BattleTech

by Loren L. Coleman

  For the next few days, they stayed in the kind of pain inside that recognized that their relationship would never be quite the same again. Still, they remained close and performed their duties well and often in tandem. A scar from their fight remained as a faint line on Lyonor’s cheek. Scars were good, virtual badges of honor for a warrior.

  Right before the photo had been taken, Joanna and Lyonor had been laughing hysterically, which might explain, in the photo, the joy in Lyonor’s radiant eyes. The scar on her cheek was so fresh, it showed up darkly on Lyonor’s fair skin.

  Strange, Joanna thought, I did laugh that day. How often do I ever laugh? I cannot remember what we were laughing about.

  • • •

  Walking back to the cot, Joanna smoothed out the edges of the photo and put it back in the lock box, underneath some transfer documents. Running her hand through the box’s objects, her finger fell on a comb. She maneuvered it out of the pile and stared at it.

  Although Jade Falcons were not known for skills in crafts, this comb approached beauty more than most of their objects. Made of a shell Joanna had found on a beach on the world of Strana Mechty, it had already had a comb shape, with a scalloped top tapering down to a flat thin surface. At first she had just pocketed it, then found it a few days later when the fatigues she wore that day had reached the slightly odorous, slightly stiff state brought around by too many days of wearing. In readying the garment for laundering, she had reached into her pocket and pulled out the shell, now covered in patches by clinging lint. She wiped the lint away and was again struck by the nearly symmetrical shape of the shell, not only in its shape but in the way light thin gray lines ran across its surface in a design that looked as if it had to be crafted by hand rather than the erosion of sea waves.

  She transferred the shell to the pocket of her clean fatigues and, two days later, happened on a village where a labor casteman, actually a specialist in etching designs on Jade Falcon medals, agreed to make a comb out of it for Joanna. She remembered the man—a squinty-eyed freeborn with the kind of rough skin common to such breeding—saying to her that a comb was a good idea to straighten out Joanna’s long unkempt hair. She pushed him against the wall of his Spartan, single room house, telling him never to talk to her, just do the job.

  When she returned the next day, the man did not speak but merely handed her the shell, crafted into a comb whose teeth imitated the symmetry of the piece’s overall shape. For a reason Joanna chose not to ask about, he had neatly painted a diamond figure, as symmetrical as the rest of the shell, in the center of the upper portion of the comb. She paid for his work with work credit—eliciting a surprise she ignored, since a warrior simply commands and takes—without complimenting on the man’s impressive skills.

  The next time she visited the town, she could not find his house and was told that he had died.

  Sitting on the cot, listening to the springs squeak beneath her as she shifted her body, she recalled another day, one soon after their brawl, when she and Lyonor had been linked by the comb.

  The comb

  Lyonor’s arm was broken, in a fracture too delicate to be immediately fixed, so she wore it in a sling. When Joanna came upon her, she was running the fingers of her good hand through her dark hair. Joanna noted that the hair, which in Lyonor’s strange un-Clanlike vanity was worn longer than most, had lost some of its shine in the days since Lyonor had injured her arm in a simple fall off a ladder in a storage depot while searching for a new edition of the Clan epic, The Remembrance, to replace the one she had worn out; even more ironic, considering most considered the use of an actual hardcopy Remembrance superfluous.

  “What are you doing?” Joanna asked, standing behind Lyonor.

  Lyonor jumped, startled. “Do you always have to sneak up on people?” she asked.

  “On the battlefield I will announce my presence. You, eyas, I watch with a Falcon’s stealth.”

  Lyonor scoffed. “On the battlefield you have no choice, you mean. How in the name of Kerensky can you sneak up on someone while in a ’Mech which can be seen from kilometers away?”

  “It can be done. Fog, snow, blinding rain. A sandstorm, perhaps.”

  “Telemetry can still detect you.”

  “Do not split hairs. And, speaking of hair, let me ask again, what are you doing?”

  Lyonor held up the comb, one of the small fragile ones issued in the kit of all warriors. Nearly half of its teeth had broken off. One of its teeth dangled, ready to fall. “You ever try to operate one of these devices when you only have one good arm?”

  “I do not try to, as you say, operate one of those much at all.”

  “I can tell. But some of us believe in grooming even when it is not time for a ceremony or ritual.”

  Joanna, resisting the urge to touch her own hair, shrugged.

  “You want help? Operating, I mean.”

  “You sure you know how?” Lyonor asked, handing her the comb.

  Joanna waved it away, saying, “Not that one. Got my own.”

  Lyonor’s eyebrows raised. She clearly was surprised that Joanna would even carry around a comb. Staring at it, she started to smile, then took a better look at the item. Light seemed to flash off it, even though the sky, filled with dark clouds, hid the sun. Impressed by the piece’s symmetry and its diamond symbol decoration, Lyonor allowed herself to do something Jade Falcon warriors rarely did—express an aesthetic opinion. “That is pretty,” she said. She touched the diamond design with her thumb. “Pretty. And strong, too. Looks unbreakable.”

  Joanna held it up. “Yes, it probably is. Turn around.”

  Lyonor took up her position, her back straight, her head slightly down. With her good hand, she fluffed out her hair so it hung down over her shoulders. Joanna smoothed its surface with her hand, noting that Lyonor’s hair, even in disarray, felt smoother than her own. Choosing some strands, Joanna slowly ran the comb through Lyonor’s hair, felt its strong smooth teeth disentangle strands of hair easily. The firmness of grip that the comb allowed and the unbreakable strength of its teeth made the process of combing effortless. Gathering bunches of Lyonor’s hair, she began creating order out of the mess.

  As she was smoothing out the last strands, she hard a loud guffaw behind her. Whirling around, she saw Garvy, one of the most disagreeable warriors in her Star. He liked to provoke all the other warriors, said he did it to make them better fighters. Joanna could not deny that Garvy was skillful in his ’Mech cockpit. With his long thin neck and body he looked more like a seabird than a warrior, but in spite of his slim frame he could attack another with a special viciousness. His hawklike face was distorted into a gleeful sarcasm.

  “Wipe that smirk off your face, Garvy,” Joanna said. “What is rattling your gyro, anyway?”

  “You two. Such a pretty picture.”

  Joanna stiffened. In warrior circles words like pretty, beautiful, lovely, as applied to warriors, were usually setups to a further insult that would start a fight. Garvy had a mean look on his face. He probably had been drinking fusionaires somewhere, and she and Lyonor were the first potential victims he had found.

  “So domestic, quiaff?”

  Another fighting word. The last thing a true warrior was, was domestic. Warriors did not live in households, and words like family often made them sick to their stomachs.

  “You know what the two of you look like? Like a pair of freebirth villagers during a— “

  And, of all the words in a warrior’s vocabulary the word freebirth was the worst. It could be, and often had been, an invitation to a fight to the death.

  Joanna started to lunge at Garvy, but the strong sudden grip of Lyonor’s good arm held her back. “He is mine,” she whispered. She stood up and wrested the comb from Joanna’s fingers.

  Lyonor did not lunge, did not even look menacing as she strode casually toward Garvy. There was a hint of a smile on her face.

  “Garvy,” she said. “Although you look like a canister mistake, you are a t
rueborn warrior, after all. I respect you for that and so I give you a shot at performing surkai.”

  Surkai was an ancient Clan ritual, which gave a chance for warriors to extricate themselves from words or actions that had been too rash, too impulsive. When a warrior acknowledged surkai and asked for the forgiveness allowed by the ritual, the rash acts would be forgiven without penalty, without recrimination. Meaningless fights were useless, and surkai was a Jade Falcon way to eliminate them.

  “Surkai!” he grunted. “I would not waste surkai on a freebirth like you.”

  Lyonor nodded, turned as if to return to Joanna, then whirled around, holding the comb straight out in the hand of her good arm, and aimed it at Garvy’s neck. Its teeth broke the skin and she pushed it in. Lyonor wrenched it out and blood came spurting after it. Garvy’s hands went to his neck to stem the flow. It looked to Joanna as if he were strangling himself.

  Lyonor wiped the comb off on her sling and walked casually back to Joanna.

  “Guess we should get him some medical help,” she said, then looking back: “Or not.”

  “How about it, Garvy?” Joanna yelled. “Want some help? Nod if your answer is aff.”

  Garvy just looked at them, his eyes bugged out, and clearly was steadfast in his resolve not to answer her. His eyes glazed over, and he staggered. For a moment the eyes became clear, and he did nod, vigorously, then they returned to the glazed state and he fell. He must have been unconscious because his hand fell away from the wound and the blood began flowing freely.

  Handing Joanna the comb, Lyonor quickly ripped a piece of cloth off her sling and went to Garvy’s side, where she knelt down and pressed the cloth to his wound. Joanna, remembering Lyonor’s useless compassion when she had refused to kill that freeborn, wanted to kick Lyonor away from Garvy’s body. On the other hand, she had admired the quick brutal way she had wielded the comb. There was hope for her yet. She was certainly the best warrior that Joanna had ever taken under wing. She might just win that Bloodname she claimed not to want as desperately as Joanna did.

  “Think we should save this freebirth?” Lyonor asked.

  “Well, he is a warrior and he is fairly skilled and we would just have to train a replacement … “

  “That is it, then. I think I can manage with one arm. I will take his head; you take his feet. Just a minute first, help me to do a field compress.”

  “With one good arm? Let me do it by myself.”

  “I can do it.” Lyonor’s voice was low but menacing, then her voice became softer. “I can do anything, you know that, quiaff?”

  “Aff. I do know that.”

  It was a struggle, but the two of them did manage a tight field compress and got Garvy back to a medic, and he lived to continue his usually drunken unpleasantness.

  • • •

  Joanna smiled as her thumb ran along the edges of the comb’s teeth. They were not as sharp as they had once been, as they must have been when Lyonor shoved them into Garvy’s neck. She shut her eyes and saw Lyonor again for an instant, on her face that curious combination of confrontation and respect toward Joanna as if she realized that Joanna had made her into the fine warrior she was. One of the best. Maybe I do have a talent for training, maybe I do belong at this stravag facility, she thought.

  She flipped the comb back into the lock-box and was about to close it, when a rare flash of light through the dirty window made something briefly sparkle in the box. Pushing other detritus away from it, she saw the piece of armor that was her most distressing memento. It had fallen from Lyonor’s Summoner on the day Joanna had learned what hell truly meant.

  The armor

  Twelve hours out from Tokasha, preparing for battle with the Ghost Bears, most warriors would feel elation. The call to Trial surging in their blood. But Lyonor had still been in a miserable mood, so much so that the scar Joanna had given her was a darker line than usual. She had not been selected to participate in one of the Trials of Bloodright rituals back home, and she was bitterly angry about it. Joanna, too, had not been selected, but that had happened so often, she just cursed and vowed to find a way to get the Bloodname at any cost. Twice now she had joined the melee that would produce the thirty-second contestant, and both times she had been defeated in the melee’s late stages, in each instance through a dirty trick rather than a one-on-one confrontation between warriors. She knew that there was something about her ferocity that put fear into others and made them resort to trickery rather than go against her. She could try the melee again, but not this time around, she told herself.

  They were in a DropShip, on their way to challenge the Ghost Bears for the legacy of one of their warriors. It was apparently from a genetic line worth fighting for, although Joanna never took much interest in that sort of thing. A fight was a fight, and she was always up for it.

  “Damn it, Joanna,” Lyonor said. “I deserved the chance at a Bloodname. Look at what I have done. Who is going, do you know?”

  Joanna hesitated a moment, deliberately extending the silence. She had to admit to herself that Lyonor had certainly changed in her attitude about getting a Bloodname. The indifference to Bloodnames she had once professed had vanished.

  “Tell me, Joanna.”

  “Garvy, I think.”

  Lyonor’s remarkable eyes seemed to have a fire blazing behind them. She was clearly ready to destroy anything she could reach. And she did reach. For Joanna. She pushed Joanna away, and Joanna began to laugh uproariously.

  The laughter sent the anger right out of Lyonor. It was more of a shock than that of Garvy’s selection for the Bloodname ritual.

  In between bursts of laughter, Joanna said, “I was—joking. Lyonor, it is a joke, quiaff? Garvy would not be selected. I have not heard who has, but it would never be Garvy. If that happened, I would simply challenge him to Trial. And he would lose.”

  Lyonor lunged at her, but this time Joanna’s laughter drew a vaguely disreputable Lyonor smile.

  And a half-day later, the Star was assembled to fight in a battle over the Ghost Bear warrior’s genetic legacy.

  Ensconced in the cockpit of her Hellbringer, going through her weapons checklist, while the ’Mech’s lasers and PPCs were powering up, and the telemetry whirled and flashed in its activating of the ’Mech, Joanna had a brief thought of how odd genetic legacy challenges were. Yes, it mattered that her Jade Falcon Clan challenge for the nearly sacred ideal of a legacy. Yes, a warrior would have to fight for a valuable warrior’s legacy to the death. Yes, Joanna would never scale down her efforts under even the most doubtful conditions. Still—there was a part of Joanna’s mind that wondered if such a skirmish over a legacy really was a proper occupation for a warrior. Skirmishes were, in a way, just rituals to keep warriors in condition, hone their skills with an imagined goal. The true goals of a warrior were matters like defending a city or planet from attack, attacking another Clan with the purpose of destroying it, conquering new worlds. Many warriors, Joanna imagined, dreamed of all-out war. It was the forbidden fruit. And its taste would not come today.

  This particular skirmish was being fought on a vast hilly plain spotted with abandoned archaeological digs. Joanna knew nothing about these archaeological digs or, for that matter, anything about archaeology itself. She knew that a lot of strange unkempt tech-caste people dug into mounds looking for lost artifacts from before the Clans, from the time of the Star League in Exile. Very few significant discoveries had ever been made in this region of Clanspace, but that could not stop archaeologists from trying.

  The Clan Ghost Bear leaders may have chosen this area because they believed Jade Falcon warriors would be less effective in such a strange terrain. To Joanna this was not smart strategy. It was just another trick like those of her victorious opponents in her two melees. No matter how familiar they might be with this planet, where Ghost Bear maintained some storage depots, it was uncomfortable to have to take note of holes in the ground while mounting assault or defense strategy. Anything that distracted at
tention from the fight irritated Joanna, even though she had been trained in all possible terrains and practiced hundreds of tactical situations. Well, at least her Trinary had been bid into the skirmish and she was happy with that. As they touched controls, her fingers actually itched with the anticipation of the coming battle.

  “You daydreaming, Joanna?” came Lyonor’s voice over the commline.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You are standing still. We have been waiting for your signal for—well, for longer than I would like. Why do not we start?”

  “There have been no orders from the Star colonel.”

  “When have you been one to stand on ceremony? Or signals? Or even obeying a mere colonel, quiaff?”

  “Aff. We will move.”

  Soon Joanna’s Star was crossing the plain, up small hills, down larger ones, and skirting the archaeological digs, which were at least spread far apart. As the Star advanced, Joanna saw the Ghost Bear ’Mechs gradually appear in the distance. At first, the ’Mechs, strung out in an uneven line, looked like toys that were slowly being expanded as they came closer. And they were so far away that their advance seemed agonizingly slow. There were so many heavy ’Mechs in the line that they were slowing down the faster ones.

  Joanna wanted to spring her own ’Mech forward, run right into the center of the Ghost Bear string of ’Mechs, wreak havoc on its orderly arrangement, then burst past them, turn and attack others from behind. It would instigate a grand melee, a free-for-all much like the one she was missing back on Ironhold. A doomed tactic, probably, but she was tempted, just this once.

  Before she could think any more about the Bloodname, the Ghost Bears opened fire. Joanna and Lyonor, both of whom had bid for particular enemy ’Mechs during the prebattle Ghost Bear advance, responded first, sending a flurry of PPC blasts that knocked armor flying from the enemy each had chosen.

  Joanna sent her Hellbringer lunging forward, zeroing in on an enemy Mad Dog. Her cockpit shook as the Mad Dog landed a glancing autocannon shot across her shoulder. She had control of the Hellbringer in a second, and rocked the Mad Dog with a barrage from both her PPCs. Something was disabled in the Mad Dog. Both its arms dropped, apparently useless, though their nervous jerking movements indicated its pilot was trying, probably desperately, to lift them. Joanna took advantage of the moment and downed the Mad Dog with a powerful barrage.