years we sparred together in the sibko. You know this.”

“Perhaps. But I will beat you today.”

“Because you maneuvered this Trial so it would take place in zero gee?”

She shrugged.

“Even if you did beat me, it would not destroy me.”

She looked up at him, that lovely face tilted toward his, those blazing eyes locked on his. “You defeated two opponents in your Trial of Position to win the rank of Star Commander.”

“As did you.”

Corinne inclined her head in thanks for his recognition. “Aff. But you went on to win the Bekker Bloodname. And you have distinguished yourself in combat in a way I have not. You are a ristar.”

“And if you were to beat me…”

“When I beat you, I will take the rank of Star Captain. I will be the ristar.” She paused. “There can only be one.”

Richard shook his head. “That is not so.”

Something bitter twisted Corinne’s pretty features. “You say that because you have been blessed with great fortune, Richard Bekker. You have never been second. Never. Take it from someone who has lived in your shadow all her life. There is only one first.”

“War is a fickle mistress, Corinne. Victory is never assured. If you were to win today, I might still win tomorrow.”

“Neg,” said Corinne sharply. “Once the Trinary is mine, I will always select the most dangerous missions for myself, so battle brings me the greatest honor. In any batchall, I will bid away your Star first. As long as I live, all opportunity for greatness will be lost to you. You are far too dangerous for me to show you even the slightest scrap of mercy, Richard. Once I get you down on the mat, I will never let you up.”

A chill wriggled down Richard’s spine. What he heard from Corinne was not her trying to gain some psychological advantage. What he heard from her was truth. She was trying to tell him the truth.

What he heard from her was the voice of his destruction.

“Why are you telling me all this?” he asked softly.

“We are sibkin,” she said using the Clan word that described two warriors raised in the same crèche, a word that simultaneously meant friend and enemy, sibling and lover.

Rival.

“I will destroy you,” she whispered. “It is the Clan way.” She shook her head. “But I take no pleasure in it.”

For a long moment he gazed into her grave eyes. “It seems you have made up your mind. I hope you will not be offended if I decide to fight back.”

Corinne laughed, a sound of unalloyed joy. “I would not have it any other way.”

Richard turned away from her and looked out over the arena, but he did not really see it. He was no longer thinking about the Trial. He did not believe that Corinne could beat him, but still, the chance was there and he had missed it. Just as the saying predicted.

He could not count on his destruction to always speak to him as clearly as Corinne had spoken to him today. The next time fate chose to warn him of his doom, he would be listening with better ears.

An alarm sounded, long and low, a jarring buzz that reached right through his chest, even as it echoed through the great space.

“All hands, thirty minutes to jump,” said a naval technician over the 1MC announcing circuit. “Thirty minutes to jump.”

He would not make the same mistake again.

CHAPTER TWO

Corinne kicked off her boots and shrugged out of the dark blue coveralls that served as Clan Ghost Bear’s working uniform, leaving her dressed in nothing but khaki shorts and a black sports bra. She folded the coveralls and handed the uniform and the boots over to MechWarrior Paula, who accepted them with a grave nod.

Then Corinne pushed off against a crate, drifting towards the circle. The warriors of the 48th Striker Trinary stood along the rough chalk figure drawn on the deck, their boots tucked into footholds or their bodies braced against crates, a Circle of Equals.

Her fellow warriors parted to let her through.

She found Richard waiting for her in the circle’s center, clad in nothing but shorts, his bronze skin already glistening with sweat in the hot cargo hold. She selected a spot a couple meters from him and slipped a bare foot beneath a cleat, anchoring herself to the deck.

Richard was taller than her by a good ten centimeters, his body lean and muscular. His jet-black hair was cut short, and the hard lines of his face were somehow both strong and beautiful.

He met her gaze. His gray eyes gave away nothing.

Like her sibkin, Corinne had seen the shape of things to be the moment she had learned of Aaron Hall’s death. What she had not understood, what she still did not understand, was why she had told Richard she intended to destroy him. Such an admission could do nothing but make an already formidable opponent just that much more dangerous. Her revelation could only increase the likelihood of her defeat—and yet she felt compelled to warn him.

Why?

She looked at that face and remembered the soft touch of her fingers running along the strong line of his jaw, remembered being held by that intent gaze, the feel of his hands on her, the feel of his mouth on her.

He caught her looking at him and she glanced quickly away, wrenching her mind back to the subject of combat. To a warrior, the contemplation of battle was familiar, even comforting. So she studied the circle, her sharp eyes marking every potential grip and leverage point within the combat area, confirming what she had seen from the catwalk.

The circle had been drawn in such a way that it pushed up against corner where the DropShip’s hull met an interior bulkhead, so that its edge was tangent to steel walls at two points. Cleats used to tie down cargo littered the rust-colored deck. The crates and equipment that had been cleared away were stacked high along the circle’s perimeter, arranged so that some of them actually overhung the circle’s border. And then, overhead, there was the broad underside of the mezzanine, supported by a quartet of columns that would break up clear lines of attack and provide much needed opportunities to change velocity in mid-fall.

She wondered if Richard was truly prepared for a fight in zero gee. For his sake, she hoped that he was.

Because she definitely was.

From among the warriors ringing the circle, Star Colonel François Cote, commander of the Third Bear Striker, raised his chin and filled the space with his deep, sonorous voice. “The death of Aaron Hall requires us to select a new commander for this unit.”

None of the gathered warriors spoke. There were no whispered side conversations, no sound in the cargo deck but the echo of the star colonel’s powerful voice.

Cote was a tall, severe man, his skin a dull bronze, his skull shaved clean, his expression empty of all feeling. Corinne could not remember ever having seen an emotion cross the face of the Third Bear Striker’s commander.

“Because Clan Ghost Bear is at war,” he said, “I have forbidden augmented combat. We cannot risk our BattleMechs in a Trial of Position. Nor does our mission allow for any delay. In compensation, I have allowed Star Commander Corinne to select the time and place of the Trial.”

He turned to look at her.

“I have selected the Sharp Claw’s cargo deck,” she said. “Thirty minutes prior to jump.”

“Bargained well and done,” said Richard.

Corinne had considered her choice with great care. Richard’s earlier statement had not been an idle boast. He was the better fighter.

If she had chosen to fight during the WarShip’s long run to the zenith jump point, Richard’s superior strength surely would have decided the issue. But she had chosen a time when the Bear’s Den hung motionless in space. No acceleration meant zero gee. And Corinne had calculated that free fall gave her an advantage.

François Cote looked first at Richard, and then at Corinne. “Victory goes to the combatant who first pushes his or her opponent outside the circle,” he said.

Simple as that, the Trial had begun.

Corinne jumped.

As soon as the words were out of the Star Colonel’s mouth, Corinne slipped her bare foot out from beneath a deck cleat and leaped, angling for the mezzanine’s steel underside.

It was exactly what Richard had expected.

Corinne was brilliant and aggressive, always ready to seize the initiative. If she could reach a leverage point opposite Richard, it would give her a point from which she could launch her body towards him and force him out of the ring.

Except once she leaped, she was committed.

Richard waited a fraction of a second to assess her speed and angle of ascent—then he jumped.

Only his target was not the mezzanine.

Once they lost contact with the deck, there was little either combatant could do until they came into contact with another hard point. Corinne’s leap had been impressive, but Richard’s legs were stronger.

He was going to cut her off a half-second before she reached the mezzanine.

She saw him coming and tucked into a ball, trying to deny him a target.

But not before his hand shot out and snared her ankle.

Quick as a snake, she lashed out with her left foot and caught him across the jaw with a savage kick. Sharp, brutal pain lanced through his face. A wave of darkness washed over him and he lost his hold on her.

She kicked him again.

Pain exploded in the center of his face. Suddenly he could not breathe and he was choking on something, choking on—

Blood.

He tasted its warm, iron tang at the back of his tongue, felt it sliding down his throat. He touched his chin, and his hand came away bloody. Touched his nose and almost blacked out from the sudden stab of molten agony.

She had broken his nose.

But that was not the greater danger. Her second kick had sent him flying through the air at a shallow angle. He could not stop himself.

Not until he hit the pile of crates on the other side of the circle.

He might hit in as little as two seconds. Until then there was nothing he could do.

Two seconds.

Her kick had changed Corinne’s momentum, had launched her upward. As Richard watched, she pushed off against the underside of the mezzanine and shot toward him.

For a warrior with the superior skill of Corinne, two seconds might just be long enough to destroy him.

And just like that, it was over. Corinne watched Richard drift backward through empty space, traling droplets of blood, unable to maneuver, helpless.

A pulse of joy surged through her.

But it was tinged with something darker. She desperately wanted to win—but she did not relish Richard’s destruction.

Corinne hit the mezzanine and pushed off, launching her body at his. She hurtled through the air, arms outstretched, coming for him. If she hit him at this angle, she would punch him right out of the ring.

He kicked with his left foot, aiming at her face.

She jerked her arms up, blocking the blow.

Then Richard kicked out with his right foot, pushing off against her shoulder, using her body to change his trajectory and launch him into a series of backwards somersaults. He tumbled towards a tower of crates, oriented so that he was upside down and facing the structure. He grabbed the big wooden box, his hands clawing at the crate’s frame, as he tried to arrest his motion. She saw him wince as the rough wood ripped his hands, but he stopped himself from bouncing off the crate.

Stravag! She had been certain of his defeat—and yet somehow he had managed to hold on. Richard Bekker was cunning and dangerous. He was not a man who made mistakes. For him to make even one error during battle was extraordinary.

She could not possibly hope for him to make two.

Corinne hit the deck and caught a cleat in her right hand, arresting her motion, holding herself in place as she crouched on the deck.

She looked over at him, six or seven meters away and clinging upside down to the crate. Despair welled up inside her. He was never going to make another mistake.

She was already defeated.

Again.

Keeping one hand on the crate, he swung his body down so he was facing her. He was a mess, his chin and the flattened ruin of his nose stained with brick-colored blood, but he flashed her a ghastly smile, his even teeth filmed with crimson. “I am not defeated yet,” he said.

She punched out a frustrated scream and leaped, aiming for the mezzanine that would give her the leverage and angle to push him out of the ring.

Richard immediately followed her.

Again she kicked out at him. This time he rolled into the blow, catching it with his left shoulder and then striking across his body to grab her right foot. She felt his hand clamp down on her bare skin like a steel vise.

A savage blow from her left foot caught him square in the face. For a moment his eyes went glassy again.

But this time he did not lose his grip.

With a quick flip of his wrist, he snapped her foot backwards. Cruel pain stabbed through Corinne’s ankle.

And then she heard the terrible crack of breaking bones.

They smashed into the mezzanine. The impact punched the air out of Richard’s lungs, but somehow he managed to wrap his left arm around one of the columns that supported the deck while still keeping hold of Corinne’s ruined foot.

His opponent was not so fortunate.

She caromed off the hard steel surface, headed back down toward the deck.

Richard let go of her foot and reached up, getting a better grip on her broken ankle, using it as a handle to wrench her body to a stop.

Corinne screamed.

And then her eyes rolled back into her head and she went limp, knocked out by the fierce pain that must have coursed through that broken ankle.

For a moment, despair squeezed Richard’s heart. He had not wanted to hurt Corinne so badly, so terribly. But he had not had a choice. She was a dangerous opponent and if he had given her even the smallest opening, she would have taken him apart. What had she said to him?

It is the Clan way.

He let go of the broken right ankle and reached down for her left, not wanting to hurt her any more than he had to. Clinging to the column he used his leverage to gently swing her body down, sending it slowly tumbling towards the deck. She would hit just inside the circle and then bounce out where the warriors of the Trinary could stop her flight.

Her body drifted toward the deck, as beautiful and hopeless as a falling leaf.

Richard drew a deep breath. His little gesture of mercy had cost him nothing. Corinne’s defeat was certain now, the likelihood of victory governed by an equation that balanced mass and velocity, energy and momentum.

Richard pushed off and sent his own body tumbling slowly towards the deck.

Below him, Corinne had rolled over, so that her body faced the deck. Her left arm was flung out at her side, her right pointed straight down at the deck. The right arm hit first, bending cruelly as it took her body’s momentum.

She gasped and her eyes shot open.

Then her body hit.

For the smallest fraction of a second she was rising again, disoriented by pain and teetering on the knife-edge of defeat.

Somehow, somehow, her right arm snaked out and found a cleat. She cried out when the damaged limb took the load of her moving body.

But somehow she held on.

Suddenly, Corinne was down on the deck, face-down, clinging to the cleat.

And Richard hung vulnerable in mid-air.

He shook his head. She was hurt, badly hurt, probably too badly to continue. One ankle was broken and her right arm had to be at least sprained. And she only had seconds to save herself. In moments he would be down on the deck and he would force her out of the ring. Nothing had changed.

Corinne suddenly turned her head, looking up at him with those blue eyes.

Then she wrenched her body around with that hurt arm, agony twisting her pretty features into something hard and ugly.

Getting into position.

Richard swallowed.

She managed to work her way into a weird kind of half-crouch, holding on to the cleat with both hands, her left leg braced against the deck, her right leg tucked up beneath her body, like she was some kind of giant flamingo, protecting that busted ankle.

She was savagely injured, there was no way she could beat him in a fight.

But Richard could see that fighting not what she had planned.

She coiled her body, readying herself.

And then she leaped.

She came at him straight and true, like a missile locked on and running straight to target. She hit him just below the ribs, her skull punching into his sternum, transferring most of her momentum to him with that one blow. They both tumbled sideways.

But Richard passed outside the circle a heartbeat before she did.

CHAPTER THREE

Richard drifted past the cab of a cargo truck. He reached inside the vehicle’s open window to snare the steering wheel and arrest his flight. For a moment, he hung there, stunned.

What had just happened?

And then Corinne tumbled into him. For a moment she was just there, the warmth of her body pressed against him, her limbs tangled up with his, her face so close that he tasted her breath. She was haggard with fatigue and pain, her face greasy with sweat. But she smiled and she had never looked lovelier.

“Richard,” she whispered.

She was glowing.

With victory, Richard suddenly thought.

She was glowing with victory.

She saw his expression and the smile slowly faded from her face, replaced by something harder, more appropriate to an officer of Clan Ghost Bear.

Richard untangled himself, gently, but firmly, pushing her away.

“I congratulate you, Star Captain,” he said stiffly. And then he let go of the steering wheel and snapped off a perfect salute.

She stared at him for a long moment, her visage a mixture of the different emotions she must have been feeling, joy at her victory, the hardness of a commander who has to deal with a difficult subordinate, and something else, a trace of sadness or maybe…

Pity.

Suddenly Richard hated her, hated her with a savagery he had not known he was capable of.

She must have read his face, because her own expression tightened and she snapped off a tight salute and turned away from him, pushing off against the truck’s grill, going to accept the congratulations of the officers of her Trinary.

Her Trinary.

For a moment he floated there, watching her go, her back to him as she went to accept the honor, the future, that should have been his. There was nothing Richard wanted more than to leave that space and go to his closet-sized stateroom.

But the nearest egress was through the cluster of MechWarriors now crowded around Corinne and he did not have the stomach to make that trip.

Humiliation burned in Richard like a flame.

He punched out an angry breath and levered open the truck’s driver-side door, slipped inside the cab. He sat down and closed the door. He found that his view of the celebration was blocked by a pallet of lube oil barrels.

It was the best he could hope for.

When he had awoken that morning, the whole universe had been his. Now, he congratulated himself on finding an obstructed view.

Somewhere in the distance he heard an alarm. An alarm saying something about a jump in two minutes.

She had destroyed him. Richard sat in the truck, clad only in a pair of sweaty, bloodstained shorts, his mind reeling from his defeat.

From his destruction.

He was a Star Commander. A moment earlier, that had been a proud rank, a measure of his accomplishment in such a short time. Now it was a mark of failure. A ceiling he could never surpass.

A hand touched his shoulder and he flinched. He twisted around to see who had dared to disturb his solitude—

It was Corinne, reaching through the open window.

“What do you want?” he snarled, shrugging off her touch.

She withdrew her hand. “Star Captain,” she said, and her voice was as hard as steel.

He just stared at her.

“I think what you meant to say was, ‘What do you want, Star Captain?”

“Have you come to rub my nose in your victory?” Richard asked. “I would appreciate it if you would not do that.” He touched his broken nose and treasured the agony that lanced through his face. “Right now my nose is a bit sore.”

“And out of joint,” said Corinne. She shook her head. “I came to tell you, we do not have time to report to the ‘Mech Bay.”

It was a tradition of the Third Bear Striker that a warrior’s jump station was beside his BattleMech. Most of the Cluster would be down in the ‘Mech Bay.

“We will ride out the jump here in the cargo hold.”

“And you wish me to join the Trinary?” He paused. “Star Captain.”

She shook her head. “I think Star Commander Bjorn can take charge of the Trinary this one time. I wished to speak with you.”

Richard clenched his jaw and sucked in a deep breath through his teeth. Would this humiliation never end?

“Do you know how I defeated you?”

“Because I showed you mercy,” Richard snarled.

“Exactly,” Corinne snapped. “If you had slammed my body to the deck when I passed out, I never would have had time to recover. You would have defeated me.”

Richard said nothing. If only he could have that moment back.

“Mercy is not the way of the Clans,” she said.

“And now you have destroyed me, just as you promised.”

She shook as her head. “Your destruction was never my goal. I only wished for victory. It is regrettable that I could not have one without the other.”

“How shall I function as a warrior without hope for glory? How can I possible serve my Clan, my commander, if I am not permitted to excel?”

She looked at him for a long moment, those dark blue eyes marking his face. “Perhaps, one day, war will claim my life. Then I will be removed as an obstacle to your success, just as today you were removed as an obstacle to mine.”

“And that is what I am left with,” said Richard bitterly, “hoping for your death?”

“Tell me of a time when you did not press your advantage on the battlefield.”

Richard sat there in the cab of the truck and said nothing. He had nothing to say. There had never been a time on the battlefield when he had not used any tactical advantage he had to torment his enemy.

Just as Corinne was doing now.

She reached through the window again, this time her fingertips gently tracing the line of his jaw. “We have shared much, Sibkin,” she said softly. “No one knows me half as well as you. Maybe…” Her voice trailed off. “Maybe you would share the pleasure of your body with me after the jump.”

“You want me to couple with you?” Richard echoed. “After all this, you actually think I would couple with you?”

“No,” said Corinne dully, and she pulled her hand back, dropped it to her side. “I suppose I am a fool to think that could be possible.”

The shrill call of an alarm sounded throughout the cargo deck and Richard heard a voice say over the 1MC: “This is the captain. All hands, prepare for jump.”

A moment later, Richard felt spacetime bend and twist as the WarShip’s Kearny-Fuchida drive ripped a hole through reality. Massive energies propelled Bear’s Den across twenty-five light years of space.

The jump seemed to last for an instantaneous flicker of time.

The jump seemed to last forever.

And then they were through and nothing had changed. Corinne was standing there, a Star Captain, and Richard was nothing but defeated.

“We are no longer sibkin,” he said bitterly.

Her head jerked back as if she had been slapped, and he saw more pain in her face in that moment than when he had broken her foot. She closed her eyes and looked down, seeming to gather herself. Then she looked up. Richard was startled to see that there was ferocity carved into the lines of her face, but somehow there was also tenderness. He did not understand how both could be there at once.

“You have never before been defeated, Richard—not really. So let me explain something to you. Defeat does not change who you are. Whether you like it or not, we will always be sibkin.” Her voice softened. “Perhaps there will come a time when you will realize that you still want—”

And then everything happened at once.

A titanic force wrenched Richard forward. The world was filled with the gunshot sound of exploding tie downs, the rumble and roar of a deadly avalanche. He had just the barest flicker of time to see everything in the cargo deck flying forward as if the DropShip had been turned on her side and everything—boxes and crates and pallets and barrels and jeeps and trucks and everything—was falling.

He had just the barest flicker of time to see Corinne’s eyes widen before she was jerked away from him.

And then the truck’s air bag exploded and Richard’s face punched into a billowing white cloud of nylon and he—

CHAPTER FOUR

Incandescent pain dragged Richard back to the world. His. Face. His face. On fire. Burning. He reached up and flattened his palm against his forehead, expecting a cruel tongue of flame to lick at his hand.

The touch sent torment radiating through his skull—but his hand was unhurt. He was not, uh, on fire.

All around him there was a terrible sound, the panicked ringing of a gong that just would not stop: dong-dong-dong-dong-dong, the sound echoing painfully in his skull.

Slowly, carefully, he opened his eyes. He was startled to find himself sitting in absolute darkness, a black so complete he could not see his hand millimeters from his face.

Am I blind?

He realized something else—he was wrapped in something, a kind of…shroud.

He swallowed hard, panic wringing terror out of his guts like a man might wring water out of a sopping wet towel. They buried me alive.

And then somehow, over the endless gonging and the trip hammer roar of his own heart, somehow he heard another sound. It was a solid, mechanical thunk, distant but real.

Switchgear, he thought. That was the sound of emergency switchgear closing.

With a kind of stuttering, flickering hum, light returned to Richard’s world and he realized he was not in a coffin after all, he was sitting in the cab of a truck.

The air bag.

The truck’s air bag had gone off. He was tangled up in the deflated bag.

Dong-dong-dong-dong-dong.

He grabbed the handle and shoved hard against the door. It did not budge. Something had smashed into the door, bending it out of true. It would not open.

He freed himself from the air bag and managed to work his way out the truck’s driver side window.

Dong-dong-dong-dong-dong.

What was that horrible racket? It meant something, but he could not remember what. Right now, he just wished someone would shut it off.

He drifted free of the truck and his jaw sagged open. He was surrounded on all sides by catastrophe. Much of the cargo had remained in place, but the items that had torn free of their restraints had wrought havoc. The air was filled with debris, millions of glittering nuts and bolts and washers, golden beads of diesel fuel, a dark mist of atomized gasoline, two-hundred-liter drums smashed flat like empty beer cans, a forest of splintered wood. An upside-down olive drab bulldozer bobbed in mid-air, tethered to the deck by a single surviving tie down and looking for all the world like a Spheroid child’s toy balloon.

Stravag! What could have done this?

Dong-dong-dong-dong-dong.

And then Richard suddenly knew what that sound was.

Collision alarm.

He realized a couple things at once. Like, it was standard procedure after a major casualty to put a quarter-gee of acceleration on to assist the damage control teams. And, when the Sharp Claw engaged her engines, all the floating debris was going to come raining down.

He glanced at the truck. The smart thing to do was to get back into the truck’s cab. It was strong enough to shield him against most of the material floating in the air. Any moment now, the Claw would detach from the Bear’s Den and put a burn on. The maneuver would be signaled by the cessation of the collision alarm, and anyone caught in the open was going to be subject to a very hard rain.

Then he realized something else. The warriors of his Trinary were trapped somewhere in this mess, many of them probably hurt.

(Corinne!)

He pushed off against the truck, throwing his body forward, but keeping low enough to the deck that he could grab the top of a crate or a box to move him forward, faster, faster.

Dong-dong-dong-dong-dong.

He looked up and what he saw wrung a gasp from him. “Freebirth,” he whispered, his mind reaching for the most profane word he knew. What he saw was a cloud of bodies floating aimlessly through space with the rest of the junk.

MechWarrior Ursula drifted gently toward him, her head bowed, shoulders rolled forward, her golden hair stained with a bright smear of scarlet.

The body of Star Commander Bjorn flew towards the overhead, a protruding bone distorting the flesh of the man’s left arm, the fracture tenting the skin. Bjorn’s eyes were wide and unseeing.

Star Colonel François Cote clung to the mast of a toppled forklift. His face was slack with shock and he was bleeding heavily from a cut that extended halfway across his bald pate, but he seemed to be alive.

There were others, too, so many others. The Trinary had been caught in the open when the disaster had struck, terrible force flinging them against bulkheads or cargo, smashing their bodies. Only Richard, sulking in the truck’s cab, had been protected.

There were so many of them he did not know where to begin.

He glanced up and, for a heartbeat, time seemed to just stop.

Corinne!

There she was! Just a little past the Circle of Equals, drifting slowly towards him, her body limp, her eyes closed, her head lolling to one side.

She was three, four meters up. If she had been healthy, if he had been awake, she could easily have survived a quarter-gee fall from that height, but she was neither. If she fell, it might very well kill her.

If she was not already dead.

Stravag! How much time did he have?

Dong-dong-dong-dong-dong.

If he jumped for her, how would he get her down? Besides, a gentle leap might not get him to her before the DropShip’s main engines cut in. And a powerful leap would send them rocketing high into the overhead and win them a fatal twenty-meter fall once gravity returned.

He glanced up at the mezzanine and an idea flashed through his head. If only there is enough time…He pulled himself to a stop and lined himself up. Coiled his powerful legs beneath him.

Dong-dong-do—

And just like that, the incessant alarm was replaced by silence. He had waited too long. Any moment now, the DropShip would detach and then she would cut in her main engines. The smart thing to do was find cover.

Instead, he jumped.

His leap shot him straight at Corinne’s limp body, sailing towards her at a rising angle.

He caught her in his arms and she did not stir. For a moment he remembered holding her after the Trial, and then he was touching her neck, feeling the delicate flutter of her pulse in her carotid artery.

She was alive.

There was still a chance.

The momentum of his jump was carrying them towards the mezzanine. The deck would have emergency equipment and first-aid kits. It was above most of the floating debris. And most importantly, if Richard had timed his jump correctly, they would reach it before the DropShip’s mighty engines reasserted their control. They were almost there, only a few meters below the mezzanine’s deck level and still heading up…

He waited for the deep clang of the 11,550-ton DropShip slipping free of her docking collar, waited as he and Corinne sailed towards the safety of the mezzanine. He could see the waist-high railing and the bright yellow DC Locker, all of it drawing closer, closer.

They were…they were going to make it.

And then, right then, the deck plating below them began to shake, began to throb with the terrible power of the vessel’s massive engines coming to life.

He felt a hollowness in the pit of his stomach. They were maybe a meter above the deck railing, but as soon as those main engines took hold, they would yank them right out of the air. Why had the deck officer not detached the DropShip? The vessel could not possibly be engaging her main engines if she were still attached to Bear’s Den.

And then he felt the first tickle of acceleration, sudden force pulling him down. But down did not turn out to be in the direction he expected. He was flying, falling toward the mezzanine, as if the whole world had been tilted on its side.

It was not the DropShip’s engines that were coming to life.

It was the WarShip’s.

Sharp Claw sat in her docking collar, perpendicular to the WarShip’s axis of motion. If the Bear’s Den was engaging her mains, the resultant forces would turn everything aboard her four DropShips on its side.

Richard just had a moment to wonder what was going on, and then brutal acceleration jerked him forward, smashing he and Corinne right into the yellow DC locker. They hit with a loud crash, the impact punching the air out of Richard’s lungs.

He felt her grunt with the impact.

He drew in a shuddery breath and turned his head to the side, trying to get his bearings.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of motion.

He sucked in a startled breath and then he was covering Corinne’s body with his.

A bruising rain of nuts and bolts punched into his back and pinged off the DC locker’s sheet-metal surface millimeters from Richard’s face. He saw something big slam into the mezzanine to his right, and suddenly he was showered with needle-sharp slivers of wood.

It was over in less than a minute.

Shaking and gasping for breath, he rose on his knees. All the debris that had been drifting through the air had now fallen against the exterior bulkhead. The DC locker below he and Corinne was the closest thing they had to firm footing, but it was not level. It sloped up and to one side. Bear’s Den must not be driving straight ahead, it was the only thing that explained the weird cant of the locker. But why would the WarShip’s deck officer choose to—

Richard felt icy fingers wrap around his heart. Of course. No sane deck officer would choose a crooked acceleration vector.

Stravag! The WarShip herself was damaged. Nothing else made sense.

He scooted down the face of the DC locker, carefully pulling Corinne’s limp body down with him. In this weird sideways world the mezzanine’s deck was a wall. But it was not a vertical wall. The WarShip’s off-cantor velocity vector had tilted everything fifteen or twenty degrees.

He peered through the slats of the railing, looking across when he should have been looking down. Like the mezzanine, the cargo hold’s deck was now a bulkhead. Material still clung to the new wall: pallets and crates and vehicles, any one of which would kill a man if it broke free and came crashing down. Normally, Richard would not have worried. The cargo techs knew how to secure their gear. But Sharp Claw had been subject to a titanic impulse. Terrible stresses had flowed through the ship’s decks and bulkheads, stretching bolts and tie downs, cracking welds, snapping lines, ripping tarps.

Overhead he heard the creak and rustle and moan of what might have once been a galleon from the days of sail. Except, what he really was hearing was the warning sounds of an avalanche readying itself to break free. For a moment he paused, staring up at all that barely restrained cargo.

Then he tore his eyes away from the problem he could not affect and focused on the problem he could.

He reached the place where the locker was anchored to the deck and climbed unsteadily to his feet, one foot braced against the mezzanine, one against the DC locker, this time searching out the new down.

The exterior bulkhead and its roll-up garage door was now the deck. Everything not still tied down had ended up wedged into the right-angle corner where the bulkhead and deck came together. The ship’s uneven acceleration made that corner into a trench that ran the full length of the ship’s exterior bulkhead. Richard’s gaze found an overturned jeep, smashed crates, armor plating spilled across the deck like scattered playing cards, and—

A body.

A twisted, broken body.

The debris was half-submerged in a shallow, brown-black soup made up of lube oil and diesel fuel and antifreeze and bleach and gasoline and Father knew what else.

The long, deep moan of tormented metal filled the space.

Richard turned, looking up.

His breath caught.

In this crazy, sideways world, what had once been the interior bulkhead was now the overhead. Anchored to the now-overhead were a quartet of ammunition racks. The storage devices were enclosed towers twenty meters high, where reserve ordnance was cradled in individual cells against sudden acceleration. But Richard had no idea just how much shock the stored ammunition could take before something bad happened. And judging by the way the nearest tower had twisted out from the bulkhead, a good number of its anchor bolts had sheared away.

The rack groaned again, and this time Richard saw it shift.

He looked from the rack to the debris half-immersed in the sludge below, and then back to the rack.

Hanging over their heads like the Sword of Damocles.

Time to go.

Richard knelt by Corinne’s still body, braced against the DC locker. He gently lifted her, laying her against the face of the gray transformer to the right of the locker. Then he jerked open the locker door.

It was a mess inside. Items that had been carefully ordered were all jumbled together. He began pulling material out and tossing it aside: a fire axe, water and food packets, a box of batteries—

There.

He paused when he found a store of Emergency Breathing Units, devices that were basically a mask and a small, portable oxygen tank. He was not sure what had happened, but the Sharp Claw was clearly crippled, and Bear’s Den was at least damaged. Survival might very well depend on having an emergency oxygen source.

Richard snapped the mask over his face, wincing as the thin plastic guard settled over his injured nose. Pulling the pin on the O₂ bottle, he squeezed the lever, took a couple deep breaths to make sure the device was working, and then ripped the mask off his face and placed it over Corinne’s.

Only when he saw the rise and fall of her chest did he find an EBU for himself.

He continued pulling things out of the locker and throwing them aside: a portable radio smashed into a million pieces, a stretcher that would never work in the DropShip’s weird sideways gravity, a body bag—

He started to throw the body bag away, and then stopped and thought better of it. For a moment he stared at the black plastic bag. Then he unzipped it part way and started tossing EBUs into it, along with a flare gun, flashlights, a laser cutting torch, a hardcopy map of the ship.

He found the ultimate piece of Clan emergency equipment, a slug thrower, and tucked the weapon into the waistband of his shorts.

Then he found a first-aid kit.

Richard lifted it out of the DC locker with trembling hands, popped open the plastic lid. It only took a moment to find what he was looking for.

A syringe.

The needle contained a mixture of stimulant and painkiller. The drug cocktail was dangerous to administer, especially if the recipient was in shock, as Corinne certainly had to be. He looked over at her, wishing there was a medical technician he could consult, wishing he did not have to do this.

But something truly terrible had just happened, and in Richard’s gut he knew he would not be able to carry Corinne out if she were unconscious.

He had to administer the drug.

He leaned over her body, tapping the inside of her arm to find a vein. And then, with one quick, decisive motion, he jabbed the needle into her flesh and depressed the plunger.

For the first time since he had woken to darkness, it occurred to him that if Corinne died here, now, he would win back the position that always should have been his. Of course, it was dishonorable to raise a hand against a rival outside a Circle of Equals. No. It would be more than dishonorable. It would be murder.

And yet, if she died now, in the midst of this disaster, no one would ever question it.

He swallowed.

Richard was surprised to find that he did not wish her to die, even though she stood between him and glory. More than anything, he wanted her to live. No matter what it cost.

He shook his head. He was soft. Perhaps…perhaps it was right that he had lost the Trial.

He reached down with his right hand and placed his palm on her chest, just above her bra. Beneath his hand he felt the steady beat of her heart, felt it start to accelerate as the stimulant took effect.

Her eyes fluttered open.

“Richer,” she whispered, slurring his name.

Those dark blue eyes marked his face.

“Something happened,” he said. “Something terrible. Maybe something hit the ship.”

“Trinary,” she whispered. “Help Trinary.”

Help Trinary.

He nodded. “Aff.” And then something tightened inside him as he looked down at her and saw how badly she was hurt. Beneath the clear plastic of the mask covering her mouth and nose she looked pale. Dark circles ringed her eyes. Her face was lined with pain and fatigue. She looks terrible. Richard tried to tell himself it was just a trick of the dim, jaundiced light.

But he knew that was not the truth of it.

A part of him he had not known existed made him say, “Aff, Star Captain.”

But his words were stolen away by the shriek of rended metal, punctuated by the gunshot sound of bolts failing one after the other. His head jerked up at the sound.

In time to see the ammunition rack hurtling downward.

For a heartbeat there was a pregnant silence as the tower just fell, plunging down through empty space.

Then it hit the exterior bulkhead.

A terrible crash echoed throughout the great space, followed by the groan of tortured metal, and the brutal snap of the rack breaking in two. The top half punched into the bulkhead and tumbled to a rest.

But the bottom half slammed into the deck and slid.

For half a second, Richard saw metal slide across metal, the rack sending up a shower of electric orange sparks.

Then a thunderous roar shook the cargo deck and the world was swallowed by inferno.

CHAPTER FIVE

Corinne woke to a nightmare. The ragged edge of a terrible pain pulsed in her right ankle and coursed through her right arm, the pain an ugly hint of a brutal agony barely restrained by drugs. Her face felt flushed and hot, and her heart hammered her ribs like a prisoner throwing himself against the bars of his prison, desperate for escape. There was some kind of mask clamped over her face and she was breathing air that tasted bitter and metallic. And somehow the world had been turned on its side, like something out of a Escher print.

It could not possible get any worse.

And then the world exploded.

She watched molten orange fire race down the trench dividing deck from bulkhead, and just like that, the cargo hold was beset by a wall of flame ten meters high. The fire swallowed everything, roaring, crackling, feeding. It devoured wooden pallets and crates, drums of paint, plastics of all kinds.

Flesh.

A mindless scream ripped through the superheated air, loud enough to pierce the hungry roar of the fire itself. It was a cry born of terror, of unspeakable suffering. It sent a chill wriggling down her spine.

A dark figure wreathed in flame lunged out of the fire and collapsed on the deck. For a moment, the unfortunate creature writhed in agony, rolling around on the deck and screaming.

And then the figure was suddenly still. Utterly still. The body, the person, lay motionless on the deck, yellow flame dancing merrily across her uniform.

Corrine’s mouth tasted like sand.

“Great Father,” she whispered, her tongue thick in her mouth. “Tha was Paula.”

She grabbed Richard’s arm and he turned to look at her, that gray gaze settling on her.

“Richer.”

“I know,” he whispered.

She watched him peer over the side of the DC locker, looking in the direction that was now down. She followed his gaze. Below them was a tool locker, and below that a cabinet filled with spare parts. They could use the lockers as stepping-stones to work their way down to the bulkhead.

“Wait here,” he told Corinne, lowering his body over the side of the DC locker.

“Neg,” she snapped.

Richard froze.

He looked up at her. “What?”

“Coming with you,” she said.

 “Your foot is broken, Corinne. You cannot possibly climb down, quiaff?”

“Neg.”

“Corinne—”

“Star Captain,” she roared.

He punched out an angry breath. “I am not challenging your authority, Star Captain.” He shook his head. “I am merely offering you my counsel.”

And then she saw it. He was not challenging her. He was trying to protect her. It was somehow both sweet and dishonorable at the same time.

“My Trinary,” she said.

“I know that,” he snapped.

She shook her head. He still did not understand. “Just took command.”

“Yes,” he said, a trace of bitterness in his voice, “I was there.”

“My people,” she said. “Cannot fail them. Not as my first act of command.”

Richard looked at her and she looked at him.

After a moment, he said, “Can you hold on to my back?”

“Maybe with left arm. Right arm broken.”

Richard’s gaze flickered to her right arm, the one that had been broken during their fight. He looked away.

He drew a deep breath and gathered up the thick plastic of the body bag in his hand, closing it tightly into a fist. Then he knelt down. Corinne climbed onto his back. She knew she weighed much less in the low gravity, but it was still awkward for him with only one free hand and her clinging to his back.

Richard slipped over the DC locker’s side, landing on the tool locker in a crouch that evoked an ugly groan from the cabinet. He did not wait for their combined weight to pull it from the deck. He was already scrambling over the side to get to the next cabinet.

He darted down the makeshift ladder. She felt him moving beneath her, his muscles working as they descended into hell.

By the time he reached the place where the mezzanine was joined to the bulkhead, Corinne’s skin felt like it was burning, broiling. Greasy black smoke filled the air, the caustic chemicals burning her eyes. Wisps of filthy smoke slipped past the mask’s loose seal, filling her mouth with the bitter taste of ash.

Richard set Corinne on the deck and pulled a half-dozen EBUs and one of the first-aid kits out of the body bag, tossing them at her feet. He leaned down so his face was only millimeters from hers, shouting over the fire’s roar. “Tend to any who make it out!”

Sudden, sharp worry stabbed through her chest. “What are you going to do?”

He turned and peered into the burning space, captivated by the terrible dance of the bright flames.

She looked through the shifting smoke, trying to discern what had captured his attention. There. The near corner of the garage door. Was that what he was looking at? Why?

“Star Commander,” she shouted. “What are you going to do?”

When he answered his gaze was still fixed on the fire. “I am going to kill the monster,” he said, his voice low and fierce. He turned to look at her. “You save our brothers and sisters.”

She jerked her head down in a grave nod.

He dropped the body bag on the deck.

And then he plunged into the flame.

CHAPTER SIX

Fire tore at Richard’s body, his clothes, pierced his flesh. With every step, panic threatened to overwhelm him.

Somehow, he pushed forward.

The door’s control box should have been posted on the bulkhead at chest height, fifty centimeters from the hatch. Had to reach it, had to—

He stumbled over something—

(control box)

—and went sprawling. It was like falling face first onto a sizzling grill. His skin was blistering, melting. He screamed and scrambled to his hands and knees, reaching back, frantically trying to find the control box.

Could not see through the swirling black smoke.

He reached forward with a trembling hand, trying to find it—

There. It was like sticking his hand into a furnace. He gritted his teeth, imagining he could feel his skin as it burned against the box’s blistering metal casing, his flesh bubbling.

He found the top button, stabbed it down.

Nothing happened.

No, no, no.

The garage door was protected by armored blast doors. If he could not get them open, his plan would fail.

He stabbed the button again and again, feeling a desperate terror rising within him. Maybe the disaster had cut the circuits or destroyed the power supply or the fire had melted the leads or—

And then he heard the low rumble of the blast doors slowly pulling apart. Finally.

He scrambled free of the fire—

(Just like Paula.)

—And fell to the deck, rolling, smothering the flames. For a moment he just lay there, fighting for breath through the plastic face mask half-melted to his face.

He forced himself to his hands and knees and then struggled to his feet.

Crack. Crack, crack.

Richard froze. Gunshots. He had spent enough time at the business of war to know the sound when he heard it.

He had assumed this was some kind of terrible accident, but maybe he was wrong. Maybe it was an assault.

But what enemy would dare attack a Ghost Bear WarShip?

He crawled along the deck, keeping low.

Crackcrackcrackcrack.

Something stung his left shoulder blade.

His enemy had put a round in his shoulder. Richard expected to die in the next moment. His attacker only had to drop his aim a millimeter or two and that would be that.

Richard looked up, but he could see little through the shifting smoke. He crawled forward, hoping his progress would throw off the attacker’s aim.

Crack, crack.

And then his right hand brushed against something metal. He glanced down and saw a long-range missile on the deck, its guidance fins crushed.

Suddenly, Richard understood. His stomach tied itself into a tight knot.

Stravag!

When the weapons rack had hit it had spilled its lethal contents out on the deck. No one was shooting at him. The fire was cooking off rounds. The broken ammunition rack must have scattered ordnance across the cargo doors: grenades, autocannon shells, bullets.

Missiles.

If the fire grew larger, if it touched off that ordnance—

He shook his head. Time was racing down to zero.

If there had been a shooter aiming for him, he could have sheltered behind a fallen crate or an overturned truck. He could have fought back. But there was no way to protect himself from the random danger of rounds cooking off. No tool he could use, save speed.

He rose into a crouch and ran forward.

The body bag was a couple meters away. He knew there was nothing in it but EBUs and emergency equipment, but looking at that black length of plastic stretched out on the deck he could almost believe it contained a body.

He ran towards it.

He knelt down, frantically pawing through the material in the body bag until he found the laser cutting torch. The torch looked a lot like the sidearm tucked into Richard’s shorts. It sported a pistol grip and a trigger guard, and it was fashioned from black gun steel. Except the barrel was not steel; it was a dull gray titanium alloy. And a helical cable stretched from the butt of the pistol grip to a portable power pack.

Crack, crack.

He felt the air stir as one of the rounds whipped by, millimeters from his face.

Richard hauled the power pack out of the bag with one hand and reached for the torch with the other. He touched the power stud and the device hummed to life. A long blade of sapphire light shot out from the device’s tip.

He moved a couple meters from the bag, moving towards the fire, and sliced through the cargo hatch with the torch. Wind tore at his body as it rushed towards the breach. A high, thin keen arose, the air protesting its banishment. Richard struggled to enlarge the gash, swinging the laser torch around until he had a ragged hole.

Air howled as it fled towards the little hole.

At first, the gale fanned the fire and the flames leapt higher. Then the wind started to entrain the burning fuel, picking it up and carrying it to oblivion. A vortex of fire and smoke swirled down the hole.

Richard sprinted across the door’s surface, giving the hole a wide berth. The differential pressure across the breach would generate hundreds of newtons of force, enough to throw a man down and smash his bones against the steel deck.

He stooped and cut a second hole in the door, across from the first. He moved as close as he dared to the fire and cut a third.

All around him, the fire was dying as its living breath was sucked out into space.

Richard dropped the torch to the deck and went back for the body bag. As the flames died, he ran along the trench, looking for survivors, ignoring the danger of random gunfire. He pushed aside charred lengths of blackened wood, crawled through the near-scalding petrochem soup to peer beneath an overturned jeep, threw boxes aside.

He pulled away a blackened tarp and found François Cote underneath. The Star Colonel was unconscious, his uniform burned in patches, the exposed skin on his hands and face reddened and blistered. His face was the color of ash and his skull was matted with dried blood the color of brick.

But he was alive.

Richard quickly got an EBU over the Star Colonel’s mouth and nose, and injected a syringe of stimulant and painkiller into his arm.

Color slowly began to return to Cote’s face.

Richard wanted to stay with the Star Colonel, but if there were any other survivors, he would have to get to them quickly. He squeezed Cote’s shoulder, hoping the man could somehow feel it.

Then he returned to his search, looking through the debris for survivors, his heart filled with frantic hope. He pulled up a pallet and—

All his hope died. The warrior whose body was nestled beneath the pallet had been so badly burned that Richard could not tell who it was. The man’s skin was charred and blackened. The corpse’s head was bowed, his hands closed into fists and held up in front of its face, frozen in a final posture of terror.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The passageway was black and still. It was the stillness that unnerved Richard. The last thirty minutes of his life had been filled with the crash of falling debris and the monstrous roar of fire.

The desperate cries of cruel death.

Here there was nothing. Not the music of disaster, not the white noise of fresh air rushing through the ventilation ducting, not the hum of electricity, not even the rumble and clatter of distant machinery. Nothing.

Richard felt like he was trespassing on the dominion of the dead.

The four of them had made it out of the hatch below the mezzanine, leaving them huddled in the right-angle corner of a dark passageway. One branch of the cockeyed corridor ran along the ship’s hull, the other rose over their heads, heading into the direction that was now up.

“Do we have atmosphere?” Cote asked. His deep, powerful voice seemed weaker than before. Muted.

Corinne shone her flashlight on the sideways haze gray slab of plate steel behind her.

Richard watched the circle of light follow along the black, rubber gasket that sealed the door. “The spacetight hatch seems to be holding up,” she said.

“For now,” Richard added darkly. “All that ordnance.” He shook his head. “If it is subjected to a big enough jar, say from falling debris—”

“We need to get clear,” agreed Cote. “Options?”

Corinne knelt down and pulled the hardcopy ship map out of the body bag, studying it intently.

Richard crouched down by MechWarrior Tomas. He sat on the deck, propped up against the bulkhead, his eyes closed, his breathing shallow. Richard placed a pair of fingers against Tomas’s neck, searching for a pulse, reassuring himself that the man was still alive.

The pulse was there, weak and thready, but it was there.

“Hanging on,” whispered Tomas. “I am. Hanging on.”

“I know you are,” said Richard gently. “You have the heart of a warrior, Tomas. I know you will prevail.”

The man did not open his eyes, did not speak further, but Richard thought he saw the young warrior give him the barest of nods.

In the end, he and Corinne had managed to rescue only two of their comrades. Only four of the fifteen warriors had survived the fiery cataclysm that had swept through the cargo deck. Four!

Richard felt numb.

Corinne put down the map and looked up. “Either passage should get us to the Den’s access hatch.”

Cote raised an eyebrow. “Either one? Are you certain?”

Richard knew what the Star Colonel was asking. It would be a difficult climb through the vertical passage.

But there was no point in taking the easy path if it did not lead to safety.

Corinne shrugged. “I cannot say for certain, Star Colonel. There may be new obstacles. But there was a path through there—” she nodded at the horizontal passageway “—an hour ago.”

Cote looked haggard, but he nodded. “Very well. Getting to the WarShip seems like our best chance.” He met Richard’s gaze. “Star Commander, you are the strongest of us. Can you help Tomas? I think I can walk on my own.”

Richard looked over at Tomas, who even now was struggling for his life. Only four. Suddenly he was angry, furious. This was wrong! For warriors to be struck down by disaster— Neg!

“Neg.” Richard had spoken the word almost before he had realized it.

“What did you say?” Cote snapped, his voice freighted with barely restrained fury. François Cote might be half dead, but he was still a Star Colonel. It was always dangerous to countermand Cote’s orders.

But to do so in the middle of a crisis might very well be a lethal mistake.

Richard slowly rose to his feet and met his commander’s smoldering gaze. “I am sorry, Star Colonel,” he said, “but I cannot go with you.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Corinne put down the map and looked up. No. What? What had Richard just said? For a moment she thought she had heard wrong, that her ears had deceived her. But then she saw the postures of the two men, legs splayed, arms held away from their bodies, hands clenched into fists, eyes narrowed, faces blank.

Ready to fight.

She slowly stood. What is this?

“Just where do you think you are going?” growled Cote. Corinne could see that the Star Colonel was leaning forward on the balls of his feet, his muscles tensed, ready to strike.

Richard drew a deep breath. “Where would you go, Star Colonel? If you were not so hurt that you could barely stand, where would your duty compel you to go?”

For a long moment the two men stared at each other.

And then something extraordinary happened. Cote looked away. “The ’Mech Bay,” he whispered. “My duty calls me to the ’Mech Bay.”

And suddenly she saw it, saw all of it, where Richard was going, what he was doing. He had already half-convinced Cote.

Once again Richard had flanked her.

“Wait,” said Corinne, desperately trying to find a way to stop it, “we need you here.”

Neither man looked at her, neither acknowledged her words. Richard stepped up to Cote. “Our brothers and sisters are trapped down there, likely battling for their survival. I know you burn to fight alongside your warriors, sir. But you have a concussion, you struggle just to hold on to consciousness, to draw a breath into your scarred lungs.”

“Star Commander,” Corinne snapped, trying to punch her way into the conversation. “You still work for me, quiaff?”

Richard turned to look at her and there was something in his eyes, something distant. “Aff, Star Captain.”

“My foot and wrist are broken,” she said. “I can barely stand. And Tomas is half-dead. We need you.” She pointed up into the towering height of the sideways passageway. “And the ’Mech Bay is that way. You would have to face an ugly climb to reach it.”

Richard shook his head. “You make my point for me, Star Captain.” He turned to look at Cote. “Your people are dying, sir, and who can you send in your place to save them? Not Tomas and not Corinne. Only I am healthy enough to go.”

Cote slowly shook his head. “I can see the blisters forming on your hands, Star Commander. I can hear the whistle of your breath through your broken nose.”

“But I have no concussion, sir, no fractured bones.” He glanced down at poor, suffering Tomas. “No internal bleeding. I am battered, but I am not broken. How can I flee when my brothers and sisters struggle for their lives?”

Cote shook his head. “Star Commander, you have shown extraordinary bravery and ingenuity in the face of terrible tragedy. But you are hurt. There is no need for you to—”

“There is a need!” Richard roared.

“There is no need for you to atone for your defeat today,” said Cote gently.

Richard slashed his hand through the air, cutting apart Cote’s words. “Neg, Star Colonel. This is not about the Trial. It is about what happened here.” He placed his hand on the bulkhead that separated them from the cargo deck. “Today we faced an enemy, Star Colonel, a treacherous, dishonorable enemy that murdered our people. When has a Ghost Bear ever yielded to such an enemy?”

“Star Commander—” Cote began.

Richard placed his hands on Cote’s shoulders. “Star Colonel,” he said. “Do not abandon your people. Allow me to go to them.”

Cote’s face hardened and Richard watched him struggle with his anger. Cote did want to go to his people. But he could not. He could barely stand on his own. At last the Star Colonel mastered his emotions. “Aff,” he finally said.

 “Neg,” snapped Corinne, pain stabbing through her body as she put weight on her damaged ankle, trying to stand straighter. “No, Richard. We need you. To get to safety, we need you.”

Richard turned to look at her, slowly dropping his hands from Cote’s shoulders.

Those gray eyes, those implacable gray eyes.

The Star Colonel helped Tomas to his feet and worked his shoulder under the other warrior’s arm. He looked up at Richard. “Save my people, Star Commander,” he said softly.

“As many as I can, sir,” said Richard.

Cote nodded and then he turned, half-carrying, half-dragging Tomas down the corridor.

For a moment, Corinne watched them go. Then she turned to look at Richard. “Do not do this.”

“I know my duty, Star Captain,” said Richard placidly. “Do you?”

“Listen to me,” she said desperately. “Whatever happened to the ship, whatever punched through it, it was powerful enough to deform structural members and snap steel tie-downs even though the cargo hold was opposite the impact. You are walking into an apocalypse, Star Commander. None of your comrades are brothers and sisters are alive down in the ’Mech Bay—and if you go, you will end up just as dead as they.”

He stared at her, saying nothing, his face impassive, and suddenly she realized. He knew. He already knew. This was not an accident and it was not a miscalculation.

He was throwing his life away.

“No,” she whispered.

Richard offered her a sad smile. “You beat me, Corinne. You are more than me. Cote was wrong, I am not trying to atone for that defeat. But I cannot live with it either.”

No no no. She was shaking her head, trying to figure out how to make this not true.

“I cannot live in a world where the only way to achieve victory is to destroy you. Maybe that is what the word means.”

Corinne frowned, shook her head, not understanding. “The word?”

“Tender,” he said.

Corinne’s throat tightened painfully. She felt like she was trying to swallow an apple whole. “Do not do this,” she said. “Your Clan needs you, Richard. I—I need you.”

 “You are wrong, Star Captain,” he said softly. “You do not need me.”

And then he leaped, grabbing a pipe running along the wall that had once been the vertical corridor’s overhead, and hauling himself up. He was hurt, yet, but his muscular body still moved with a liquid grace as he climbed steadily towards the doom that awaited him in the ’Mech Bay.

“Wait,” she called after him. “Sibkin.”

But Richard did not stop, did not turn to look down at her.

And right then, Corinne knew, as sure as she had ever known anything in her life, that she would never see him again

CHAPTER NINE

Richard pried open a hatch and peered into the darkness beyond. He found himself looking into a black tunnel that dropped straight down into the body of the DropShip like a mine shaft sunk into the earth. Whatever disaster had befallen the Sharp Claw, it had cut off all power to this portion of the vessel.

He shone his flashlight into the long, dark hole. Richard was looking down in a passageway turned over on its side. The corridor extended six or seven meters down into the ship, dead ending into a bulkhead and a spacetight hatch. The hatch was a piece of steel plate half a centimeter thick, painted gray and fitted with a rubber gasket to maintain an airtight seal.

Except this hatch was bent and twisted like a potato chip. “Stravag,” he whispered. He played his light across the bulkhead, looking for clues to what had damaged the hatch. What he saw drew a gasp from him. It was not only the hatch that was warped.

But also the bulkhead the hatch was set in.

What had could have done that to the entire bulkhead? Richard did not know. The Great Father help him, he did not know.

But he was going to find out.

Richard played the flashlight over what should have been the passage’s deck. The beam revealed the dull gray of steel loops embedded in the tiles, spaced a meter apart. They were meant to be used as footholds (or handholds) in zero gee. But in this strange sideways acceleration they would serve perfectly well as a makeshift ladder.

Lowering his body into the shaft, he searched for one of the footholds with his toe. When he found it, he hauled the body bag down with one hand and closed the hatch with the other. He quickly climbed down into the passage.

When he reached the bottom he knelt down and touched the hatch. The steel surface was bitterly cold and slick with condensation. In the cargo deck he had battled fire.

Here he would contend with ice.

“Vacuum,” he whispered.

If the ’Mech Bay had suffered a breach, then opening the hatch would expose him to micropressure and freezing cold. He had salvaged an emergency pressure suit from a passageway locker. The emergency suit would give him thirty minutes of air and protect him from the low pressure. But eventually the cold would seep in. And he was stepping into a space that had to be as torn up as the cargo hold.

If he were to rip his suit on a jagged piece of metal…

What he was doing was perilously close to suicide. And he did not have to do it. He could turn around and go back. No one would question his decision. For a moment, he almost turned to climb back up the corridor.

And then he remembered those eyes looking into his, those blue, blue eyes.

Corinne!

He reached for the door’s long striker arm. How strange that this should be the instrument of his death, a slender rod of steel painted haze-gray.

He pulled it off the striker plate.

Richard had expected that he might have to cut through the door, but the instant he released the handle the inward-opening hatch jerked away from him. The rush of air picked him up and threw him through the opening. He smacked painfully against the deck.

Again he found himself in darkness. Terrible cold cut through his flesh like a scalpel. The deck (which must have actually been a bulkhead) was slick with a thin rime of ice. Vacuum. When the atmosphere had bled off a fraction of its water vapor must have frozen right out of the air.

This was a place of cold, desperate death.

He shook his head. Neg! I will not think that way.Perhaps some of the MechWarriors had managed to get to emergency suits or sheltered in the cockpits of their machines.

I will try.

Richard willed his body to rise. Slowly he climbed to his feet.

And took his first really good look at the ’Mech Bay.

In the instant before he glanced up, he was not sure what he would see. Somewhere in the back of his mind he was imagining another cargo deck, wooden crates smashed open, debris littering the deck, cargo jerked out of place. So he was not prepared for what was truly there.

Shock strangled his breath in his chest.

Normally, the ’Mech Bay was a cavernous, well-lit space that sheltered BattleMechs locked in place with giant clamps. A twenty-meter garage door had been built into the space’s exterior bulkhead, so the great engines of war could quickly egress the DropShip and fight their way into the battle for a contested landing zone.

Richard peered up, looking at the place where he should have seen the DropShip’s hull and the garage door. Instead he saw stars.

“Freebirth,” he whispered.

For a long moment he just stared up, his mind unable to process what he was seeing. More than half of the bay was gone, simply gone, torn free by Great Father knew what.

Directly overhead, a shadowy, white wall stretched upwards as far as the eye could follow.

The hull of the Bear’s Den. And beside it, something else.

A mountain of stone tumbling through space.

CHAPTER TEN

Corinne’s heart pounded as she scaled the makeshift ladder fashioned from a chair hastily thrown atop a desk she and Cote had scavenged from a small office just off the corridor. They had encountered a dogleg in the passageway, nothing more than a five-meter jog to the right under normal conditions, But in this terrible world of sideways gravity, it was a brutal climb.

“Can you make it?” asked Cote. He sat on the deck next to Tomas, breathing hard. Watching her.

“Please do not question my abilities or my determination, Star Colonel,” said Corinne, her voice light. “You are in no condition to fight a Trial of Grievance.”

A tired laugh issued from Cote. “My apologies, Star Captain. Will you grant me surkai?” he asked, naming the Clan rite of forgiveness.

“Aff,” she said. “Your punishment is that you must be silent and let me climb.”

“Bargained well,” said Cote.

“Shhhh,” said Corinne, turning to look back at him, a broad smile on her face.

Then she turned away from Cote and her face tightened with pain. She drew a deep breath and pushed off on her left foot, slipping her right knee up over the seat of the chair, trying to keep from putting any weight on her shattered right ankle. Even so, she felt it throbbing, a beacon of pulsing agony that just would not stop.

Her face was bathed in sweat, her hands slick with it, the sour smell of perspiration a cloud that wreathed her head. Balancing on the chair, she pulled her left knee up.

She bowed her head for a moment, her eyes screwed shut, her chest heaving, her breathing a harsh rasp echoing in the passageway.

I am Clan, she said to herself.

She raised her head, opened her eyes.

Corinne grabbed the back of the chair with her left hand, bracing herself.

True to his word, Cote said nothing.

She pushed her body up, so that she was standing on her left leg.

Despite the solemn promise she had made herself to hold her right leg steady, she felt a sharp spike of terrible pain tear through the ankle and she almost toppled right off her little makeshift tower.

She doubled over the chair’s back, breathing hard, sweat stinging her eyes, her left leg trembling with exertion, her right held away from the chair, but somehow still throbbing with pain.

She shook her head.

Then she looked up at the lip of the corridor, a good 175 centimeters away. It might as well have been a light year. She shifted her weight and felt the chair shudder beneath her, no chance that she would be able to stack a second chair on the first.

If only I had two good legs.

But she did not have two good legs. It was not the warrior’s way to whine about the desperation of her circumstances. It was the warrior’s way to overcome adversity.

Her ankle hurt so much. How much more would it really hurt if she put some weight on it?

Slowly, experimentally, she put her foot down, put the slightest weight on it. Brutal pain flared supernova bright in her ankle. She gasped and almost lost her balance, almost toppled right off the chair. She held the pain tight, like a person clutching a bar of soap in the bath.

Somehow, she did not fall.

Slowly, every so slowly, she crouched down, her eyes screwed shut. She did not need her eyes, she held the corridor in her mind.

The pain was a siren echoing in her skull. She ignored its shrill call.

For an instant she crouched. She drew a deep, desperate breath.

And then she jumped, hurling her body at the lip of the corridor.

Like an explosion of flame and gas pushing a rocket high into the sky, Corinne’s agony propelled her through empty space. She hit, the deck punching the air out of her lungs, and for a moment the world was gray and unsteady. For a moment, she just lay there letting the pain have its way.

And then she remembered who and what she was.

Hugging the bulkhead, she managed to haul herself up, perching on her left foot. Careful to keep her right foot from touching the deck.

What she saw broke her heart.

The passageway ahead was blocked. Impassable.

It was not just that debris filled the passage—it did—but the passage itself had caved in, the thick steel hull of the Overlord-C crushed beneath the weight of some terrible catastrophe.

They would not reach the Bear’s Den this way.

They had no choice but to go back.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

For a heartbeat Richard just froze, his mind stopped, his mind broken, shocked by the terrible scope of the disaster. Horror bloomed in him like a dark flower. As a warrior he had seen monstrous destruction, indeed, he had been its author, but never had he seen anything like this. An entire Cluster had been obliterated.

And it meant nothing.

Great Father!

He tore his eyes away from the mountain of stone tumbling through star-flecked space and wrenched his attention back to the ’Mech Bay.

Darkness ruled the cavernous space, but it was not unbroken black. There were a few feeble sources of illumination: the Den’s deck lights painted faraway circles of white light on the WarShip’s hull, high overhead; the glow of emergency symbols marked on bulkheads in green phosphorescent paint.

And there was the cold and distant light of the stars.

It might almost have been better if there had been no light at all. The gloom revealed terrible things. The space’s thick steel bulkheads had been torn and shredded, as if some great carnivore had ripped a hunk out of the DropShip’s flesh. Structural beams were bent into fanciful shapes, looped into crooked circles or twisted into strange helical forms. A fallen gantry, broken and bent, its spidery corpse painting unwholesome shadows on what had once been the space’s deck.

It was bitterly cold in the ’Mech Bay, the kind of cold that cut through flesh like a blade. And it was still. Empty of movement. Empty of even the smallest scrap of sound.

There was nothing here but loss. Nothing could have lived through this. Not this. No one would blame Richard if he turned and fled from this horrible, sideways hell. It was the logical thing to do.

And Clan warriors were bred to be coldly logical.

He had every reason to leave.

Instead, he moved further into the space.

Richard clambered over the smashed gantry, gripping steel so cold it stung his hands right through his gloves, twice falling in the darkness, once smashing his face against a hard pole.

He struggled to his knees and gasped.

An icy sliver of pain stabbed into his left leg. For an instant, he thought the limb was broken. And then he realized the pain was cold. He glanced down. A twisted scrap of steel had slashed his suit from knee to ankle. A tightness in the knee told him that a bladder in the suit had inflated, sealing the rest of him off from the breach.

But his leg was out in the cold.

He had a patch kit, but the kit’s gel was only suitable for plugging small punctures—not mending a tear a quarter-meter long.

Grimly, Richard managed to push himself to his feet—and go on.

Ahead, in the tangle of shadows, he saw a dark shape that could only be a fallen BattleMech. He could not identify the machine, but he could see that it was big, an assault ’Mech—or at least a heavy.

It was unnerving to see a ’Mech ripped free from its clamps and tossed casually to the deck. The BattleMech was a fearsome beast. At ten meters, it towered over the 31st century battlefield, a heavily armored monster bristling with weapons, a fusion reactor its beating heart.

Almost nothing threatened a BattleMech—except another BattleMech.

Yet this one had been crushed like it were a child’s discarded plaything.

Richard worked his way down the mountain of twisted steel and snapped on his flashlight, playing the beam across the fallen machine. It was a Mad Dog, a design the Spheroids called Vulture. The ’Mech’s torso was a narrow triangular wedge that looked a little like a beak, set between two massive shoulders topped with missile launchers.

The sixty-ton machine had fallen face-down, the nose buckling under the brutal impact. The fall had also snapped off the twin barrels of the pulse lasers that made up the end of the machine’s right arm, and it had half-rolled onto its side.

The Mad Dog’s cockpit normally sat high atop the torso, but the angle of the machine’s fall had brought it within reach of the deck. Richard hurried down the gantry and sprinted for the cockpit, breathing hard.

The ferroglass canopy was frosted with pale ice and he felt a jet of freezing-cold gas that told him the canopy was cracked and losing atmosphere. Most of the ice was on the inside—but not all of it. With the back of his hand he wiped away the ice that had frozen on the outside of the canopy.

There was a warrior inside.

A woman’s body was pressed against the ferroglass canopy. She must have been sitting in her cockpit when the impact’s terrible force wrenched her machine free of its huge mechanical restraints, but she had not been belted in. The fall might very well have killed her.

Richard rapped on the canopy.

Inside her glass chrysalis, the warrior stirred.

Richard pounded his fist on the canopy, trying to get her attention.

He saw the shadow of her body draw itself up. She leaned forward and wiped the thin film of ice from the canopy and looked down at him, clearly dazed.

The dim half-light washed out all color, but Richard still recognized the woman’s coal-dark skin, the short curls of ebony hair shadowing her skull, the wide, black eyes that should have been a clear hazel.

Star Captain Malika Hall.

Richard held up both hands, begging her to stay with him. He knelt down, pulled a white board and marker from the body bag, and wrote, “P-SUIT.”

Slowly she nodded.

She rummaged through a small locker and came away with an emergency pressure suit. But Richard worried about her slow, clumsy motion. Just how disoriented was she? Emergency suits were designed for ease of use. But if she failed to seal it properly…

He watched her struggle with the suit.

Maybe there was another way. He could use the gel in his patch kit to slow the canopy leak, wait for help to come. Except there was no telling how badly hurt Malika was. He looked up at the huge hole.

And there was no guarantee that help was coming any time soon.

No, he had to do something now.

He wiped his board clean and wrote another message: “CHECK SUIT SEAL.”

She peered at it for a moment, and then nodded.

When she was done, he checked the ’Mech’s warped hatch.

Jammed shut.

He pulled the slug thrower from his waistband and held it up, then waved Hall back.

Her eyes grew large when she saw the weapon.

Again, Richard gestured at her to get back.

At last she understood. Stumbling over her own feet, Hall staggered to the back of the cockpit and crouched down, facing away from him.

Richard ran his hand along the canopy, looking for the leak. Ferroglass was a strong material and ordinarily it would easily stand up to a slug thrower. But the hold was brutally cold and the Mad Dog’s canopy had been subjected to a massive shock. He had cold and a flaw. All he needed to get brittle fracture was a stress.

If he could just find the leak—

There. Right there. Bitter cold stung his hand as a jet of frigid gas played over his fingers. He positioned the weapon a couple centimeters from the crack, angled away from the woman. He drew a deep breath.

And pulled the trigger.

The weapon bucked in his hand, and then the ferroglass exploded. Shards of glass rained down, ricocheted off his faceplate.

During all of this there was no sound, absolutely no sound, not when he pulled the trigger, not even when the canopy exploded into a million pieces.

He savagely punched through the broken ferroglass, opening a hole big enough for a person to crawl through. He was through the jagged ring of broken glass in a heartbeat, checking her suit, making sure it was properly sealed.

She watched him with wide, terrified eyes.

Once he saw the suit was fine, he dug through the first aid kit for a syringe. He was worried about giving Hall a stimulant, but he needed her to be alert. In the end, he decided to give her a third of the syringe, hoping it would be enough. Hoping it would not be too much.

He punched the needle through the tough fabric of the suit, then pulled it back out, sealing the puncture with gel from the patch kid.

The drug seemed to do its job. She closed her eyes for a moment, but when she opened them again, her gaze met his and he thought he saw understanding there.

He pointed behind him, at the hole.

Hall nodded.

Richard swung his body out of the hole, landing on the deck in a crouch. He turned and caught the woman in his arms.

And then he sprinted for the nearest bulkhead.

Spaces as big as the ’Mech Bay possessed closet-sized vacuum shelters, small spaces that a trapped crewman could access in the event of a decompression accident. There. A square hatch marked, Hg 0 SHELTER 6-88-3-B, in glowing green phosphorescent letters.

He reached the hatch and punched an emergency access plate embedded in the bulkhead. The hatch popped open. Richard carried Hall through and closed the hatch behind him, feeling it latch as it shut. There was another access plate on the inside. Richard saw its faint green glow and pushed it.

Nothing happened.

For a moment Richard felt the first stirrings of blind panic rising within him. The vacuum shelters were supposed to have dedicated power supplies, but he remembered crawling through pitch-black corridors. If there was no power, there was no air.

And then he felt a jet of warm air play across his back, heard the subtle hiss of returning atmosphere.

Thank the Great Father!

After a minute, a second hatch popped open and he stepped into a space that was little bigger than two meters by three. He closed the second hatch behind him and gently set Hall on the deck. She was shivering, and Bekker suddenly realized he was, too.

There was light in the little space, a dim yellow glow, and bless all that was holy, there was heat. It was actually warm in the closet-sized space, a toasty thirty degrees Centigrade. It felt wonderful. It took all of Richard’s self-control not to sit down next to the woman, close his eyes, and go to sleep.

She looked up at him. Malika Hall was pretty, though not as pretty as Corinne. “Whas going on?” her voice came out slurred and muffled by the mask.

“Asteroid,” said Richard, not believing the word even as he spoke it. Not believing it even though he had seen it. “The ship was hit by an asteroid.”

“An asteroid,” she whispered and there was horror in her voice, a haunted look in her big, expressive eyes.

Richard understood exactly how she felt. He remembered his own horror when he learned of the manner of Aaron Hall’s sudden death, but this was a thousand times worse, a million times worse. The warriors who had died here had been wasted, all their skill and courage and honor thrown away as if they did not even matter. They had not been felled defending Clan Ghost Bear or the Great Father’s vision.

No, they had been killed in a monstrous accident.

It was hard to see how such a thing could even be possible.

He stripped out of his damaged suit, going to a locker and pulling out a fresh one. His leg throbbed with terrible pain. He searched through the first aid kit until he found the part-empty syringe he had given Hall. He gave himself the balance and immediately felt better.

She tilted her head, looking at him again. “I owe you my life, Richard Bekker.”

He waved her words away. “It was nothing, Star Captain.” He was not being modest, only honest. It was nothing. It was less than nothing. Clan warriors were reared to believe in bravery and honor, but how could those ideas mean anything in the face of something like this.

She frowned. “Well, it means something to me,” she said.

Richard opened his mouth and then closed it again, choosing not to argue the point. “Is there anything I can do for you before I go?”

Hall’s face crumpled into a puzzled scowl. “Go? Where would you go?”

“There are sure to be others out there, Star Captain, trapped in the darkness as you were.”

Hall shook her head. “Richard Bekker, you are clearly hurt. If you venture back out into the vacuum, it will cost you your life, and you will save no one else.”

Richard nodded. “That is what I was told before I came to rescue you.” He leaned forward and touched her shoulder. “Do not worry, Star Captain. When help comes, the vacuum shelters will be the first place they will check for survivors.” He flashed her a lopsided grin as he punched the inner access plate and the door slid open. “And I will do my best to find you some company as soon as I can.”

But he could not help one last, longing glance back into the little bubble of warmth and hope before stepping back out into the desperate cold.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Corinne collapsed to the deck, breathing hard, gasping for every last molecule of oxygen. She screwed her eyes shut, trying to push away the terrible agony that throbbed in her right ankle with every heartbeat. Her mouth was bone dry and she tasted burned metal on her tongue. She wrapped her arms around her middle, but she just could not seem to stop shivering.

She felt a gentle touch on her shoulder—

(Richard!)

—and opened her eyes. François Cote knelt down by her, his eyebrows pulled down into a frown. He was concerned. The Iron Man was actually showing an emotion.

Which meant the situation had to be really, really bad.

Corinne tilted her head and saw a spacetight hatch behind Cote. She thought it was probably the same one they had used to flee the cargo hold, though she was too tired to be certain. She leaned her head back and gazed up. A dark passage rose up through the ship. Yes. It was the same hatch.

“Are you okay, Star Captain?” asked Cote.

“Never have I worked so hard to end up right where I began,” said Corinne.

Cote offered her a grim smile. “Can you climb?”

Corinne took a deep breath and shook her head. “No, sir,” she whispered. It was the hardest thing she had ever said in her whole life. She was Clan. She did not shrink from her duty. She did not shrink from the challenges the universe threw at her.

But she was not certain she could even stand.

She was quite sure she could not climb.

“Star Colonel, if you gave me another dose of the drug, perhaps I—”

Cote shook his head. “Neg,” he said. “It is too dangerous.” He looked up, studying the corridor overhead. She followed his gaze.

The passageway’s desk was polished tile; far too smooth to offer a handhold. The two bulkheads were a bit more promising: there was a fire extinguisher bolted to the wall on one of them and in a pinch a door knob might offer a place to grip. But such makeshift climbing aids were too few and far between to aid an ascent.

Her eyes drifted to the overhead.

Spaceships were built without drop ceilings so maintenance crews had easy access to the pipes, ducts, and conduits that ran along the overhead. There was enough structure there to allow a warrior to climb. “The overhead,” she whispered.

He nodded. “That is what I was thinking. I think I might be able to carry a passenger in the light gravity. I will ascend the corridor and then come back for the other warrior.”

Their eyes met.

“Take Tomas first,” she said. “He needs immediate medical attention. I can wait.”

“Tomas may not survive even with medical attention,” said Cote in a low voice.

She flashed a bitter smile at Cote. “Now that Richard Bekker is gone, he is all that remains of my Trinary.” Her voice softened. “He is my warrior and my responsibility. Take Tomas first.”

Cote looked at her for a long moment and then nodded. “You are a fine leader, Star Captain Corinne.”

Then he turned away from her.

Corinne closed her eyes and laid her head on the deck, feeling pain pulse through her body with clockwork regularity.

After a time, she was not sure exactly how long, she felt somewhat better. She opened her eyes and stared up at the haze gray surface of the spacetight door.

She almost thought she might be able to stand.

Corinne hauled herself up, managing to get up on her hands and knees. Her body fought her every millimeter of the way. Even the thought of moving was enough to send molten torment coursing through her ankle.

But, somehow, she managed to do it.

The hatch had picked up the soulless cold of the vacuum in the cargo hold and it was slick with cool condensation. She bowed her head against the sideways steel door, breathing hard.

She drew a shuddery breath and turned her head to look up at the corridor above her. Maybe…maybe there was a way she could…

She slowly rose on her left leg…

And just like that she was standing, standing. Maybe she could actually—

A massive crash shook the corridor and knocked Corinne back down. Her wrist slammed against the deck and for a moment incandescent pain flashed through her body. Something had fallen, something had—

The crash was immediately followed by an explosion.

A missile, Corinne thought. She had been a MechWarrior long enough to recognize the sound of an exploding missile.

She reached up and put her left hand against the cold door.

A second explosion followed the first, and then detonations rippled through the cargo hold. The hatch tore free, shattering the bones in her arm as it flew away.

And then a gout of shrapnel-laden fire shot through the open hatch and Corinne—

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Black Lion-Class WarShip CGBS Bear’s Den

Damian Pirate Point, Clan Ghost Bear Occupation Zone

Richard’s mouth tasted as dirty and dry as a used ashtray. Excruciating pain stabbed through his shoulders and elbows, his knees and wrists—really every part of his body that could bend. His nose was still broken, which made it hard to breathe. He imagined ants were crawling all over every square millimeter of his skin—except the crisped, black skin wrapped around his right hand, an ominous sign that his burns had been severe enough to cause nerve damage.

But none of that was as bad as the chamber itself.

After the asteroid had first hit, he remembered waking up in the truck and thinking he might have been buried alive.

Now he was sure of it.

The medical techs had placed him in a steel tube little bigger than a coffin. Intellectually, Richard understood the importance of hyperbaric oxygen therapy. But if the technicians had left him the slug thrower he had found in the DC locker, he would have shot off the chamber’s locking mechanism and killed every one of them to get out.

The funny thing was, he had never been claustrophobic before.

Just one more thing the asteroid had changed.

The medical techs had not told Richard much about the disaster, but he had gleaned enough to piece together what had happened.

In her haste to put down the rebellion on Damian, Galaxy Commander Tseng had ordered Bear’s Den to jump into a pirate point. Such jumps were often dangerous. Pirate points were gravitational null points, transient phenomenon brought about by the shifting position of a star’s planets. Some were pulled out of nowhere for brief stretches of time, only to disappear just as quickly. A JumpShip captain who did not have precise and updated data on the orbital mechanics of a star system risked destruction by jumping into a pirate point.

Bear’s Den had survived the jump to Damian with no trouble—only to blunder into a passing asteroid moments later. Rocky debris swept up by the asteroid’s gravity slammed into the WarShip first, rippling along the hull like shrapnel, punching through armor and tearing apart the vital systems underneath.

But that was nothing compared to the damage done by the great rock itself. The asteroid, an immense slab of nickel-iron, had clipped the Sharp Claw. It took only the merest brush of contact from the asteroid to rip the DropShip apart, tearing away a full quarter of the Overlord-C.

And obliterating the Third Bear Striker.

A great number of Richard’s brothers and sisters had been killed in an instant. Explosive decompression and blunt force trauma had smashed the life out of scores of warriors and technicians in the blink of an eye. As time bled on, fire and asphyxiation and finally hypothermia came for the rest.

The click of a microphone interrupted his grim reverie and Richard closed his eyes, expecting yet one more command from the medical technicians.

So he was surprised when he heard a familiar voice instead, deep and measured and powerful. “Greetings, Star Commander.”

Richard’s eyes flew open. Star Colonel Cote. Richard was lying on his back as he had been instructed, but now he rolled painfully onto his side so he could see the man peering at him through a flanged sight glass.

The top of Cote’s head was swaddled in bandages and he looked pale beneath his bronze skin.

But he was alive.

Richard reached out with a trembling hand and touched the mike button. “Greetings, Star Colonel.”

“They tell me you pulled eight warriors from the ’Mech Bay before you succumbed to decompression sickness. You saved ten warriors in all, Star Commander. Your bravery may even win you a few lines in the Remembrance.”

Richard blinked, confused. Ten warriors. “Uh, I am sorry, sir, but do you not mean eleven warriors?”

Cote stared down at him, his black eyes grave, his face hard. “No, Star Commander. It is I who is sorry. It was not eleven, but only ten.”

“Tomas,” Richard whispered. “Tomas did not survive.”

Cote was silent for a long moment. “Neg,” he said gently. “Tomas still lives.”

Richard stared up at his commander, at first not understanding.

And then it hit him.

“Corinne,” he whispered.

“The passage was blocked by debris,” said Cote. “We had to take the alternate route. She could not climb on her own, not with her broken foot. I carried Tomas up first, intending to go back for her, but before I could, the spilled ordnance detonated. The explosion punched through the cargo deck bulkhead and into the passageway where she was waiting.” He hesitated. “I am sorry.”

Not with her broken foot.

Richard suddenly remembered the feel of that foot in his hand, how he had jerked it down, snapping the bones in her ankle. She could not make it with her broken foot, the foot he had broken. And he had not been there to carry her. What had she told him before he had left?

To get to safety, we need you.

“I betrayed her,” Richard whispered.

“It was not about her,” snapped Cote.

The Star Colonel’s harsh tone jerked Richard out of his thoughts and he looked up at his commander. “Sir, I—”

“Your valor in the ’Mech Bay cost the life of a single warrior, but saved eight. There is no rational way to look upon that as anything other than a victory.”

“But Corinne was sibkin!” He locked eyes with Cote, fury coursing through his veins.

“You should have beaten her,” said the Star Colonel, his voice cold. “You were stronger than her. Quicker. Smarter. And after what you have just endured, no one can question your resourcefulness or your bravery. You were better than her in every way.” Cote held up a single finger. “Except one.”

Cote shook his head. “Star Captain Corinne had the heart of a warrior, tempered in the crucible of war. But you, Richard Bekker, you with all your fine skills and your impressive codex, you are nevertheless blinded by sentiment.” Cote’s lip curled. “By love.”

The word was like a hammer blow. Love. Love? Romantic love was a rare and forbidden concept among the Clans. Yet Richard could not think of Corinne’s loss without a horrible emptiness opening up inside him, a yawning blackness he did not think he could ever fill. Was this terrible grief what Spheroids called love? Was this the thing that pervaded their entire culture, that filled their songs and their stories?

This?

Cote leaned closer to the little port and Richard struggled to bear up under the weight of that baleful gaze.

“The Ghost Bears have come to the Inner Sphere to save its people from their own decadence. We fight among them, live among them, but we are not them. You must guard against their ways.”

And right then, Richard’s strength failed him. He looked away from that dark gaze.

Without even realizing it, he had strayed from Kerensky’s path.

He had shown Corinne mercy and it had cost him the Trial. He had gone to the ’Mech Bay because he could not live in a world in which he needed to destroy Corinne to advance. He had saved ten warriors—and yet he could only think of the one he had failed.

Either Richard was flawed, broken in some deep part of himself, of the Clan was wrong.

But the Clan could not be wrong.

After a moment, he looked back at the little sight glass, but Cote was gone.

Slowly, Richard lay back down, staring up at the steel surface of his tiny prison.

Corinne’s words suddenly came back to him. Perhaps, one day, war will claim my life. Then I will removed as an obstacle to your success just as today you were removed as an obstacle to mine. How could he know that her words would be proven true on the very day she uttered them?

A true Clanner would step up and grab the opportunity, claim the rank and position, just as Corinne did after the death of Aaron Hall.

But for the first time in his life, Richard was not certain he could do it.

Corinne!

He closed his eyes.

No warrior truly understands the instrument of his destruction until it is too late.

It was the very first thing they had learned in the sibko, he and Corinne, sitting next to each other as they were schooled in the ways of Clan Ghost Bear.

Richard had been so determined to avoid the fate the motto promised. And yet destruction had announced itself, actually announced itself, over the 1MC in a voice that was even accompanied by a jarring alarm for good measure. Their destruction had been as obvious as it possibly could be.

Yet neither he nor Corinne had heard it.

Follow Richard Bekker into the Word of Blake Jihad in Part II of Ghost Bear’s Lament: The Fading Call of Glory

BATTLETECH GLOSSARY

Clan military unit designations are used throughout this book. The information below refers to pre-Stone disarmament, before the end of the Jihad in 3081; late 31st and early 32nd century Clan organizations were scaled down considerably. Only recently have “standard” organization numbers begun to reach these levels once more.

Point: 1 ‘Mech or 5 infantry

Star: 5 ‘Mechs or 25 infantry

Binary: 2 Stars

Trinary: 3 Stars

Cluster: 4–5 Binaries/Trinaries

Galaxy: 3-5 Clusters

Nova: 1 ‘Mech Star and 1 infantry Star

Supernova: 1 ‘Mech Binary and 2 infantry Stars

ABTAKHA

An abtakha is a captured warrior who is adopted into his new Clan as a warrior.

AUTOCANNON

This is a rapid-fire, auto-loading weapon. Light autocannon range from 30 to 90mm caliber, and heavy autocannon may be from 80 to 120mm or more. The weapon fires high-speed streams of high-explosive, armor-piercing shells.

BATCHALL

The batchall is the ritual by which Clan warriors issue combat challenges. Though the type of challenge varies, most begin with the challenger identifying himself, stating the prize of the contest, and requesting that the defender identify the forces at his disposal. The defender also has the right to name the location of the trial. The two sides then bid for what forces will participate in the contest. The subcommander who bids to fight with the  number of forces wins the right and responsibility to make the attack. The defender may increase the stakes by demanding a prize of equal or lesser value if he wants.

BATTLEMECH

BattleMechs are the most powerful war machines ever built. First developed by Terran scientists and engineers, these huge, man-made vehicles are faster, more mobile, better-armored and more heavily armed than any twentieth-century tank. Ten to twelve meters tall and equipped with particle projection cannons, lasers, rapid-fire autocannon and missiles, they pack enough firepower to flatten anything but another BattleMech. A small fusion reactor provides virtually unlimited power, and BattleMechs can be adapted to fight in environments ranging from sun-baked deserts to subzero arctic icefields.

BLOODNAME

A Bloodname is the surname associated with a Bloodright, descended from one of the 800 warriors who stood with Nicholas Kerensky to form the Clans. A warrior must win the use of a Bloodname in a Trial of Bloodright. Only Bloodnamed warriors may sit on Clan Councils or hold the post of Loremaster, Khan, or ilKhan, and only the genetic material from the Bloodnamed is used in the warrior caste eugenics program.

BONDCORD

The woven bracelet worn by bondsmen is known as a bondcord. Warrior-caste bondsmen wear a three-strand bondcord on their right wrists, with the color and patterning of the cords signifying the Clan and unit responsible for the warrior’s capture. The cords represent integrity, fidelity, and prowess. The bondholder may cut each strand as he or she feels the bondsman demonstrates the associated quality. According to tradition, when the final cord is severed, the bondsman is considered a free member of his or her new Clan and adopted into the warrior caste. Each Clan follows this tradition to varying degrees. For example, Clan Wolf accepts nearly all worthy individuals regardless of their past, while Clan Smoke Jaguar generally chose to adopt only trueborn warriors.

BONDSMAN

A bondsman is a prisoner held in a form of indentured servitude until released or accepted into the Clan. Most often, bondsmen are captured warriors who fulfill roles in the laborer or technician castes. Their status is represented by a woven bondcord, and they are obliged by honor and tradition to work for their captors to the best of their abilities.

CASTE

The Clans are divided into five castes: warrior, scientist, merchant, technician, and laborer, in descending order of influence. Each has many subcastes based on specialized skills. The warrior caste is largely the product of the artificial breeding program; those candidates who fail their Trial of Position are assigned to the scientist or technician caste, giving those castes a significant concentration of trueborn members. Most of the civilian castes are made up of the results of scientist-decreed arranged marriages within the castes. 

The children of all castes undergo intensive scrutiny during their schooling to determine the caste for which they are best suited, though most end up in the same caste as their parents. This process allows children born to members of civilian castes to enter training to become warriors, though they belong to the less-prestigious ranks of the freeborn.

CIRCLE OF EQUALS

The area in which a trial takes place is known as the Circle of Equals. It ranges in size from a few dozen feet for personal combat to tens of miles for large-scale trials. Though traditionally a circle, the area can be any shape. 

CRUSADER

A Crusader is a Clansman who espouses the invasion of the Inner Sphere and the re-establishment of the Star League by military force. Most Crusaders are contemptuous of the people of the Inner Sphere, whom they view as barbarians, and of freeborns within their own Clans.

DEZGRA

Any disgraced individual or unit is known as dezgra. Disgrace may come through refusing orders, failing in an assigned task, acting dishonorably, or demonstrating cowardice. 

DROPSHIPS

Because interstellar JumpShips must avoid entering the heart of a solar system, they must “dock” in space at a considerable distance from a system’s inhabited worlds. DropShips were developed for interplanetary travel. As the name implies, a DropShip is attached to hardpoints on the JumpShip’s drive core, later to be dropped from the parent vessel after in-system entry. Though incapable of FTL travel, DropShips are highly maneuverable, well-armed and sufficiently aerodynamic to take off from and land on a planetary surface. The journey from the jump point to the inhabited worlds of a system usually requires a normal-space journey of several days or weeks, depending on the type of star.

FREEBIRTH

Freebirth is a Clan epithet used by trueborn members of the warrior caste to express disgust or frustration. For one trueborn to use this curse to refer to another trueborn is considered a mortal insult.

FREEBORN

An individual conceived and born by natural means is referred to as freeborn. Its emphasis on the artificial breeding program allows Clan society to view such individuals as second-class citizens.

HEGIRA

Hegira is the rite by which a defeated foe may withdraw from the field of battle without further combat and with no further loss of honor.

ISORLA

The spoils of battle, including bondsmen, claimed by the victorious warriors is called isorla.

JUMPSHIPS

Interstellar travel is accomplished via JumpShips, first developed in the twenty-second century. These somewhat ungainly vessels consist of a long, thin drive core and a sail resembling an enormous parasol, which can extend up to a kilometer in width. The ship is named for its ability to “jump” instantaneously across vast distances of space. After making its jump, the ship cannot travel until it has recharged by gathering up more solar energy.

The JumpShip’s enormous sail is constructed from a special metal that absorbs vast quantities of electromagnetic energy from the nearest star. When it has soaked up enough energy, the sail transfers it to the drive core, which converts it into a space-twisting field. An instant later, the ship arrives at the next jump point, a distance of up to thirty light-years. This field is known as hyperspace, and its discovery opened to mankind the gateway to the stars.

JumpShips never land on planets. Interplanetary travel is carried out by DropShips, vessels that are attached to the JumpShip until arrival at the jump point.

KHAN (kaKhan, saKhan)

Each Clan Council elects two of its number as Khans, who serve as rulers of the Clan and its representatives on the Grand Council. Traditionally, these individuals are the best warriors in the Clan, but in practice many Clans instead elect their most skilled politicians. The senior Khan, sometimes referred to as the kaKhan, acts as the head of the Clan, overseeing relationships between castes and Clans. The junior Khan, known as the saKhan, acts as the Clan’s warlord. The senior Khan decides the exact distribution of tasks, and may assign the saKhan additional or different duties.

The term “kaKhan” is considered archaic, and is rarely used.

LASER

An acronym for “Light Amplification through Stimulated Emission of Radiation.” When used as a weapon, the laser damages the target by concentrating extreme heat onto a small area. BattleMech lasers are designated as small, medium or large. Lasers are also available as shoulder-fired weapons operating from a portable backpack power unit. Certain range-finders and targeting equipment also employ low-level lasers.

LRM

This is an abbreviation for “Long-Range Missile,” an indirect-fire missile with a high-explosive warhead.

POSSESSION, TRIAL OF

A Trial of Possession resolves disputes between two parties over ownership or control. This can include equipment, territory, or even genetic material. The traditional batchall forms the core of the trial in order to encourage the participants to resolve the dispute with minimal use of force.

REMEMBRANCE, THE

The Remembrance is an ongoing heroic saga that describes Clan history from the time of the Exodus to the present day. Each Clan maintains its own version, reflecting its opinions and perceptions of events. Inclusion in The Remembrance is one of the highest honors possible for a member of the Clans. All Clan warriors can recite passages from The Remembrance from memory, and written copies of the book are among the few nontechnical books allowed in Clan society. These books are usually lavishly illustrated in a fashion similar to the illuminated manuscripts and Bibles of the medieval period. Warriors frequently paint passages of The Remembrance on the sides of their OmniMechs, fighters, and battle armor.

SEYLA

Seyla is a ritual response in Clan ceremonies. The origin of this phrase is unknown, though it may come from the Biblical notation “selah,” thought to be a musical notation or a reference to contemplation.

SRM

This is the abbreviation for “Short-Range Missile,” a direct-trajectory missile wth high-explosive or armor-piercing explosive warheads. They have a range of less than one kilometer and are only reliably accurate at ranges of less than 300 meters. They are more powerful, however, than LRMs.

SUCCESSOR LORDS

After the fall of the first Star League, the remaining members of the High Council each asserted his or her right to become First Lord. Their star empires became known as the Successor States and the rulers as Successor Lords. The Clan Invasion temporarily interrupted centuries of warfare known as the Succession Wars, which first began in 2786. 

SURAT

A Clan epithet, alluding to the rodent of the same name, which disparages an individual’s genetic heritage. As such, it is one of the most vulgar and offensive epithets among the Clans.

TOUMAN

The fighting arm of a Clan is known as the Touman.

TROTHKIN

Used formally, trothkin refers to members of an extended sibko. It is more commonly used to denote members of a gathering, and warriors also frequently use it when addressing someone they consider a peer. 

TRUEBORN/TRUEBIRTH

A warrior born of the Clan’s artificial breeding program is known as a trueborn. In less formal situations, the Clans use the term truebirth.

WARDEN

A Warden is a Clansman who believes that the Clans were established to guard the Inner Sphere from outside threats rather than to conquer it and re-establish the Star League by force. Most Wardens were opposed to the recent invasion of the Inner Sphere.

ZELLBRIGEN

Zellbrigen is the body of rules governing duels. These rules dictate that such actions are one-on-one engagements, and that any warriors not immediately challenged should stay out of the battle until an opponent is free. 

Once a Clan warrior engages a foe, no other warriors on his or her side may target that foe, even if it means allowing the death of the Clan warrior. Interfering in a duel by attacking a foe that is already engaged constitutes a major breach of honor, and usually results in loss of rank. Such action also opens the battle to a melee.

WANT MORE FAST-PACED MILITARY ACTION? WINTER DRAGON IS A SUSPENSE-FILLED NOVEL BY STEVEN MOHAN, JR, WRITING AS HENRY MARTIN. LOOK FOR IT ON SALE NOW IN FINER ELECTRONIC BOOKSTORES.

The submarine USS Pasadena draws a routine duty: bird-dogging a Chinese naval exercise. But what happens next is anything but routine. Pasadena watches as a Chinese submarine sinks a Chinese destroyer. Neither the People’s Republic of China nor the United States understand what’s really happened. The Americans believe they’ve witnessed another Tiananmen Square. The Chinese think they’ve been attacked by the lurking American submarine.

And the two most powerful nations on Earth stumble towards war. 

It will be up to diplomat Sandra Johnson to unravel the mystery–before all Asia is consumed in the fire of a Winter Dragon.

RED ON RED

1

USS Pasadena, East China Sea, 200 miles SSW of Qingdao

It had already been a long and dangerous deployment for the attack submarine Pasadena and here, at the end of it, Commander Mark Castillo was especially determined to be careful. Tired men made mistakes, and on a submarine, mistakes could be fatal.

It was a chilling truth that Castillo had recently seen in operation, up close and personal.

This was what he was thinking as he popped his head into the darkened closet that was Sonar and studied the sharp emerald lines that sliced through the waterfall display. The constant murmur of the ocean and its creatures showed up as a gentle green static that moved from top to bottom on the screen, giving the display its name. Sharp lines signified something else.

Something manmade.

The sonar watch supervisor was STS2(SS) Jimmy Busfield, a rail thin kid from the Texas panhandle. The boy crouched on the edge of his chair, staring intently at the display, hands pressed to his earphones. The ghostly glow of the screen colored his face pale green.

“Sovremenny?” Castillo asked, wondering if the intel report from the latest satellite broadcast was right.

Busfield looked up. “Oh, mornin’, skipper.” He pulled the phone off his left ear but kept the other one on.

One of the other sonar techs on watch glanced back but kept his phones on. The rest never turned around.

 “Yessir,” said Busfield. “She’s a Type 956, one of the skimmers the Russians sold the Chinese ‘round the turn of the century.”

Castillo smiled at the use of the word ‘skimmer,’ a sign of the casual contempt American submariners felt for their surface cousins. To a submariner all surface ships were either skimmers or targets. “Who is she?”

“Computer makes her Fu Zhou out of Qingdao.”

Castillo frowned and sipped iced Coke from a navy mug. That was what most amazed his crew about him. Not that he was a second generation immigrant from the bad part of Denver who had risen to command one of the U.S. Navy’s silent killers nor that he graduated from Mines with degrees in Metallurgy and Mechanical Engineering, but that he’d gotten through an eighteen-year naval career without learning to drink coffee.

The situation plot in Control showed the destroyer moving south-southwest toward the Taiwan Straight and intel reported a fleet of amphibs and surface combatants gathering off Qingdao. The Chinese were setting up a major exercise. The report said that they were calling it AUTUMN HATCHLING, supposedly in honor of their newly designated national bird, the red-crested crane.

Castillo thought the name was apt for another reason. From where he stood HATCHLING looked to be a mock-invasion of Taiwan and it was clear that the Chinese hadn’t yet figured out the finer parts of amphibious ops.

At least not the ASW part.

“She’s a picket,” said Castillo.

Busfield nodded. Officially sonar techs weren’t privy to tactical intel, but the theories flowed freely in Control and Castillo knew that Busfield was smart enough to guess that Fu Zhou was running south ahead of the main invasion fleet.

“Has she made us?” asked Castillo.

Busfield shook his head. “That’s a big negahatchy, skipper. We’re under the layer and Sovremennys don’t have much in the way of sonar. She doesn’t even have a tail.”

Castillo nodded. Fu Zhou wasn’t much of a threat to submarines, even a tired, old 688-boat. She didn’t have a towed-array sonar that she could drop below the thermocline, the layer of water where the sharp temperature drop shielded submarines from surface sonar. Better yet, the Sovremenny’s only ASW armament was four 21-inch torpedo tubes. The new Chinese government had just purchased three Udaloys, destroyers plenty capable of hunting submarines, but thankfully they hadn’t taken delivery from the Russians yet.

Pasadena had drawn easy duty in tracking the destroyer during the exercise and Castillo was glad of it. It had already been an eventful WESTPAC. His crew was ready to return to Pearl.

Crew fatigue worried Castillo a lot more than the emerging Chinese exercise or even the tropical depression moving in from the south. There was no room for mistakes on a submarine. As if to underscore that fact, the Russians had lost a Victor III, the Daniil Moskovskiy, six weeks before in these very waters.

One of the Victor’s torpedoes had spontaneously lit off, opening her to sea. The torpedo room had flooded in less than a minute. The additional weight in the bow had pulled the submarine down nose first, throwing men and equipment around. When the Russians finally tried to blow ballast it was too late. Someone managed to get the first water tight door shut and dogged, which arrested the flooding, but which trapped the sailors in the forward compartment. Then Moskovskiy settled on the bottom.

Pasadena had been first on scene and they’d heard it all. Before the Russians had warned her off, they could hear the sound of trapped men banging on the hull and crying for help.

The Russian Navy deployed a DSRV out of Vladivostok. It took them sixteen hours to arrive, but the Russians refused assistance from both American and Japanese naval units. Working around the clock the Russians managed to bring up 54 of the 98-man crew.

Castillo shook his head. The best way to avoid a similar fate was to focus on the present. “What else can you tell me about the destroyer?”

“She’s on course one nine three, 28 knots, I’d guess she has a full bell on. Her port screw’s cavitatin’. Probably time for an overhaul. Shift change was about 45 minutes ago, I could hear doors slamming and toilets flushing.” Busfield grinned. “Anything else you’d like to–”

The smile suddenly disappeared. He snapped the left ear-phone back on and his eyes darted back to the display. He toggled the 7MC switch. “Conn, Sonar. I have a subsurface contact.”

Castillo swore silently to himself. He stepped out of Sonar and called, “All stop.”

“All stop, aye aye, sir,” answered Lieutenant, j.g. Bob Glazer, the officer of the deck. “All stop.”

“All stop, aye,” answered the helmsman, who leaned forward and rung up all stop on the engine order telegraph. A second later a bell rang and the indicator matched the ordered speed. “Maneuvering answers all stop.”

Castillo’s jaw set. He’d had a two-thirds bell on, making turns for eighteen knots, radiating noise into the East China Sea like nobody’s business.

There was no reason to believe that Fu Zhou had heard them with her bow-mounted sonar, but a submarine was quite a different matter.

Castillo poked his head back into Sonar. “What do you have, Busfield?”

“She’s quiet, skipper. No reactor pumps.” He met Castillo’s eyes. “I’d say a diesel boat running on batteries, making turns for five, six knots, bearing three two zero.”

“Range?” asked Castillo, already knowing the answer.

Busfield shook his head. “I’m gonna need a turn, skipper.”

Castillo sipped his Coke. So was this a Chinese boat running interference for the destroyer or was this another hunter after the same quarry as Pasadena?

“Is she a Dolphin?” Intel reported that two of Taiwan’s four Dolphins were at sea. Undoubtedly, the Taiwanese would take great interest in the People’s Liberation Army Navy force assembling in the East China Sea.

Busfield screwed his eyes shut, listening to the soft whisper of the submarine’s propeller. His forehead glistened with sweat. “No, sir, not a Dolphin. Blade count is wrong.” The sonarman opened his eyes. “I make her a Kilo.”

Damn. That made her Chinese. How had he managed to get caught with his shorts down? The Russian-built Kilo was a very capable platform. Silent and heavily armed she would be a deadly adversary.

Castillo was tall for a submariner, six foot even, with dark eyes and skin the soft color of bronze. His father was Anglo, but his mom was Mexican (Castillo’s maternal grandmother had called him Marcos Castillo Martinez until the day she died) and he favored his mother.

He was good-looking enough to turn womens’ heads, but too much of a boy scout to ever notice. He was entirely devoted to his wife Dianne and their three children.

Castillo’s face had a way of taking on a sharp edge when he was thinking hard. The lean muscles in his jaw tightened, his brows hunched together, and his dark eyes smoldered. It was a look that often unnerved people, and Castillo was thinking hard now.

Castillo stepped back into control and caught Glazer’s eye. “Bare steerageway. Come to course three three seven.”

The OOD repeated the order and the Pasadena slipped ahead to three knots, the minimum speed at which the boat could hold a course. The helmsman put the wheel over and began a slow, ponderous turn.

Castillo didn’t know where the Chinese boat was and if he used active sonar he’d give away his own position. All passive sonar would tell him was a direction. But if he turned, it would give him a baseline to triangulate the Kilo.

“Man the fire control tracking party,” ordered Castillo.

The OOD and his watch team began plotting information on the Kilo, trying to pin her down. Tense minutes ticked by. Castillo looked over Glazer’s shoulder as the OOD worked out the problem and checked it against the BSY-1’s solution. He looked up. “She bears three one three at 4,000 yards.”

Something was wrong. Castillo lined the ships up in his head, the Chinese destroyer to the north, but moving south-southwest, the Chinese Kilo drifting toward the surface ship.

Of course.

She was lining up to take a shot.

“I need a course on the Kilo, right away,” said Castillo.

Glazer frowned at him. “What do you think it is, Captain?”

Castillo smiled. “I think we’ve stumbled into the middle of a Chinese war game.”

It was the only thing that made sense. If AUTUMN HATCHLING really were a dry run-through of an invasion the Chinese would simulate Taiwan’s response, and Taiwan’s first line of defense was its four American-built Dolphins armed with Mk 48 ADCAPs.

The PLAN had few effective ASW assets. It would be easy enough for the Taiwanese to pick off China’s troop carriers one-by-one. No invasion would be successful unless the Chinese learned how to conduct effective ASW ops.

If that was the goal of this exercise, the captain of the Fu Zhou had failed miserably. He wasn’t zigzagging and he was moving slowly enough that the diesel boat had been able to get into prime firing position.

After a few minutes, Glazer said, “The sub’s on course zero five two.”

Castillo nodded. Just as he thought. He toggled the 7MC. “Sonar, Conn. Do you have an ID on the Kilo?”

“The computer doesn’t have a match,” answered Busfield’s voice. “She must be one of the new ones, 376 or 377.”

“Will you be able to hear her if we move out of the layer?”

“As long as the TACTAS is deployed we can hear her.”

The Tactical Towed Array Sonar was a string of hydrophones attached to a long cable. Pasadena could rise above the thermocline and still listen below using the towed array.

The Kilo had played a good game but she’d lost. (To Pasadena at least. There was still no indication that Fu Zhou knew she was there.) If she moved the U.S. sub would hear her with her tail. If she stayed where she was they could use set and drift to calculate her position. And the nuclear-powered 688-boat had the advantage of time. Eventually the diesel-powered Kilo would have to come up to snorkel. When that happened Pasadena would have her.

Castillo gave his OOD a wolfish grin. “Take her up to pee dee, Mr. Glazer. I want to see this.”

Glazer smiled back. “Aye, aye, Captain. Diving officer, make your depth six-two feet.”

The diving officer, a torpedoman chief, leaned forward and barked several orders. To his left the chief of the watch adjusted the ship’s trim using the ballast control panel. The helmsman and stern planesman pulled back on their control yokes. Pressurized air flushed ballast water to sea while hydraulics angled the bow and stern planes up. Water streamed over the submarine’s control surfaces providing lift.

Pasadena started to rise.

Castillo reached up into the overhead and grabbed an EAB manifold, anchoring himself as the ship took on a distinct up angle.

There was no doubt how this encounter would turn out. The Kilo had the destroyer dead-to-rights. It was always fun to watch a submarine get the better of a skimmer. One of Castillo’s proudest moments had been when he’d slipped into the middle of the Reagan battle group during a RIMPAC and gotten close enough to snap pictures of the mess cranks throwing garbage off the carrier’s stern.

Castillo set his Coke down in a cup holder and went to the periscope stand. He began searching for a shadow in the water, turning round and round, his face pressed to the periscope, sweat trickling down the back of his neck.

Rising toward the surface was the most dangerous evolution a submarine ever conducted. Castillo only had a sketchy idea of the surface picture and it wouldn’t take a very big freighter to send his submarine straight to the bottom of the East China Sea.

The periscope broke the surface and Castillo’s quick three-sixty revealed only the Chinese destroyer. He estimated her target aspect as port bow. Moboard told him she was three thousand yards away and closing. Like the Kilo, Pasadena was lined up for a nice shot.

And the destroyer still didn’t know they were there.

Castillo smiled. This was the perfect opportunity to give his crew a little practice. “OOD, develop a firing solution on the Chinese destroyer.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

The 7MC blared to life. “Conn, sonar, the Kilo’s flooding tubes.”

Castillo tensed. He briefly considered the possibility that the Kilo was going to take a shot at Pasadena, but it just didn’t make any sense. Even if China were preparing for a real invasion instead of just conducting an exercise why would they commence hostilities before they had all their forces in place? No, the Kilo had to be trying to rattle them.

Castillo’s hands tightened on the periscope grips. The Kilo’s captain would find that it would take a lot more than an open torpedo tube to shake Mark Castillo.

“Conn, sonar,” shouted Busfield, “I have a high speed screw in the water.” Panic edged the young man’s voice.

The rapid high-pitched pinging of the torpedo’s active sonar filled Control.

“Fish in the water,” shouted the OOD.

Adrenaline surged through Castillo’s body. Fish in the water. Tube two was set up for a snapshot. He could release his own fish, deploy countermeasures to decoy the Chinese torpedo, and crash-dive beneath the layer.

But he had only seconds to decide.

And if he fired on a Chinese vessel without provocation he’d start a war.

“Doppler shift on the torpedo,” yelled Busfield.

“That’s affirm,” said the OOD. “She’s opening. Bearing three zero zero. Three one zero. Three two zero.”

Of course. Castillo took a deep breath. “The fish is meant for the destroyer.”

Glazer looked at him with a blank face.

“It’s an exercise round, lieutenant.”

A relieved smile crossed Glazer’s face.

Instead of high explosives, this torpedo was armed with a suite of sensors. The exercise round would track the destroyer’s movements as she tried to evade the attack, but it wouldn’t explode.

Castillo reached forward and toggled the 7MC. “Sonar, Conn, we believe the fish to be an exercise round.”

“Conn, Sonar, aye.”

Castillo leaned into the periscope but he closed his eyes and said a quick Hail Mary. Thank God he hadn’t taken that snapshot.

He opened his eyes. The Chinese destroyer had finally figured out she was being stalked from below. She kicked up a rooster tail of white spray as she turned her stern toward the torpedo and put on flank speed.

It wouldn’t save her. The max speed of the Test-71 torpedo was forty knots. The best the destroyer could do was thirty-three. The destroyer’s fate was governed by an equation whose variables were time, speed, and distance, and the solution set was rapidly converging.

“Surface contact executing a hard turn and coming up in speed,” said Busfield.

“I see it,” said Castillo softly. He could see the fish’s wake now as the weapon closed the destroyer. There wasn’t anything that could save the Fu Zhou’s captain now. He’d have some explaining to do to his squadron commander during debrief. That was one after-action report Castillo was glad he wouldn’t have to write.

“Second torpedo in the water,” shouted Busfield. “And the Kilo’s moving.”

Castillo frowned. A second exercise round? That couldn’t be right. He was about to turn and ask the OOD what Busfield had said when the first torpedo hit.

A fountain of flame and spray erupted from the destroyer’s stern. The shock wave followed seconds later, a deep angry rumble that shook Pasadena like she was a toy. Castillo grabbed the periscope to keep from falling.

“That was a war shot,” shouted the Chief of the Watch.

“Get me bearing and range to that fucking submarine,” shouted Castillo. “Do it now.”

He looked back in his periscope just in time to see the second fish hit. The torpedo struck the destroyer amidships, breaking her in two. By Castillo’s count it took fourteen seconds for both halves of the broken ship to slide smoothly beneath the sea.

He flicked the periscope grips up. “Where’s the Kilo?”

Glazer glanced at the diving officer.

“Where’s the Kilo?” Castillo roared.

“We lost her,” said the OOD. “In the noise of the explosions.”

Castillo clenched his jaw and stabbed at the 7MC. “Sonar, Conn.”

No response.

“Sonar, Conn.”

Castillo pushed through the Sonar room door. Busfield lay slumped over his console. One of the young techs leaned over the petty officer, his eyes wide with fear. “You OK, Jimmy?”

 Castillo shouldered the panicked seaman aside and ripped the headphones off Busfield’s head. A thin trace of blood marked the boy’s ear. He must’ve had the gains turned all the way up.

Busfield blinked and looked up. “Skipper?”

Castillo swore under his breath and stabbed the 7MC. “OOD, get the corpsman up here. And a relief sonarman.”

The boy had been stunned by the sudden sound of the concussion amplified by Pasadena’s sonar, but he’d be OK. That was more than Castillo could say for the poor bastards on the destroyer.

Castillo stepped out of Sonar, a man whose nice orderly world had suddenly gone straight to hell. A Chinese submarine had just sunk a Chinese destroyer. “Kilo?”

Glazer shook his head.

There might be survivors on the surface. Castillo’s responsibility under maritime law was clear, but the Kilo was still out there somewhere and if she would sink one of her own who was to say she wouldn’t take a shot at an American SSN? He couldn’t conduct rescue ops and hunt an enemy submarine at the same time.

His ship had circled impotently as the men trapped in the forward compartment of the Moskovskiy slowly died, their desperate tapping growing fainter and fainter as he listened. Castillo squeezed his eyes shut, drew a deep breath, and made his decision. He opened his eyes and said, “OOD, surface the ship.”

“Sir?” said Glazer.

“You heard me,” snapped Castillo. “There are men dying up there. Sailors just like you and me.”

Glazer turned away. “Surface the ship, aye aye, sir.”

Castillo stabbed a button on the 7MC. “Radio, Conn. Get out here, Chief.”

RMC Frank Borkow stepped out of Radio. “Do you want to send a distress signal, skipper?”

“Not now, Chief,” snapped Castillo, his voice wavering with emotion. “I have flash message traffic for the National Command Authority.”

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