The sardonic smile died by increments as he made his way out onto the metal cowling and looked around. The Wendigo lay almost completely buried under an avalanche of boulders of all sizes: fists to houses. Like a newly created ramp, the ’Mech had collapsed a portion of the plateau, dropping down into the ravine and pulling with it endless thousands of tons of rock.
The last time you will fight for me. He slowly rested his forehead against the metal of his Wendigo and found comfort. Found it to be right. As though snipped, his past flowed away, a departing ship leaving him beached on a new shore. Pristine sand marched to a new horizon, waiting for feet to tread a new path. And with the departing history flowed his ’Mech.
Flowed all that went with it.
Better you are buried on the field of battle, than to grow old and have your armor cut away and your engine and gyro and internal components ripped free to save the life of another ’Mech. No, better the honor of death and a lonely memorial on a forgotten world, than disgrace and the ignominies of scavenging.
With a final sigh, avoiding the still-hot metal spots—all too strong a testament of the battle so recently finished—Kisho stepped out onto the rocks and began the tortuous climb to the top. Much to his chagrin, he was forced to stop several times, bending over to catch his breath and control the spots dancing a kaleidoscope across his vision.
How can I be this out of shape? He forged on, each rock edge a nightmare blade to his feet, the loose stones tumbling him about as though he were a ’Mech with a damaged gyro. At some point during that terrible climb he finally faced the need to accept. To accept the need to be completely truthful to himself. The last few weeks had been a torment of the soul and mind. And the body cannot take that type of punishment, regardless of how well honed it might be. He glanced down at the smears of blood marring his fingers. And right now, he was far from honed.
Finally scrabbling to the top, he bent almost double, head between knees as he coughed and wheezed, vision narrowing down until he knew he would pass out. But he didn’t and it passed enough for him to gaze back down the ramp. Vertigo sank gnarled claws into his vision and he wobbled on the edge of capsizing back over the edge: the distance and angle of ascent astonished him.
I came up that? Sweat blurred eyes until he rubbed it away with copper-scented, calloused fingers shaking with the aftereffects of adrenaline. Something pushed and prodded within him; he dodged and twisted until he stopped cold against the rigid reality of his new situation. He began to laugh softly, an unhinged cackle, which he finally subdued before it turned into a scouring wind he would not be able to control.
Long-ago words from Hisa seemed to float and burst into consciousness. There is nothing so terrifying as standing naked in front of the mirror. Unless it is standing fleshless in front of a soul mirror.
The clothing of the world seemed abruptly stripped away, until he floated in front of an endless pane of mirrored silver—cruel, cold, and sharp-edged with the reality of his own faults. With all he had done. With the knowledge that he had climbed the avalanche without a care in the world, secretly hoping it would collapse and kill him. Not the honor of bondsref, but a terrible, pitiful, cowardly denial of facing his true mettle.
A mettle found wanting in every way.
“Mystic.”
The words burst like a laser blast across the cosmos, shattering the mirror into infinite shards, showering down and around, each tickling sound of breakage finally rousing him to the here and now. Slowly standing erect, he took in a lungful of ozone-tinged, hot air and turned to face another mirror.
Sweat-soaked and dirty, Galaxy Commander Kev Rosse stood a short distance away. For an eyeblink, the endless chasm of Kisho’s dreams hovered between them, the blade just beginning its bloodletting of feet.
Hisa.
Her memory stirred and the veins growing and flowering within him seemed to take on a greater life as he took a firm step straight into that chasm, across that blade. A half dozen steps and he stopped several feet away from Kev, knelt, and then bowed, holding the position for longer than any previous time in his life. Not even his mentor ever received such. He tried speaking several times, but failed. Scraping flat palms across the dusty, warm rocks until it felt like sandpaper tearing at his skin, he finally found words.
“I ask surkai, Galaxy Commander.” The words came out a whisper, but with more truth and clarity then any spoken before. “I have been mistaken. There is no surkai great enough to atone for what I have done. Not even bondsref might wash away my mistakes. Neverthless, I ask it. And by The Founder, and the blood that flows through my veins, I will live to be worthy of your answer.”
An eternity seemed to spiral stars through the void, crushing and birthing worlds before Kisho could stand the silence no longer and looked up. Kev, in the silence, had seated in mirrored form, exactly at a distance where their outstretched hands might meet, just finishing his own nod, eyes intent, mouth dropping open to answer . . .
(Kisho jerked backwards, almost spilling from his seated position, mind a violent storm: tears threatened. I am not worthy; I come, destroying all you know in weakness and error and you honor me!)
. . . and a river of blood violently splattered Kisho all across his body, full in the face, until the wash plugged up nostrils and coated tongue, until Kisho felt it would never end.
The world seemed to hiccup during the splattering of blood, Kisho literally tasting the death of Kev before the large-bore rifle bullet grazed his face so closely that the whip-crack of its passage cut a small, crimson contrail across his cheek, and the spang off the rocks echoed into the distance.
No! he shouted, though whether with lips or within his mind he would never know, and froze. Kill me. Kill me! Kill ME! KILL ME!
He yearned for it. Demanded to gush his own blood in place of that of Kev. Knowing the bullet should have taken both their lives, knowing the assassin would be drawing a new bead, his muscles went frigid as a sapling in the harshest arctic winter and he fell away, welcoming the harvester’s scythe, knowing he should have died with Hisa, and Tanaka, and now Kev, knowing he had failed, it all had failed.
Interlude IV
And the light of the universe bled; wails of sorrow, remembrance.
A hundred songs of tears, a thousand rages of betrayal, ten thousand trials of retribution. Blood sings a new path.
The greatest warrior since the Founding, sacrificing legion, to safeguard.
First Mystic.
—The Remembrance (Clan Nova Cat),
Passage 442, Verse 7, Lines 1–10
Ways of Seeing Park, Barcella
Nova Cat Reservation, Irece
Irece Prefecture, Draconis Combine
2 May 3102
His bones hurt.
They always hurt of late. But this night. This meeting. They hurt more than usual. And yet . . . the pain seemed a comfort. A salve against the wall of darkness thrown across this line in life for so long.
Is my birthday so close? With the huge festivities of Homecoming building and exploding yesterday—some activities still ongoing even at this unholy hour; celebrations so needed after the last few years—his own celebration of one more foot towards the grave slipped his mind.
As it always did.
Who wants to think of how many sunsets are behind and how few ahead?
And yet, at last, the way forward . . .
At three in the morning, local time, the long corridors of the Nova Cat Genetic Repository held only shadows and secrets, both jealously guarded this night. Refusing to show the pain he felt with each step, the old man moved sedately through frescoed columns, Corinthian-style archways and alcoves, and endless flagstones with their buried treasures and memories.
How many years have I walked these halls? How many years . . .
Turning right, then descending a series of stairways, he continued moving right each time until it seemed impossible he might still be beneath the tower complex. Yet the old man knew the inside of the building
as though it had been etched upon his retinas. Though he was deep and in areas only a handful ever traversed, he was still within the shadow of the almost three-hundred-meter-tall tower at high noon.
His tired chest began to wheeze, compounded by the stale and arid touch of the artificial air as it rasped at his lung tissue. This depth was long past the point when natural air currents might keep a Barcella mole-rat alive, much less a human. Another dozen steps and he stood before an iron-bound door. He paused here, and lightly touched the mahogany.
This extension of the original building existed because of him. This secret chamber was here because of his own history. Yes. From a lifetime of neglect, memories surged of an existence before this one, of other desires and wants and needs. Other responsibilities. No, not that. The responsibilities never changed, regardless of what trappings he wore.
The bas-relief of the door pushed against his calloused fingers, probing, demanding. Incessant. As he’d needed it to be. A lifetime’s love of history gave birth to an almost mosaiclike relief on the door, depicting a multitude of scenes. Of Icarus; Caligula; the last samurai in the nineteenth century; the United States of America at the rise of the Western Alliance; the Terran Hegemony at the end of the Star League; ComStar before the schism; the Clans on Strana Mechty at the Great Refusal; the Jihad: almost forty scenes total, each spiraling after the other in a never-ending circle.
The old man smiled slightly, his usually stoic facade cracking at the idea of what it all meant. He might just allow a successor to finally win his post, if he could just find one who could tell him the theme of the door. In a single word. So simple and yet so foreign to so many, especially those in power.
Especially me? He couldn’t help the small chuckle, considering the meeting about to unfold.
He shrugged lightly, the coarse cloth of his robes rubbing casually against leathery skin. He pushed against the door and entered.
The chamber within was almost anticlimactic after the marvel of the door’s beauty. Spartan to the point of austerity, it contained a simple five-sided table, with two chairs to a side, all with the warm cherry blush of hardwood. A soft glow wreathed the room in familiarity and comfort from a hidden bank of lights in the high-vaulted ceiling. A small raised platform to the right, with a small mat and tea-making apparatus, was the only other oddity in the rather small chamber.
But the simplicity of the chamber belied the expansive technology banking the room completely, enfolding it in a silence as great as resources might allow. His lips twitched once more at the idea of so many years of subduing his previous life for the current, only to draw on it on numerous occasions, when needed. Only when absolutely needed . . . of course.
We always go back to the same drinking hole, don’t we, old man?
Lips threatened to twist into a larger grin, but it died unborn, sliding back to a thin line as the other four occupants of the room came into focus. The tall, almost tawny-skinned Khan Ajax Drummond filled a seat with his usual determination and charisma. The dark clouds humped in lines on his forehead could be read by the basest labor castemen, much less one so versed in reading others as he was. He does not approve of the proposal. The dark, brooding eyes that met his unflinching grays secured his opinion of the fight to come.
Carefully making his way to the table, the old man seated himself while taking in the other three. Though each sat at a different angle, the deference paid by the two flanking individuals to the third, central, figure was so great as to almost be a physical manifestation he could strum with idle fingers.
Muscles relaxing after the strenuous walk, he let out a pent-up breath, but it didn’t bring much relief. After all, the pain in his bones sparked from much more than simply old age and a long walk down darkened stairwells and ghostly hallways.
He nodded respectfully to the guest, ignoring the other two, who’d yet to speak in the months of negotiations that proceded this night. The woman appeared to be of an age with him. Yet where time sat heavily upon his wearied shoulders, the striking beauty of her youth still shone just below the skein of wrinkles and only slightly sagging skin. In white robes that flowed around her like a web of silk spun on the spot, she emanated power and tranquility in equal parts. It was in the way she turned her head, in the look in her eyes, in her posture. A combination he found fascinating, to say the least.
Are you so enfeebled, old man, that you allow your mind to wander at such a delicate time? When all the future unfolds from this night? A pair of pretty eyes to engender regret for decades-long celibacy? He kept himself from shaking his head, but only just. “Abbess Tolonoi, what have you to say?”
Delicate shoulders moved layers of robes imperceptibly, while a smile brought her beauty even more strongly to upturned lips and accepting eyes. “What more is there to say?” She casually pointed towards the holoprojector inset in the tabletop. “My Order has provided all the documentation available. We have withheld nothing. The decision is yours. As it has been for the last three days.”
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Khan Drummond open his mouth and moved to forestall an outburst that might cost them. Regardless of the Order of the Five Pillars’ seemingly outstretched hand, a devastating war was only recently ended. A war, in fact, that led directly to this place, a war perpetrated by the masters of the very abbess now sitting calmly in their midst.
Ah, the vagaries of fate and the webs of lies and deceit . . . and hope. Yes, hope. The universe must enjoy itself at times. Very much.
“Abbess,” he began, “we are well aware of time’s stately march. Yet we cannot move into the future you propose without due consideration. I have been on Zane Plateau several times seeking guidance. This may be one of the most pivotal moments in the history of Clan Nova Cat.”
She nodded. “I understand. Hence my patience. However, the time comes when decisions must be made. You Clanners must know that even more than any Spheroid. There are times when decisive action is needed.”
“As when Warlord Minamoto’s mad grab for power sparked another war with Clan Ghost Bear?” Khan Drummond spoke, anger seething in words that filled the chamber with all the hurt and pain and death of the last three years. “When he moved decisively to give action to his hatred of us? To subjugate Clan Nova Cat once and for all to the Dragon, as the Ghost Bear gnawed our flanks?”
The abbess glanced in his direction without moving her head and once more he marveled at the subtle dismissal of his khan’s argument. “Warlord Minamoto failed. He has paid for his sins,” she responded in soft tones only heard because of the perfect acoustics of the room.
Ajax’s hand slapped the table, fury threatening to overcome all the weeks of groundwork. “Perhaps for you, but not for the Nova Cats. Who will atone for the deaths of so many Clansmen? Of so many civilian dead? And you say he failed?” He slapped the table again, voice spinning up even higher. “Then why are we now on reservations on worlds we once owned outright, given to us by Theodore Kurita? Why does Coordinator Hohiro not pull troops from our soil? Why do we not return to the balance of our pledge of loyalty to the Dragon? Or does he not trust us any more than Warlord Minamoto?”
The abbess regarded the khan of all Clan Nova Cats for a few moments, then her eyes flowed towards the old man. He matched her stare, fully aware of the passing of authority implicit in the act. As Khan Ajax began to stand, rage vibrating from his large stance at her affront of dismissing his concerns, the old man spoke.
“Please, my Khan,” he began, turning fully to Ajax with the implied blessing of the abbess—he could say things she could not. He must come at this carefully. “Though no ilKhan has been elected since the days of the Jihad and the Wars of Reaving,” he began, licking lips to work moisture into his mouth, “by the nature of the position, an ilKhan’s hands were ofttimes tied, making it impossible to simply force an issue. Instead, many an ilKhan had to exert pressure elsewhere to achieve a goal. The same applies here. Hohiro is as committed to the Nova Cats as his father. Perhaps more so. Y
et he is not all-powerful and his position is precarious. He will support Clan Nova Cat, but the pressure from his warlords currently will not allow him to pull back his troops. To do so risks another Ronin War.”
Ajax stood rooted to his spot, turning over both that knowledge and the fact that the words had come from him. What finally convinced the khan, the old man felt sure, was the same reason the abbess did not speak. The same often applied to the khan of a Clan—at times the Clan Council could throw impediments in a khan’s way, forcing him to use alternate means. The fact that he avoided mentioning what would be plain between him and Khan Drummond also helped to mollify the khan towards the abbess’ actions. At times, even in secrecy and on foreign soil, some words could not be spoken.
“But this?” Ajax continued. “Do we really want to commit ourselves to this course?” Even slightly mollified, the khan’s reluctance still rose like heat waves on sun-baked ferrocrete.
The old man lost focus for a moment as glimpses of a possible future gyrated—spurts of technicolor and auditory and tactile sensations slipping through small rents in the blackness of the unknown they now moved through.
The khan may not budge until you hammer it home. Until you destroy the last vestiges of his reluctance. Coming back into focus, he spoke blasphemy.
“Nicholas Kerensky failed.”
Ajax jerked back as though pole-axed, the words echoing with power, then falling into a silence so thick with emotions that the old man, for just a moment, felt as though the pumping hearts of those present thrummed along invisible lines . . . lines that might fall apart, but which also might succeed if wound and woven and bound together.
“The Founder failed,” he continued, his voice profound—soft, yet powerful as a Mad Cat laying waste to enemy ’Mechs on the battlefield. “The Clans failed. As a whole, we did not restore order to the Inner Sphere and reestablish a Star League. Instead, regardless of its sham roots, a Star League formed to stop us. And then someone did bring lasting peace, at least what might be lasting peace, to the Inner Sphere . . . and Devlin Stone had nothing to do with the Clans, nor we him. And he even seduced us with his words, until we Clans joined the Inner Sphere in diminishing the very thing the Founder built us to be. And even Nova Cat visions did not succeed, though perhaps those visions have yet to come to fruition and our current valley of death is a signpost we must pass to reach paradise. . . .” He trailed off, the words spoken almost more for himself than the khan, as eyes once more saw forbidden fruits. The pale, wild-eyed look of his khan finally penetrated his own musings and he wrestled his errant thoughts back to the unfolding battle that must be won, or the seeds of that forbidden fruit would never germinate. He continued, inexorable.
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