To admit his true identity would doubtless ruin him as a warrior, but would also bring Roshak down with him. However, Aidan did not think seeing Roshak shamed and executed was enough to risk his own execution. The least punishment he could expect was a demotion in caste. He had been a tech temporarily after failing his original trial and before assuming his new identity, and he knew he could never return to that level of Clan society. That, too, was not warriorlike. The way of the Clan was for each member to take satisfaction from whatever duty he or she performed for the good of all. There was no room for dissatisfaction. And, in truth, very few Clanspeople were unhappy with their lot. Aidan thought he must have been cursed by some mysterious fate, yet even that was not of the Clan. He had learned the concept only from his clandestine readings. That fate had made him reflective, congenitally restless, and—its last probable irony—a counterfeit freeborn. A freebirth, as Pershaw constantly reiterated.
Sometimes Aidan wondered if his private fate, ever guiding his life down fruitless paths, had performed one of those mythological miracles he had read about. In one story a sculptor had created a statue of a woman, and it had come to life. For Aidan, it was as though the skilled hands of his private fate had sculpted him into a freeborn. Perhaps he was a freeborn now and could never be a trueborn again, as if he had come to life in the wrong caste and would become a statue if he tried to return to the other.
The trouble was that he now thought more and more like a freeborn. He had been with frees for so long that he had come to admire them, particularly their ability to fight well despite the contempt the trueborns always rained on them after the battle. Their attention to their own skills, their own efficiencies in guiding a BattleMech, could at times be phenomenal. But the only credit they ever got for doing well, even better than some trueborns, was some carelessly written words in a worthless commendation. For consolation, they had the camaraderie among themselves, which Aidan had come to enjoy. Freeborns were not as stiff and distant as the truebirth warriors. The Clans also turned a blinder eye on the drinking habits of freeborns and on their having their way with village women more frequently than the role-obsessed trueborns ever could.
* * *
Kael Pershaw had been staring at him for some time, his face placid, his body relaxed. Everyone in his command knew that such apparent contentment was something to fear, although Aidan refused to fear the base commander.
"Believe me, Jorge," he said finally. "I would like nothing more than to kill you in the Circle of Equals if we were not so undermanned at Glory Station that any warrior's death is shockingly wasteful. I suspect Clan Wolf had good intelligence about our situation even before the batchall. But I will not allow them to have my genetic legacy. And that is why your mission is essential. If I could entrust the task to a trueborn unit, I would, but we are already stretched too thin. Your Star must do it."
Of course, Aidan thought. If it was the worst task available, give it to the freeborns. This mission, which his Star must do, was undoubtedly the equivalent of cleaning the Cave, the warrior name for lavatory.
"As you know," Pershaw continued, "a DropShip containing the Trinary to be rotated here was attacked and shot down by Clan Wolf aerofighters. What I did not mention in the briefing is that we know approximately where it fell. Air surveillance has indicated at least some survivors and the possibility of some intact BattleMechs, but there has been no communication from the DropShip. The surveillance report may be in error and perhaps no survivors exist, or it may just be that all communications equipment was knocked out in the crash. You and your Star will travel to the crash site in your 'Mechs, investigate, and give help where needed. But the most important facet of the entire mission is to bring out any warriors and any functioning 'Mechs, taking them to Glory Station for integration into combat. It is a simple mission, one even freebirths can perform. I am sure you would agree, quiaff? You may respond, Star Commander Jorge. Here alone, between us, with battle conditions imminent, you may speak without awaiting my authorization."
"There is not anything to say. Simple as we are, my Star can fulfill mission orders."
Was it Aidan's mistaken perception, or did Pershaw's eyebrows rise just slightly? They may have, for he said, "Your skill at nearly imperceptible sarcasm occasionally impresses me, Star Commander Jorge. I take it then that you have no questions about your orders?"
"I wish to know only the necessary details. There is no difficulty with that, quineg ?"
"Neg. Anything else?"
"May I stand?"
"Of course."
Pershaw managed to stand before Aidan did. He also went around to the rear of his desk, another tactic. Because Aidan was the taller of the two men, it might have made Pershaw severely uncomfortable to stand close and look up at his subordinate, his very inferior officer. Before this meeting, Aidan had known that Pershaw despised freeborns. However, it was not until now that he knew how deep went the antipathy. In an odd way, he almost admired Pershaw more. The man was capable of hatred, just like Aidan. They shared, in spite of their differences, a human trait.
Pershaw laid out a map of Glory Station and surrounding territory on his desktop, then leaned over it. "The crash occurred just about here." He put his stubby forefinger on a point just to the other side of Blood Swamp. Between the swamp and the crash site was some pretty rough terrain, Aidan knew.
"It will take a long time going around the swamp," Aidan observed.
"Yes. If you were to go around the swamp. We do not have time for that. Operations has mapped out a route through the swamp."
Pershaw looked up at him. Aidan knew the man wanted him to protest, but he would not give Pershaw that satisfaction. He merely nodded.
"After the swamp, there will be some tough going in the jungle, but we will install hand units in place of arm-mounted weapons on some of your 'Mechs. This should allow you to break through any heavy jungle growth. The hand activators should also be of service if any of the Guard 'Mechs must be cut loose. That is satisfactory, quiaff?"
"Neg. I would rather have the weapons and then take our chances."
Pershaw muttered, so faintly he could barely be heard, "Typical freebirth cowardice."
"It is not cowardice. There may be skirmishes, there—"
"Do you think the Wolves will be interested in your little diversion? I doubt that. I will signal to them that you are a freebirth unit, and they will know that you are on a garbage patrol."
"If I may contradict, once they see our destination, they may try to stop us."
"And you are Jade Falcon warriors, who can fight any attacker with whatever firepower you have, quiaff?"
Pershaw had him there. It was a clear-cut victory of argumentation that left Aidan powerless. The man was, after all, the highest-ranking officer at Glory Station. He should be expected to win arguments. Knowing that did not make Aidan feel better, but again he felt a certain admiration for the hated commander. Not only that, he was quite right and Aidan should have seen it. A warrior was continually proving himself or herself as a warrior, and the higher the odds against him, the more valuable the triumph.
After some further data provided by Pershaw, Aidan asked, "Did surveillance indicate specific numbers of survivors?"
"No. But the pilot thought she saw some movement. There was a light mist, and the apparent survivors may have been no more than shadows. The mist is thicker now, and surveillance can detect nothing."
"What is the nature of the military force?"
"A Trinary, with the appropriate 'Mechs, some support personnel, supplies, the usual. I am told the Trinary's Star Captain is an especially skilled officer. She is fresh from a challenge on Dagda. She led the assault contingent, which broke the Ghost Bear line. Her name is Star Captain Joanna. No Bloodname yet, twenty-eight years old, so she is getting on in age for a warrior. But we are not here to discuss her bloodlines, quiaff?"
"Aff."
Aidan was happy that Kael Pershaw was so intent on the briefing that he h
ad not noticed the look of surprise that must have glimmered briefly in his eyes. Joanna! Not only was this mission cursed from the start, not only did it require traversing the cursed Blood Swamp, not only was his unit diminished in weaponry, not only was the objective at the end of impossible terrain, but the objective itself was Joanna. And if Star Captain Joanna was not Aidan's own curse, then nobody was. He would rather have gone barefoot across a field of poisonous snakes, carrying burning sticks in his arms, with a cloud of methane gas settling around his head, than have to see Joanna again.
7
Joanna came to, leaving behind a dream of drowning in murky water. She came to choking, for a moment not sure if the dream was real after all, or if her desperate need for air originated elsewhere. She tried to inhale but got only a trace of air, just enough to make her conscious that her lungs seemed crushed from behind. The left side of her face was pressed against something very hard. It felt like rock. She moved her face slightly, and the substance seemed to abrade her skin like rock. But what was it pressed so hard against the rest of her face? Her next attempt to breathe seemed to get a bit more air, plus the smell of something very wet. Water? No, something else. Something with a familiar, somewhat cloying odor. It was the smell of a battlefield. Blood, it was blood. Was she smelling her own blood, pooled somewhere in the ground nearby? And what was pressing against her? The next breath added an aroma of cloth, very wet cloth.
She tried to move her body. What little movement she could accomplish was painful. A fierce pain ran up and down her back and legs, and the only movement she could manage was a twitch of her left foot. Nothing much happened when she concentrated on her arms. It was as if they had been shot off at the shoulder, like some armless 'Mech. The lack of feeling frightened her, but then came a tingling in her right hand. Knowing that she was at least one-armed brought a bizarre sense of relief.
Another breath. Nothing new. Then, suddenly, by her ear, there was an explosion. At first she thought the sound might be some signal that accompanied death, but no, she was still alive when the next moment arrived. Joanna would have been angry about dying, a whirling tornado of wrath. She intended to die on a battlefield, and that was that. This could not be death.
Just as she felt the warmth of an expired breath on her right cheek and the unmistakable stale odor of carbon dioxide contaminated by some recently ingested and unpleasant food, she abruptly understood her plight. Someone was lying on her, chest against her face, head near hers. Something else pressed down on her body, though she did not know what it was. For the moment, that was all right. At least she had defined something.
Then came another explosion of sound, another moan apparently. Whatever it was, the head shifted, then slid a bit, creating an opening, and air seemed to rush in at Joanna's face. The cloth that had been suffocating her must have been moved along with the body. She took several deep breaths, trying to get as much as she could in case the head shifted again and cut off the air.
The body moved again and her right hand was free. Reaching up and behind her, she felt the muscles in her shoulder erupt with agony. Her fingertips came down on skin, but she could not tell where on the head it was located. Her fingers roamed around, brushing against what felt like a cheekbone and going backward to some hair and an identifiable ear. Twisting her hand unnaturally, straining her wrist, she was able to grab the ear and pull weakly at it. The jerking motion moved the head, and Joanna's own head felt freer. Now her angle was really difficult. Her shoulder throbbed, her wrist threatened to break, but she managed to grab some hair and, tugging at it, somehow made the head slide to her aching shoulder.
She lifted her head from the ground, perhaps a centimeter or two, her neck muscles competing with her shoulder and wrist for pain. She could not open the eye that had been groundside, but that did not matter. She could not make out anything around her with the other one. It was apparently night, and whatever the landscape around them, everything was pitch dark.
With the clearer air came the unmistakable smell of charred matter. Something nearby had burned. But there could be no fire now, for there was no light.
She blinked her open eye several times, but nothing clarified itself for her vision. Settling her head back again to relieve the pain, she considered her situation.
No matter what she did, she could not move her body. Her right arm, pain running up and down it, could be moved, but could not do much. She could use it to move the body on top of her some more, but would have to wait a few minutes until the arm and her shoulder felt better.
No matter what her other physical incapacities, she still had one powerful weapon left in her arsenal. Her voice.
Drawing in a good lungful of air, she held the breath for a moment, then let it out in one massive, earth-shaking scream. It was the scream of the jade falcon, as taught her by a long-forgotten sibparent, back in the days when she was a mewling, spitting child of a sibko. She had been told she reproduced the bird's sound rather well, though it had been years since she had heard one, and then only at a distance.
The head above her was abruptly dislodged. It hit the rocky ground with a thud. "Wha—," said the person. It was a male voice, but she did not recognize it.
"Get up, you," Joanna said. She was distressed at the paltriness of her vocabulary in a crisis situation.
The man slid forward, bumping her head. She ignored the new pain. "I said get up!"
"What? I'll—oh damn damn damn!"
"What is it?"
"My arms. I can't move them."
"Nomad? Is it you?"
"I'll have a committee study the subject. Of course it's me, Joanna."
"Do not address me familiarly."
"Joanna, we are rammed together on a hillside, both of us in bad shape. It's no time for formalities."
"I will put you on report."
"Do what you will. Oh, damn!"
"Why are you so profane?"
"You would let out a few profanities, too, if both your arms were in pain. I can't move them. Therefore, I cannot get up. I can tell by the way my legs are resting at a higher level than my head that we are on a hill. My body is twisted in such a way that I have a steady ache in both sides. I can move my legs, but there seem to be things on either side of them, preventing them from doing anything helpful. That is my report, Star Captain. Your move."
Joanna tested everything in her body that was supposed to move but obtained only infinitesimal responses from them.
"You cannot move your arms, Nomad?"
"I have been trying. One arm is getting numb, but I can get some movement from the other. What's hurting there is my hand. Each time I move the arm, there is a sharp—oohh, there it is again. Okay. Okay. I think if I—I think I can. There. Well, that was something."
"What was something?"
"I am propping myself up on my elbow. I can twist onto my side, but I'm afraid that is about all. Now what?"
"You stupid fool!"
"Insults are not of much use just now, Joanna. Why don't you let off another of those yells or whatever it was?"
"I would strangle you if—"
"If you had the use of your arms."
"I have one arm free. I could do it with that, your neck is so scrawny."
"The way I feel right now, I might rest my neck in your hand and let you do it."
Joanna almost laughed. She had to admit that he had the advantage on her.
"A jade falcon," she said.
"What was that?"
"The yell. I imitated a jade falcon yell."
"Not even close."
"And you would know?"
"Yes. I have heard several."
"Perhaps you were lying too close to my mouth, and the sound was distorted."
"A possibility. Why are we talking about bird calls when we are in such jeopardy?"
"Do you have a way out of this?"
"Not for the moment. Perhaps when daylight comes ..."
"Then it does not matter what we talk about, quin
eg?"
"I suppose you are right."
"That is it. Avoid the contractions. This time. I can only hear your voice, and only your voice. Do not torture me all night. I think I will try to sleep."
"No!"
She was surprised by the vociferousness of his response.
"Are you the Star Captain here, Nomad? Do you give the orders now?"
"For the moment, yes. I can move a little bit. Apparently you cannot. We do not know what is wrong with you. It may be a concussion or something worse. You must not sleep."
"How will you stop me, idiot?"
"I will tell you stories, Star Captain. It will keep my mind off my own . . . troubles."
"I am too sleepy for stories."
"I know some pretty lively ones, Star Captain. Listen."
Joanna was startled by how bawdy were the tech's stories. It was her first glimpse ever at life below her caste, at least that part of it that warriors never saw. Many of Nomad's yarns, in fact, illustrated lower-caste customs. She was fascinated in spite of herself.
It seemed not long before some light gradually forced its way to them through the canopy of jungle. It was not bright light, but at least they could divide up the world around them into shapes and shadows. Most of the shapes were clearly flora, while most of the shadows hinted at hidden fauna.
"Curious," Joanna said. "This place is very still. I wish I could hold my head up higher. I cannot see much."
"Neither can I. Over there, though, a piece of metal."
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