Way Of The Clans

by Robert Thurston

  The barracks, which had once seemed so crowded, suddenly seemed cavernous. The winds of Ironhold came through old cracks in the building and created uncomfortable draughts. Aidan caught another cold, as did Rena. Issued only a rough piece of gray cloth to handle such an illness, Rena annoyed Aidan by telling him not to steal her cloth to wipe his nose. That made him furious, because his own pronounced sense of personal hygiene made him careful to use only his own little gray swatch.

  Marthe became more silent than ever. Two days after Tymm's departure, she moved her bed into the gap, thus isolating herself from the other four cadets. Bret, Rena, and Peri did not mind her withdrawal as much as Aidan did. After their last conversation, however, he could no longer find a reason to speak to her himself.

  "We do not have enough people left to form a team tussle," Bret said out of the blue one night.

  "You will always be a child, you stupid freebirth," Rena muttered.

  Hearing the reviled epithet, Bret jumped on Rena and wrestled her to the barracks floor. His eyes seemed inflamed with anger. Aidan rushed to the grappling pair and tried to lift Bret off Rena's body. Peri, reacting just as quickly, pulled Aidan away.

  "Let them fight. It is too exciting to miss."

  "You call fighting among ourselves exciting?"

  "The way things have been lately."

  She nodded her head toward Marthe, who was merely sitting on her bunk and viewing the fight as if it were an entertainment.

  "This is what I tried to tell you, Peri—about the sibko and-"

  "Let it rest, Aidan. It is a lost cause. What we have to do is get through it."

  Bret and Rena's brawl was getting vicious. She had poked him in the eye to get him off her, then kicked him between the legs. That would have finished off most persons, but Bret, his tenacity intact, managed to plunge forward and butt Rena hard in the abdomen. As headbutts go, it did not look like much, but it had its effect on Rena, whose face contorted in pain. She doubled over.

  It was a ridiculous sight, each of them bent at the waist and trying to suppress moans of pain. (That was another contribution of Falconer Joanna, the requirement not to show pain. "Think of it, eyasses. You hurt and your enemy can see it. What confidence, what an edge you are giving away.") Peri put her arm around Bret, said some soothing words, while Aidan attended to Rena. Rena's eyes were glazed.

  Glancing up, it seemed to Aidan that, for the first time in a long time, the four of them were grouped together in a way reminiscent of old sibko days. He reached out and took Peri's hand, thus linking the quartet together.

  From the other side of the room came a loud laugh. Marthe was amused.

  "Fools," she said, her intonation mimicking, it seemed, Joanna's.

  Marthe walked to the group and knelt down across from Aidan. She put her hand on Bret's shoulder and gripped Rena's arm. She smiled at Aidan. Perhaps it was his imagination, but it seemed to him like the old smile. It certainly reminded him of the two of them together before warrior training began.

  "Fools," she said again and shook her head slowly from side to side.

  The sibko broke up in a few minutes, and the wounds of both battlers were attended to.

  That night, another sleepless one for Aidan, he wondered if they had restored the sibko's old camaraderie. It would be miraculous if it were so.

  The next day showed that was not to be. Bret went back to being argumentative, Rena sullen, Peri enigmatic. And Marthe stayed in her corner of the massive barracks, aloof, uninterested in anything her fellow sibkin might do.

  There was never another moment when sibko feelings reemerged. They were separate forever. It did not matter. It was not long before only three of them were left, at the edge of a broad meadow, awaiting with cadets from other sibkos their opportunity to prove themselves in a Trial of Position and become warriors of the Jade Falcon Clan.

  12

  I earned my Bloodname more through staying power than actual acts of heroism, wrote Falconer Commander Ter Roshak. I participated in so many battles, racked up so many kills, led a Star that seemed blessed in rarely suffering even minor casualties—all minor achievements but they added up until I was worthy to contend for a Blood-name. I even won my Trial of Bloodright by being the last one standing, being the survivor, and not through any extraordinary skills.

  Because I had studied Ramon Mattlov so thoroughly, I became good at bidding during my career, but that was my only talent related to strategy. In actual warfare, strategy was not my forte. Sometimes I was lucky enough to have an adjutant who covered my weakness in that area, but mostly I just blundered into the middle of dancing 'Mechs and flying projectiles and figured out how to get out of it. I suppose tactics were my specialty. Once in the middle of a conflict, I knew what to do, almost instinctively. I barked out orders to the rest of my Star, they carried them out, and we won. I saw the enemy's strategy and countered it. If five 'Mechs were converging on three of us, I knew how to deploy my forces, use surrounding terrain, feint and thrust, make surprise jumps, hide when necessary, tromp with my 'Mech's heavy feet on enemy pilots escaped from their cockpits, and whatever else was needed to extricate my command from an engagement successfully. I turned odds against into odds for.

  But now I am in danger of becoming old, losing my edge, settling like fresh dirt into the grave of my memories.

  Now that I think of it, my real talent was for logistics. I know of nobody who was better at arranging for the proper supplies, scavenging for food and shelter among hostile villages, transporting troops quickly and efficiently. The logistical mind sees what is needed most immediately, next-most immediately, and so on, then goes out and gets it. A logistical mind thrust into battle becomes, perhaps, a tactical one. In battle I would take stock of the dangers in exactly the same manner I planned logistics. I decided what was the most dangerous element or factor in the battle, the next-most, and so on. Once I had that set in my mind, I worked out the necessities coolly and calmly, and perhaps that accounts for my success record.

  But I got away with it only so long. Superiors soon saw that I was a good warrior but not a hero. As they are prone to do, they got the best out of me, then consigned me to this duty of wet-nursing cadets. I will not say I am bitter about the assignment. I gain from it a certain amount of satisfaction. And it takes planning, too. I determine early on which cadets have the potential and which will undoubtedly be reassigned to the lesser castes. The warrior caste demands near-perfection, and the only way to obtain it is by winnowing down a sibko to its two, three, or four best cadets to compete in the final Trial of Position. Occasionally I have seen a sibko produce more than five—that is only logical, considering that the gene-pool contribution in some sibkos is nothing short of spectacular—but it is rare to see that many reach the last stage. It is estimated that half of the cadets fail this final trial, too. I am proud that none of the sibkos I have supervised has ever failed to produce at least one successful warrior.

  There are those who criticize the warrior program as it is practiced here on Ironhold, those who have an economical turn to their minds. They say that we produce too few warriors, that our armies grow too slowly, and BattleMechs will be left gathering dust in underground caches. Their arguments become poignant when they discuss actual wars, where warriors may be killed at a faster rate than we are turning them out here. Yet we do produce many more warriors than anyone might expect, what with all the training units spread out over Ironhold. I am, after all, only one of more than a hundred falconer commanders in charge of training units, and each of our units processes at least twenty sibkos. I am overseeing twenty-six sibkos at present, ranging from newly arrived contingents to the sibkos whose members have been whittled down to their survivors. I believe we are, in fact, shipping out warriors at an astonishing rate, given the demanding, harrowing, and long training program they have to get through. Nicholas Kerensky would, I think, have been satisfied, and undoubtedly proud, of our accomplishments. The warriors we produce do tend to valida
te his genetic programs, starting with the gene pool from which most of us who qualify have emerged. His theories of eliminating the worst traits, those that interfered with the skills and thus the success of a warrior, and transmitting the best traits, those of our most skilled and wondrous warriors, to sibling companies have been proven over and over. And here on Ironhold, we carry on the theories by taking these products of the genetic program and doing our own eliminations. The end result is that we train the best warriors humanly possible. That is the way of the Clan and the wonder of the genetic program.

  I am not prone to nostalgia (a negative trait if there ever was one), but I sometimes think of my own sibko and our days in training. We were a rough group, unlike some of the sibkos in training now, and at least half of us disposed of the other half before we got down to the serious business of molding ourselves into cadets worthy of testing. My first time out in a stripped-down 'Mech, I killed one of my sibkin. Looking down at his corpse, I wondered if we had ever been close. I walked away from the body with no regrets. And regret has not been a part of my arsenal since.

  The Mattlov/Pryde sibko has reached its final stages. Five youngsters remain, including Cadet Aidan, whom I have observed carefully ever since noting such a strong Mattlov resemblance. They are nervous, eager, almost ready to attain that curious psychological blend of individual and machine that occurs when a warrior is at one with his 'Mech. I have tried to explain this feeling to many people over the years, but few non-warriors have even approached understanding. Even some warriors have claimed ignorance of this phenomenon, saying it is just the feedback from the neurohelmet that creates the illusion of oneness. But it could not be merely the neurohelmet. I fought countless battles with my headgear damaged and lost not an iota of my connection to the machine. I cannot imagine any warrior being successful in a 'Mech without having the sense of it as a living being for whom he or she is the driving force, the brain. But even that does not express it. The meld feels almost like a joining of metal and circuitry with the skin and innards of the pilot. Drivers of vehicles have told me they have often felt the same way about their machines.

  Looking at the roster of Aidan's sibko, as I am doing now, I am impressed with the achievements of this quintet of survivors. Still, I suspect that one or two of them might not make it to the last test. Cadet Peri, whose intellect nearly matches that of the top student, Cadet Marthe, still lags appreciably in her mechanical skills. It may be dangerous to allow her to go much further. She will be useful in another caste. No sense wasting a life for purposes of bravado. I must speak with Falconer Joanna about Peri.

  Of the rest, Marthe and Aidan have the superior skills, although only Marthe really knows it. I can see the doubts in Aidan's eyes, the residual effects of the riding that Joanna gives him. She has done everything to take away his confidence, to break him. But he keeps coming back, rising to his impressive full height as he did when she fought him so hard on that first day long ago when the sibko first arrived on Ironhold. Resilience seems to be his special talent. Yet, there is a weariness in him that worries me. I have told Joanna not to be so harsh with him, but she is adamant. She does not believe in the theory that says a training officer should go from being disciplinarian to mentor. Indeed, she insists that being kind to a cadet, even one who seems destined for success, gives him or her a certain slack that can affect everything from concentration to timing. Perhaps she is right. With my irritability and sudden temper, I would make a poor mentor. Yet, other officers who advocate the milder approach also turn out successful warriors with their methods.

  It often seems strange that our training goes against the grain of military training as practiced in past eras. In earlier times, the idea was to take separate individuals and mold them into a unit that would work and fight efficiently together. As I understand it from some readings, the process consisted of conditioning the minds of the trainees. Any trace of individuality was removed in favor of group thinking so that the military unit would be united. In our approach, we travel an opposite route. We take a group that is united, a sibling company or sibko, and break down its unity. We even set them against each other, as we did with this particular sibko. And why? So that we can turn them into individuals, give them the singularity necessary to the character of a BattleMech pilot. Oh, we realize the necessity of unity in battle, but that comes later. Assigned to a Star, the individual relearns the unity of the sibko, this time with new companions. And, some say, it is a new and better unity, one that adapts to new warriors coming in to replace dead or departed ones, and to new units. The old team tussels of the sibko seem primitive when compared to the feisty concord and loose harmony of a genuine fighting unit.

  It is hard to predict what will happen to the other two cadets in the Mattlov/Pryde sibko. The short one, Bret, is a battler, all right, and reasonably intelligent, but he is more bravado than skill. He might make it. He is certainly out to prove himself and will accept nothing less than victory, a quality we always say is necessary for a warrior.

  The other one, Rena, does not quite seem like warrior material. She was once overweight and still moves with some of her former clumsiness and heaviness. Yet she has courage and a tenacity toward surmounting obstacles, so she may surprise us all.

  I worry most about Aidan, not because he cannot succeed, but that he might not. Sometimes, when I dream of the dying Ramon Mattlov, the face of the corpse changes and becomes his near twin, Aidan. Interpreters would say that I fear something, something related to this stubborn cadet. I have seen many trainees who are too clever by half, and he leads them all in this respect. All I can do now is wish the best for him.

  13

  Aidan woke up suddenly. Near his bunk a dark blur moved slowly, or else he was not really awake and this was a nightmare.

  "Who is it?" he whispered.

  The blur hesitated, as if it wanted neither to sleep nor to haunt.

  "It is Peri, is it not?" he said.

  Her shoulders sagged. She had not wanted to be recognized.

  "I am leaving," she said. "Please do not speak louder. I do not want to display my humiliation to the others."

  "It is not humiliation, it is—"

  "I know. It is part of the whole damn noble goal we all seek. Only now I am out of it. Think of how it feels. All this time spent in training, only to be flushed out and told you now belong to another caste. Well, I do not belong to any other caste. Wherever I am, people will look at me and the thought will cross their minds that once I was in warrior training. It is like a brand mark on my forehead. I am a warrior and will remain so all my life. All my life."

  Aidan sat up in his bunk and tried to make out her face in the dim light.

  "Where are they sending you?"

  "I am not told. Just that it will be in the scientist caste. I will be an apprentice, A Tech in training to be a scientist."

  "That sounds good, Peri. Important."

  "It is. As consolations go, it is acceptable. That is the way of the Clan, as they so often tell us. We accept what comes. Death or honor, success or failure. But I wanted to be a warrior, needed to be one. You knew that better than anybody. For some reason, I have never fathomed, you seem to perceive things the rest of us do not."

  "I used to think we all knew everything about each other, that such understanding was no special talent."

  "But we were each different. I always thought that was the interesting thing about our sibko—about most sibkos, I suspect."

  "What do you mean?"

  "We come from the same gene pool. With the same genetic materials, we might have been identical in most ways. But, just as there is a great deal of physical variation among us, there are also differences of talent and ability. It says a lot for our genetic forebears, tends to confirm the superiority of successful Bloodnamed warriors and their achievements, that there are more than sufficient good traits in the two geneparents to be doled out among their sibspring. Validates the worthiness of the Kerensky program, in a way. Still
, I wonder why so much variation in our sibko? Seems to me we should all have become warriors—or, conversely, all of us should have flushed out. But the differences in our performances have been phenomenal."

  She glanced around the room, where the others made various sleeping sounds. She seemed to be searching for answers to the questions she had posed.

  "You know, now I think of it, I would like to study that. Certainly, if they choose to lock me up with a bunch of scientists, I stand a good chance of attempting such study."

  They fell into an uncomfortable silence. Aidan wondered if one should say something positive, thoughtful, comforting at a time like this. As Clansmen, it was so hard for any of them to come up with a pleasantry, a piece of well-considered counsel or even a polite farewell. If sibparent Glynn had not told them all those stories about heroes in other cultures, they might not even have been aware that there were alternate customs, alternate behaviors. Peri apparently had the same problems with saying goodbye, for she said, "Go back to sleep, Aidan. We do not know how to part from each other, even though we have grown up together and have rarely been apart until now. It was the same with all the others when they left. Maybe that is why most of us try to steal away instead of saying long goodbyes."