With each insult, Aidan bristled inwardly. He wanted to challenge his commander to a battle in the Circle of Equals, the one place where a warrior could legitimately fight a superior officer, but Kael Pershaw had banished the Circle. It had become debased, he claimed, by its use for trivial quarrels.
Kael Pershaw no doubt sensed Aidan's uneasiness, but Aidan had vowed to show no emotion before him. That oath was becoming more difficult to honor, with the Star Colonel's broad smile indicating clear and present danger.
"It is economy, Star Commander Jorge, that saves you from the punishment you deserve. If I could, I would deny you the rite of surkai and have you shot on the spot, but there is no one in your Star to take your place. I trust you will not be insulted when I say that your unit is the most motley, unskilled, and worthless group of warriors it has ever been my misfortune to have in my command. You are undoubtedly the right commander for them, and unfortunately, the only one I can spare for the job. So, let us initiate the rite of forgiveness, then return to duty."
Pershaw came around the desk, ready to accept Aidan's surkai, and was startled when Aidan said, "No. I refuse to initiate surkai this time. I was justified in killing Bast, and I need no forgiveness for it."
Pershaw was clearly enraged. If not, why did his voice drop almost to a whisper?
"I demand that you perform surkai, Star Commander Jorge."
"No. I will not."
"I order you."
"No officer may order surkai. Shall I quote you from The Remembrance on this subject, sir?"
"No, you will not." He walked away from Aidan, toward the only window in the room. It was so blackened from the gritty mists that came from Blood Swamp that only a few small areas still offered any possibility of a view. He stood for a moment, hands clasped behind his back, then abruptly turned.
"All right, then, we can only resort to symbology. Lanja!"
Lanja appeared immediately. Aidan knew she had been standing by the doorway, awaiting her commander's order. With Pershaw, all contingencies were anticipated. From the first moment he awoke after he had ordered himself to sleep, his day was firmly scheduled. He no doubt always had a plan ready for the rare occasion when a warrior might refuse surkai.
Lanja carried a slim case, holding it as if it were part of a ritual.
"Lanja, set the case on my desk."
"Yes, sir."
"Now open it."
Lanja slowly opened the case, with the same public precision she always used in response to an order from her commander. Aidan knew what was coming. If Clan loyalty had not restrained him, he could have strangled both Lanja and Pershaw at that moment.
Lanja held the black ribbon delicately in both hands. She extended it toward Kael Pershaw, who took it from her carefully, as if the ribbon were precious.
"Star Commander Jorge, you have brought discredit to your Star. There is nothing more shameful than an unnecessary death. For the period of the next month, you must wear the Memorial Ribbon and this picture across your chest. Lanja?"
Lanja displayed a holographic photograph of Bast, balancing it on the tips of her fingers to keep from damaging it in any way. The photo depicted Bast in a surly mood, the kind of tough-looking portrait of which warriors were so fond. One might find hundreds of nearly identical ones in any Clan file.
"Before I place the dark band on you, you are allowed by law to make a defense of your dishonorable action. Go ahead, Jorge. Respond."
"Would there be any point?"
"Yes. I am not unfair. Respond."
"Bast insulted me."
"If you were a trueborn warrior, that might be a legitimate defense. But you are a freebirth. Bast was allowed to insult you. Anything more?"
"No."
"Good. Fit him with the dark band, Lanja."
Lanja, her eyes peculiarly somber, placed the ribbon across Aidan's chest and waist, then spent moments smoothing out the band's wrinkles, fussing over the placement of Bast's photograph. Then she stepped back, still looking quite critical of her accomplishment.
The smile faded from Pershaw's face as he gave the proper orders in the proper voice. He told Aidan that during the time he would wear the Memorial Ribbon all would shun him and he could speak to no one unless given express permission. Further, Aidan must not venture out in public without wearing the dark band, that should anyone speak to him about the band, Aidan must respond with neither word nor deed, that he must always remember that the Memorial Ribbon was to remind him—as it reminded others—of the unnecessary death he had caused.
When Kael Pershaw was done, Aidan saluted him, then passed by the somber Lanja, realizing he could kill them both. But especially Pershaw. Just as he had with Bast, Aidan would take great pleasure in standing over the corpse of his commanding officer.
* * *
Lanja watched Jorge walk out the door, then turned to Pershaw and said, "He is a proud young man. And clever. He may turn the wearing of the dark band into a virtue."
Pershaw sighed. Uncharacteristic of him to sigh, Lanja thought. "We are Clan. We can only follow the rituals as prescribed. I would rather hang him by his thumbs from a yardarm or stick his head through stocks or even burn him at the stake."
Lanja laughed suddenly. "Just what are you talking about?"
"Those were old forms of punishment, of humiliating the chastised. You do not think Jorge deserves this punishment?"
"I did not say that. I merely said he was proud."
"But was that not admiration in your voice?"
"Was it? Perhaps so. There is something admirable in being able to wear the dark band proudly."
"Then the punishment has failed, has it not?"
"I did not say that. You are merely expressing your own worries, quiaff?"
"Aff. I think the man possesses some strange core that is unpunishable, that cannot be humiliated."
"And you do not admire that?"
"No, I do not. I do not."
They might have continued this conversation, and perhaps found themselves wading in dangerous waters, if a messenger had not delivered the communique from the Wolf Clan invaders.
* * *
Aidan's walk back to the barracks where his Star was housed was agonizing. One after another, as if the call had gone out to form a gauntlet for Aidan, trues stared at the dark band when he passed. Sneers, anger, taunts, crude joking remarks rained down on him. Aidan shut off his mind as best he could and strode with his eyes fixed straight ahead. He knew that if he looked even once into the eyes of any of the trues who were insulting him, the anguish of his shame would drive him once more into the kind of fight that Pershaw and the law of the dark band expressly forbade. Rebellious as he was, even he must accept any ritual that symbolized the way of the Clans.
Horse stood at the door of the barracks, watching the final steps of Aidan's proud walk. A few trues were now stalking his every step, hurling new taunts at him. Horse came out to join him.
Though they could speak no words, Aidan knew his friend was silently saying, "Ignore them," as he came close.
"I will," he said fiercely to himself.
Horse joined him and the two walked together into the barracks. The taunters stayed for a while, making the gesture of the coward in the direction of the barracks. The gesture involved placing one's hands in succession over the face, the throat, the chest, and the genitals. The trues eventually tired of the game, and began to drift away. Their raucous laughter drifted back on the wind for a long while after they were out of sight.
Aidan remained silent for even longer, staring straight ahead, unwilling to look down at the dark band. Horse reclined on a bunk, also keeping quiet. Finally, Aidan spoke:
"I think I must kill Kael Pershaw."
Horse shrugged. "That may be so. But I think this is not the right time."
Aidan smiled. Horse's laconic comments often amused him. "You mean, while wearing the dark band? Just after killing another true?"
"Something like that."
; "Perhaps a time will come ..."
"You're not a murderer."
"I was not one. Perhaps I am now."
"There is a book among your books about a man who plans and carries out a murder, and then cannot live with himself."
"Yes, I know. There is a moral to it, but I never much believe in the morals from books. They do not seem to apply to our lives."
Horse shrugged again. "Maybe so."
"But maybe not?"
"Whatever you say."
"Sometimes, friend Horse, you seem to speak in codes."
"Maybe."
Horse's half-smile made Aidan laugh. He kept laughing until his hand accidentally found the dark band and its silken texture. Was it his imagination or did it deliberately press against his chest, constricting his breath?
"We have to get away from here," Aidan said. "Get to some duty that—"
"You told me that the next time you started bemoaning our lives on this backwater planet I should remind you that you had vowed to stop."
"Horse, you always—"
He was cut off by the strident blare of an alarm klaxon. It was sounding off in long, steady tones, a signal that the base was under imminent attack. Reacting instinctively, Aidan and Horse grabbed their battle gear from their lockers as the rest of the Star assembled.
"Horse," Aidan said, "I think we may finally be getting some action."
"Don't bet on it."
Sometimes Horse could be irritating, and no more so than when events proved him correct, as they were about to now.
4
Aidan was convinced that even the furniture selected for freeborns was carefully, and cruelly, chosen by the trues. As he stared at the video monitor, watching the start of the formal declarations of the Trial of Possession, he could not sit still. His body sought some comfortable position in this yellow plastic deformity but found only resistant bumps and a teurvature that could only have been meant for some upright lizard species. Each bump and curve was yet another reminder of all the ways trueborns treated frees as inferior.
"How do you manage it? Sitting in these things?" he asked Horse, who seemed quite comfortably ensconced in his chair.
"I beat the system by convincing myself that all discomfort is comfort, for discomfort is all that a freeborn is ever allowed. It's a kind of perverse utilitarianism."
"Util-"
Horse put his finger to his lips, a signal that he had learned the word from one of Aidan's secret books. Aidan smiled. He knew there was probably no reason to keep the books a secret. Most trueborns would find Aidan's penchant for literature a curiosity and do nothing about it, but some were ornery enough to search out some law somewhere that would let them confiscate the material. It was better to hide the books. They had, after all, been hidden in the first place. Most warriors were not casual readers, anyway. Technical manuals, military strategy treatises, and endless quoting of The Remembrance were about their speed. Aidan was a great admirer of the latter, the Clans' major epic poem, but it could sound grotesque when recited by some of the trueborn warriors whose rough voices and indifference often diminished the poetry.
Aidan had discovered the books in the hideaway of a Brian Cache, one of many underground shelters for BattleMechs and war materiel. One section was devoted to a vast supply of computers and data banks. These must have been from the days when the great and noble General Kerensky had ordained that his people must preserve the knowledge and data they had brought with them from the Inner Sphere. Each skilled person, whether warrior or technician, then recorded what he or she knew into the computers of the Brian Cache.
One day Aidan had been on duty in a Brian Cache, attempting to relieve his boredom by studying the boxed disk-files of information. Behind a shelf, in what appeared to be a temporary wall, he noticed a rectangular section that seemed lighter in color, as if a picture had once hung there. There was no interior decoration in the entire Cache, so Aidan reckoned the rectangle served some other purpose. When he gave one corner a push, it slid open. Inside were several boxes, filled with real paper-and-ink books. Not disks, not printouts, not manuals, but the kind of books that, according to legend, might be found only in the quarters of the highest-echelon personnel. With the help of Horse and others in his command, he had discreetly moved them to his own cache, a narrow false wall in the freeborn barracks. Since then he and Horse had been devoting their rare free time to reading them. The books had certainly helped him endure the painful duties of Glory Station and the antagonism of its commander.
Aidan squirmed more in the chair. The snakelike movements seemed to amuse Horse. "It's not the chair, is it?" he said. "It's that you're not in there with the rest, making your own bids. Instead, we have to sit out here, with other frees, separated from the trues."
Horse was right. Aidan resented that only trues could enter the command chamber for the bidding procedures. He sighed. "I suppose it does not matter. We will be bid away and left to view the battle from the barracks monitors. Or, worse, detached to supervise logistics so that the trueborns there can be sent to more important strategic areas."
He glanced down at the beeper on his belt. It was partially obscured by the dark band fitting over part of it, but the light in the center was still visible. When that light went out, it would indicate that Aidan's unit had been eliminated from the bid—the forces Kael Pershaw would use to defend against the Wolf attack. It would probably happen immediately after the Wolf batchall. Not only did Pershaw resent having freeborns under his command, but he was now furious with Aidan because of the Bast incident.
The Wolf Clan commander now came onto the screen. Dressed in full Clan regalia, the Star Colonel made an imposing figure.
"I am Star Colonel Mikel Furey of Clan Wolf's Sixteenth Battle Cluster. What forces defend the spawn of Kael Pershaw?"
An almost imperceptible shudder went through Kael Pershaw's body, and an eruption of shocked reactions flowed from the assembled trueborns. The Wolves were not here for Glory Station but for the genetic legacy of the base commander!
"What're they doing now?" Horse asked.
"Probably trying to absorb the impact of the Wolf Clan batchall. I do not know if Kael Pershaw expected that the prize of the battle would be the gene heritage of his own bloodline. It is an insult of the highest order."
"Insult? I thought trues regarded their blood heritage as something sacred. I think I'd like it if an enemy wanted to fight over my bloodline. Quite an honor. Of course, my blood heritage is a seamstress and a comm-tech. Not much to fight over there, and of course, it's difficult to obtain the genetic materials from them now."
"Do not be obscene."
"Is it obscene? I'm only referring to my own parents."
Aidan felt a twinge at hearing the word parents.
Some of his old trueborn legacies, feelings about free-borns and reactions to words referring to procreation, were so ingrained that they still rose up as instinctive responses. He hated the casual way frees tossed around words relating to the birth process and parental matters. Motherhood, womb, fathering—words like that. He, like all trueborns, knew no parents. Truebirths were born out of metal containers that they often liked to refer to as canisters or iron wombs. Any talk of lower-caste birthing and parental matters was disturbing, not only to Aidan but to all trues. Freeborns were often beaten for the mere mention of their so-called natural births.
For warriors, it was the canister that was natural, not the repellent and even dangerous procedures that produced freeborns. At any rate, warriors knew the theoretical advantages of their caste. Genetically engineered humans, it was said by the experts, represented the most perfect beings in the evolution of the race. Natural births, with their random genetics and casual DNA factors, could not possibly compete with the union of the genes from successful warriors that were "mated" scientifically in laboratory vessels.
Kael Pershaw regained his composure and responded.
"I am Star Colonel Kael Pershaw of Clan Jade Falcon, commanding
the Glory Station Garrison Cluster. I will meet any foe on Glory Plain or in the skies above with the forces that I now designate."
Pershaw's hand moved to the console in front of him, swiftly slapping one button, then another, and then, after a second's hesitation, a third.
"Seyla," intoned Pershaw as his hand hit the transmit switch that would send the Clan Wolf Colonel a history of his forces.
"Seyla," intoned Star Colonel Mikel Furey as the Wolf Clan leader broke communications.
The batchall had ended. Aidan glanced down at his beeper. The light had not gone out.
The batchall had ended, and Kael Pershaw, as was his right, had submitted his bid. Aidan's beeper light had not gone out, which meant his Star was still part of the forces being bid to defend Glory Station.
* * *
At his own bidding place in the bridge of his DropShip, Dwillt Radick evaluated the forces Clan Jade Falcon had committed.
"I see he is using the new troops in the incoming DropShip," Radick said.
"Yes. You knew he would."
Radick nodded with some pleasure. He liked to hear Craig Ward give him due credit.
"Very well. As junior, Zoll must bid first. He is timid, so I expect him to use all three of the Cluster's Supernovas. That will give him thirty first-line BattleMechs to Kael Pershaw's thirty and a two-to-one advantage in Elementals. I will counter by bidding Bravo Supernova, Command Supernova, and a Star of fighters. That should be enough to destroy the DropShip. If Zoll is overly aggressive, I can eliminate four Points of Elementals and three Points of fighters."
"What of Clan Jade Falcon's Garrison Trinary?"
"Freebirths and has-beens. Nothing of any account. In fact I am glad Kael Pershaw did not eliminate all of his freebirth units from the defense. There is nothing like a few of those damned frees to stir up our troops to a fighting frenzy, quiaff?"
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