"I was bred to be a warrior, Victor, to fear nothing and no one. Only through acts of bravery and tactical superiority could I expect to lead my people to victory. You have seen how easy it is to destroy Elementals when 'Mechs dominate the battlefield—imagine how difficult it is to rise to command among them."
Osis pulled his left arm free, allowing the armored sleeve to drop to the ground. He slipped his right arm from its shell, letting the small laser that capped the arm fall away. The man flexed his arms and chest, then tore away the flank armor and allowed the SRM launcher assembly to crash to the ground.
"Do you know how I won my bloodname, Victor? I met and broke MechWarriors like you in single combat. Luck was with me because my first battles were fought unenhanced, but not so the last round. To win this bloodname, to become an Osis, I had to destroy a Mech Warrior who, like you, sat safely locked away in the cockpit of a BattleMech. We fought in territory not unlike this, in a place on Huntress. He thought he was stalking me, but I stalked him. From a cliff I leaped down and landed on his Adder. He could hear me there, blasting away, burrowing into his 'Mech and there was nothing he could do to stop me. He knew it, so he crawled from the cockpit and tried to kill me. He failed, and his genetic heritage was discarded."
Victor's eyes narrowed. "You killed a man who clearly had been defeated? Why?"
"He wanted to die. He knew he had failed, knew he was not the sort of material the Osis House would want to pass on to future generations." The ilKhan sat on the missile launcher pack and pulled his legs from the armor. Wearing only a pair of shorts, Osis stood and made no attempt to hide the hideous wound on his left leg. Victor punched up magnification on his holographic display and clearly saw sutures. And there's blood oozing from the wounds.
Osis opened his arms. "I am the last of the Smoke Jaguars, Victor Davion. I invite you now to face me, man to man. Face me and earn the honor you think you deserve. Only a coward would not face me. Come to me, Victor, and I will teach you things in seconds that men study lifetimes to learn."
Jerry Cranston's voice echoed through Victor's helmet. "Don't even dream it, Victor. His daughter kicked your ass. Hell, back on Trellwan, I kicked your ass."
"Message received, Jerry." Victor shook his head. "What makes you think, Lincoln Osis, that I want to learn the lessons you could teach?"
Osis' mouth opened slowly and his shoulders sagged a bit "You are a warrior, quiaff? As am I. Our business is death. Here I offer you the chance to face death and see which of us it will claim."
Victor hit the release on his restraining straps, then punched a button that popped the Daishi's canopy open.
"Victor, what are you doing?"
"Easy, Jerry. I know what I'm doing."
"Care to give me a clue?"
"I'd rather ask you to trust me." Victor slipped off his helmet and didn't hear Jerry's reply to his request. He climbed from the command couch and untied the string securing a small rope ladder at the cockpit edge. He tossed it out and let it unroll its way to the ground. He turned to climb down, then saw sunlight glinting from the crossguard of the katana he'd been given upon his arrival on Luthien. Smiling grimly, he slid it from the bracket that secured it to his command couch and carried it with him to the ground.
Osis folded his arms across his chest and glared at him. "Even that sword will not prevent me from killing you."
"Not the reason I brought it." Victor slipped it through the gunbelt he wore, positioning the blade in its proper place over his left hip. His fingers went to the clasps on his cooling vest. He unfastened them and shrugged the bulky garment off. His pasty white chest proved a perfect contrast to Osis' physique and won him a scornful look from the Elemental.
Victor snorted and traced his left hand over the twin scars on his chest. "I wanted you to see these. I had a katana very much like this one shoved through my chest. Why? Because someone thought, by virtue of my birth, that I was his inferior. He thought my very existence in some way sullied the world he imagined existed. The way he saw things, the way his master saw things, demanded my death, and this man, he came to take my life."
"Clearly he failed."
"He did. I killed him with this sword I now wear. It was given to me as a matter of courtesy, to make a statement, but the night I killed my assassin, I earned the right to wear it."
Victor frowned. "And that night I killed him, I died as well. I've felt death's touch, but I came back. I came back with one specific purpose in mind—defeating you and putting an end to your invasion."
Osis waved the comment away contemptuously. "This story might frighten a Nova Cat, but not a Smoke Jaguar. Kill me if you dare."
"No."
"No?"
Victor shook his head. "No. There's been too much killing here, and you must have known that."
"What do you mean?"
Victor jerked a thumb at the battlefield behind him. "The 'Mechs you sent against us, you had to have known that force was inadequate. There was no way it could have stopped me or any of our Inner Sphere forces. You must have thought to preserve some of your warriors, spare them the humiliation."
Osis swallowed hard, then glanced down. "You are wrong." He hesitated for a moment. "They were all I had left." a cold droplet of sweat ran down Victor's spine. We really have broken them. "You're left. Your pilots here."
"You'll destroy them the way you did the rest of the Smoke Jaguars."
"Yes, we will erase all traces of your Clan, but that does not mean the people will die. You may think us inferiors, but we are not murderers."
Osis slowly sank to his knees, his mouth open but mute. His eyes flicked back and forth, as if he were watching the events of the invasion pass before him. His hands, which had been balled into fists, slowly opened. "What in the name of Kerensky have we done?"
The pain in his voice squeezed Victor's heart. "You tried to breed into men a talent for warfare, when perhaps you needed to breed out the stupidity that lets us think the last battle can be fought, the last victory can be won, and that then there will be peace."
Osis gave him a weak smile. "But that was the impetus behind your crusade here, quiaff?"
"The irony isn't lost on me, but at least I want to stop."
The ilKhan's voice lightened a bit. "That will never happen, you know. You will never know peace."
"With the invasion stopped, at least some people will know peace."
Osis lifted his chin and looked up at Victor. "I will never be your bondsman."
"I don't want to make you my bondsman."
"I am finished, Victor Davion. Take your blade. Kill me."
"No. We're not murderers."
Osis reached out to him. "Please, as one warrior to another. My people have been destroyed. Do not make me outlive them."
"No." Victor's eyes tightened. "You've lost. You know it. It is over. For me to kill you now would be murder. I won't do it. Your reward is to live. The Smoke Jaguar warriors are no more, but that does not mean you still do not have a life."
"No warrior can live if he is no longer a warrior."
"So, then you face a new battle, living as something other than a warrior." Victor turned away from the ilKhan. "The last Smoke Jaguar warrior died here today."
Though he heard the scrape of bare feet on the rock, and saw the shadow loom up over him, Victor had felt Osis' move before the sensory input reached his conscious mind. The Prince pivoted on his right foot and came around by reflex. His katana slid noiselessly from its scabbard and golden sunlight skittered along the sharpened edge as the blade came up in a high arc. Without thinking, Victor slashed the blade back down. It met resistance for a second, then swung free again.
Victor stood there, Strana Mechty's sun hot on his back, staring down into the lifeless eyes of Lincoln Osis. The ilKhan's blood dripped from the katana's blade, forming a little stream tracing a path down the rocks to where the Smoke Jaguar's head rested.
The Prince slowly shook his head, surprised to taste tears on his
lips. "The invasion started with a Smoke Jaguar, and now it has ended with one. The last Smoke Jaguar warrior did the here today. May he rest in peace."
15
Hall of the Khans, Warrior Quarter
Strana Mechty
Kerensky Cluster, Clan Space
25 April 3060
Prince Victor Ian Steiner-Davion tapped his foot nervously as he waited. The clicking echoed up and down the corridor outside the Grand Council chamber, sounding like the ticking of a crude time bomb. He smiled, knowing that what he had to say to the Clan Khans would undoubtedly explode among them like a bomb. Just have to hope it's a shaped charge that takes out key structures and doesn't bring the whole thing crashing down.
The battling in the Trial of Refusal had gone well for the Inner Sphere. The draw between the Wolves and the St. Ives Lancers had surprised Victor when he first heard of it, but a review of gun-camera holovids and battle roms showed that things could very easily have gone much Worse for the Inner Sphere. Everyone who looked over the after-action data credited Kai with having taken control of the battle and eliminating one of the Wolves' most potent weapons. Kai, with his usual humility, credited luck for his success. Victor had told him, "Yes, it's better to be lucky than good, but you're very lucky and excellent which is very tough to beat."
The Jade Falcon victory over ComStar had disappointed everyone, but the Falcons had chosen an excellent defensive position, had deployed their 'Mechs well, and had used tactics that maximized their ability to deal damage while minimizing losses. Victor and his other advisors told Focht that none of the forces that had come from the Inner Sphere could have won that battle. Despite that reassurance, the loss seemed to take the edge off the Precentor Martial who, for the first time in all the years Victor had known him, finally seemed tired.
The only other Clan win came in the battle between the Star Adders and the First Free Worlds Guards. The Guards had entered a swampy area to fight the Star Adders and reacted over-enthusiastically when they first ran into a couple of light 'Mechs and a Point of Elementals that they assumed was a formation scouting for the Clan main body. In fact, they were bait. As the Guards started pounding on the easy targets, the Star Adders blasted into their right flank and rolled it up. One Guards lance did manage to escape, but all the 'Mechs were damaged and five of the other pilots died.
The Inner Sphere won the rest of the battles. The Nova Cats thrashed the Ice Hellions. Khan Severen Leroux was credited with bringing down Asa Taney's Visigoth fighter. The two Nova Cat Khans took upon themselves the brunt of the fighting and were both slain, but none of the Nova Cats seemed upset about that fact. As nearly as Victor could make out, the Nova Cats viewed the deaths of their leaders as a point of transition for their Clan, and the deaths just fit pieces into a larger puzzle that gave them comfort and direction.
The Capellan Confederation's Red Lancers severely beat the Fire Mandrills. That Clan, while wholly Crusader in control, had political subdivisions including Wardens that meant the two Stars in their force did not work at all well together.
Using tactics that owed more to Napoleon than Sun-Tzu, the Lancers managed to hold one Star off while pounding the other, then they mopped up what was left of the second Star. Only Victor's win over the Smoke Jaguars resulted in more destruction of the Clan opposition, but the Red Lancers' commander wisely allowed the last Mandrills to surrender, then confiscated all the 'Mechs on the battlefield.
In perhaps the biggest and certainly the most pleasant surprise, the Free Rasalhague Republic's Third Drakøns defeated the Hell's Horses. The Clan deployed armored vehicles and tanks, as well as infantry, to support their 'Mech forces, and initially turned back the Drakøns. The Hell's Horses tried to exploit their advantage, then Overste Dahlstrom rallied her troops. Her crisply shouted commands galvanized her people and got them moving. The accuracy of their shots spiked to where it seemed as if she had a whole company of Kai Allard-Liaos fighting for her. Their withering fire stopped the Hell's Horse advance and sent them reeling back. While the Drakøns did take a beating, they obtained their objective and even held off one last desperate attempt by the Clanners to liberate it.
Victor drew in a deep breath, then slowly exhaled. Of eight battles, they won five, which gave them victory in the Trial of Refusal. The invasion is over. For the last eleven years he had waited for this day to come, but could never have imagined that he would find himself here, dictating terms of the peace. Looking back he had assumed this role would fall to his father, or Morgan Hasek-Davion or Takashi Kurita.
Here I am, thirty years old, the man who led the largest military operation the Inner Sphere has seen since the fall of the old Star League. By my age Alexander the Great had become King of Macedonia and had spread an empire over much of the known world. I've beaten an invader back from whole worlds, tracked them to their haven, and defeated them here. Am I, like Alexander, at the pinnacle? Will I die in three years, my greatest victories behind me?
The door to the Grand Council chamber opened and an unarmored Elemental looked at Victor and nodded. Victor tugged at the hem of his Star League Defense Force jacket, then strode through the door and toward the high bench. In front of it sat a misshapen man—more metal than flesh, it seemed—Who glared at him. Victor ignored the poisonous glance and mounted the steps to the high bench. Once there, he turned to face the assembly and hesitated.
The room itself was magnificent. The amphitheater's tiers, desks, and seats had been fashioned from black granite streaked with white. Red cushions had been set on the benches for the Khans, and Victor could see them because of the absences among the assembled Clan leaders. A banner with the Clan crest hung over the appropriate seats and Victor counted fourteen Of them. He double-checked and saw none for the Smoke Jaguars or Nova Cats.
He pressed his hands to the cold stone surface of the high bench. The Clan Khans all wore their ceremonial garb and hid their faces behind ornate enameled masks. The masks looked truly fearsome, but Victor found them to be brittle and a sham. He had no doubt many of the Khans used them to conceal their fear.
"I bring you greetings from the First Lords of the Star League, and I thank you for receiving me here. I have been told I am the first person who is not a Clansman to address the assembled Khans and, despite the circumstances, I consider this an honor. For over a decade I have learned to fear you, and now, looking at you here, I know this assembly to be the wellspring from which the Clans have drawn their strength."
Victor kept his voice even and a bit low, forcing the Khans to listen to him carefully. He saw a few of them shift in their seats and wanted to interpret this as an easing of their tension, but without being able to look at their faces, he had trouble reading them at all. Their culture is alien to me; Can I even trust what I think I see?
"As you know, a week ago the Star League Expeditionary Force challenged your ilKhan to a Trial of Refusal concerning your invasion of the Inner Sphere. Two days ago we fought against the eight Crusader Clans. We lost to two, achieved a draw with one, and defeated five. Your invasion is over."
He let that comment sink in for a moment, then continued. "There are those among you who have interpreted this Trial of Refusal to be about more than your invasion. It has been seen as a test of your culture, your ways, your history, and your right to continue living the way you do. That was never part of our intention in coming here, in issuing the challenge or in defeating your forces. We came here not to impose our way of life upon you, but to stop you from attempting to impose your way of life on us."
The Wolf Khan stood and removed his helmet. "You successfully imposed a new way of life on the Smoke Jaguars."
"Your point, Khan Vlad, is a good one, but not entirely on target. We knew, when we came after you, that the only way you would take us seriously was if we managed to do what only the Clans have done before: annihilate a Clan, erase its identity. We chose the Smoke Jaguars and we brought war to Huntress. I am certain all of you know how brutal things were there." The
Prince glanced down for a second. "Your way of life hid from you the reality of warfare and we needed to remind you of it—the way your attacks on our worlds brought it home to us. The fact remains, however, that we do not want to change the way you want to live.
"The invasion is ended, but not so our contact and our futures. While there are countless individuals in the Inner Sphere who have learned to hate you, we do not intend to prosecute a war against you—at least, not as the Star League. As the Star League we would invite you back to the Inner Sphere, to allow your people and ours to become acquainted. We have things to offer you, as you have to offer us. Beneath this umbrella of peace, there are many new possibilities. We invite you to explore them."
"You invite us to our death, Victor Davion." Vlad moved from his desk in the first rank, to the open floor before the high bench. "In fighting against the St. Ives troops I realized I had made a mistake. I let your Kai Allard-Liao get too close to me and, in doing so, I allowed myself to be hurt. As I crawled from my 'Mech's shattered cockpit and watched my troops fight, I realized that my error was a small piece of the larger error we all made."
Vlad addressed the other Khans but pointed his finger at Victor. "The Inner Sphere is a breeding ground of discontent from which our isolation had saved us. They are diseased and we were pure and healthy before we invaded them. Our prolonged association with them has hurt us, it has weakened us. It has allowed them to defeat us. And even now, with this invitation, the Inner Sphere seeks to absorb us."
Bjorn Jorgensson of the Ghost Bears stood and removed his helmet. "It strikes me, Khan Vlad, that your assessment of Prince Davion's invitation is wrong. He has not asked us to abandon who we are."
"No, not yet, but that will come." Vlad shook his head. "These people have a world where combats are staged for entertainment"
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