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  Ragnar shrugged. "I'm not offering it to Victor. If you want it, Kai, it's yours. If not, I'll eat it." To the group at large, he added, "I may be the youngest here, but that doesn't mean I was born yesterday or born ignorant. This is worth at least three cans of beans, a whole chocolate bar, and someone taking my watch for me."

  "Keep it, Ragnar. You might as well enjoy the meal because tomorrow is going to be nasty." Kai popped open his stew and shuddered as the odor reached his nose. Losing his appetite, he set the can on the rock. "Yeah, one more thing. About the watches. They're going to be two hours instead of the normal one. Sun-Tzu will take the first, followed by Ragnar, Cassandra, and me in that order. I'll get everyone moving well before dawn so we can hit the enemy before they're out of their sleeping bags."

  Sun-Tzu looked up. "No. I'm tired. I don't want the first watch."

  Kai sighed heavily. "I set the watches based on who seems to be most tired. Not only do I feel you have more stamina than Ragnar or my sister, but you're very difficult to awaken when it's your turn for the watch. I'd prefer not to have to worry about it. You have the first watch."

  Sun-Tzu looked at Victor and Hohiro. "And they do not have watches? I know why you make an exception for the Davion, but why for Kurita? Have you, like your father, turned traitor?"

  Cassandra scrambled to her feet, fists balled, but Kai stepped forward and stopped her without a word. He acknowledged the fury in her brown eyes and blessed it with a nod, but signalled her back to Ragnar's side with a look. She acquiesced, but only reluctantly, and Kai knew her anger still simmered only a degree or two below a rolling boil.

  "Let me explain this to everyone, just so we're all clear here. Victor, Galen, Shin, and Hohiro are our primary strike force. Their job is to get to the enemy 'Mechs and to secure a lance. For this, I want them well-rested and sharp. I do not think interrupting their sleep will help in that, so I have exempted them from watches for this evening."

  Kai indicated the rest of them by opening his hands. "We are the diversionary force. Our job is to create as much mayhem and confusion as possible to cover the others on their way to the 'Mechs. Because we do not face the complicated task of trying to strip out the code modules for a 'Mech in mid-raid, I think we can get by with a bit less sleep. As it is, by taking the first watch, your sleep will be uninterrupted. Is that clear?"

  "I see what is clear." Sun-Tzu picked at his trimmed fingernails, then stood abruptly. "I see everything clearly. This is a conspiracy."

  Ragnar set his food down. "Look, I'll take the first two watches. I can do four hours. I've never need much sleep."

  Sun-Tzu gave him a sour look. "Away, puppy. I don't need you to defend me. It is obvious that all of this is a plot to embarrass and degrade the Capellan Confederation. Why else would they have put you in charge and have your Amazon sister here? To elevate you to the position of commander of this exercise is an insult to legitimate nations, and for Davion and Kurita to condone it proves their complicity."

  Kai kept his voice even. "Sit down, Sun-Tzu."

  Sun-Tzu's voice dripped scorn. "I take no commands from you. Treason runs in your veins, and that House Davion depends upon the Allards makes them worthy only of contempt."

  He turned and focused fully on Ragnar. "You, on the other hand, are fit only for ridicule. The Free Rasalhague Republic never was anything more than a joke that the Draconis Combine played on your people. Your freedom is based purely on the promise of those who were once your masters. If the Combine decided to revoke your independence, do you think anything could stop them? And now you have lost your capital and over half your worlds."

  Ragnar shot to his feet. "Then you should realize how much alike we are, Sun-Tzu. Each of us has lost half our realm to outsiders. We should be brothers, you and I, in resolving not to lose the rest of our worlds."

  Though Ragnar meant his plea to be calming, it had the opposite effect. Sun-Tzu's voice rose in pitch as he screamed at the Prince from Rasalhague. "Never presume equality with me, boy. It is well you toady up to Kai and Cassandra. You all come from bandit nations that have no right to exist."

  He whirled. "And how appropriate it is that a yakuza attends a Kurita and that a Lyran sucks up to a Davion. You're all whores playing into the hands of whatever plot Hanse Davion and Jaime Wolf have hatched. You know the Dragoons are part and parcel of the Clans. Wolf said so himself. And here we are, going through a sham to delay any real planning while the Clans regroup."

  Ragnar reached out and touched Sun-Tzu's arm. The Capellan spun, his right hand a blur as it came around to smash Ragnar down. But before the blow could land, Kai shot forward and caught his cousin's wrist in his right hand.

  Shrieking like a wild beast, Sun-Tzu ripped his hand free from Kai's grip. For half a second, Kai looked into his cousin's green eyes and saw the vicious emotions that drove him so. Then brilliant stars exploded, eclipsing the view of his cousin, as Sun-Tzu's right foot swept up in a roundhouse kick that blasted Kai to the ground.

  Shimmering balls of rainbow light danced before his eyes and dirt ground beneath his teeth. The left side of his head felt as though he'd been hit with a mallet, but the ringing in his ears failed to block out Sun-Tzu's angry words of triumph.

  "Do not touch me, quisling whelp! There now, you've a taste of what will happen if you ever attempt to complete what your mother and father started. The Capellan Confederation is not yours. It is mine. You will never get your hands on it—this I vow—no matter how hard you try to embarrass me."

  Kai's own anger erupted. His hands reached out and gathered Sun-Tzu's ankles together. As his cousin fell, Kai pounced on his chest and pinned his arms to the ground by grinding his knees into Sun-Tzu's biceps. He grabbed the front of Sun-Tzu's jumpsuit in his left fist, then slapped him twice in quick succession.

  Kai's voice dropped to a menacing growl. "I hope this gets through to you now because, until now, it hasn't. I do not want it now, nor have I ever wanted, the Capellan Confederation. The Celestial Throne is yours, and you are welcome to it. If Victor asked me to lead an invasion into the Confederation, I would counsel against it. If I never see or hear of fighting between our realms again, I will die a happy man."

  Without letting go of his cousin's jumpsuit, Kai stood and dragged Sun-Tzu to his feet. "The first watch is yours."

  Sun-Tzu staggered back but said nothing when Kai released him. Blood still pounding in his ears, Kai turned away and stalked off beyond the circle of stones that marked their campsite. He wandered off and down around a small hill that hid the camp from view. Seating himself on a stone, he closed his eyes and hugged his arms around himself.

  How could I have been so stupid? He knew that hitting Sun-Tzu was no solution to the problem. It probably wouldn't be more than twenty-four hours before the council leaders would call him up again to explain his conduct. Kai's cheeks began to burn as he imagined his parents' disapproval.

  Behind him, he heard the sound of gravel crunch beneath booted feet. He knew instantly that it was not Sun-Tzu because the noise was not loud enough. "It's all right, Zandra. I'm fine."

  "Forgive me, Leftenant Allard," said Hohiro. "I did not mean to intrude on your thoughts."

  Kai turned slowly. Despite a half-full moon and a dozen smaller satellites of various colors orbiting above them, Kai could not see more than Hohiro's outline. "It is no intrusion, Hohiro. I should apologize to everyone for my conduct, and I might as well start with you. I am sorry you had to witness that, that ..."

  "That loss of control?" Hohiro shook his head. "No apology is necessary, Kai. In fact, I come here to tell you I admired your command of self. In your place, I would have beaten him senseless."

  "That's the problem. Sun-Tzu is already senseless. Beating him would only reinforce everything he's known his entire life. And as much as you thought I controlled myself, there had to be another way."

  The Kurita Prince leaned back against a dark dolmen. "There are times when the only solution is violence."


  "Hohiro, you and I are both warriors. We condone the use of violence to solve problems, and I have to admit that sometimes it seems the only way." The image of Clan 'Mechs being crushed under tons of stone flashed before his inner eye. "But killing Sun-Tzu is not an option, and beating him only deepens his fear."

  "His fear?" Hohiro scratched at the stubble on his chin. "I've never seen anything in him but hatred."

  Kai clasped his hands at the nape of his neck and hugged his forearms to his head. "It's there, believe me. I saw it in his eyes before he nailed me. Think about it. He's grown up in a nightmare. He learned to hate and fear me the way Romano hates and fears my mother. He was barely five years old when our grandfather supposedly committed suicide, so he grew up with the rumors that his own mother ordered his death. As much as he loves Romano, somehow he has to reconcile the loving face she shows him and the demonic mask she displays to the people. With the same spontaneity that could make her suddenly give him a present, she could order the death of thousands. She institutionalized torture as a test of loyalty and no matter how much he wanted to deny it, he had to be afraid she would one day ask him to prove his loyalty in that way."

  Kai swallowed hard. "Somehow he survived in that madhouse. He has worked long and hard to appease his mother and to deflect her from murderous rages. He has fought to hold together' a realm that his mother could so easily tear apart, but for what? He looks at the St. Ives Compact and the Federated Commonwealth and he knows we could sweep the Capellans away at any time. He knows his troops wouldn't even slow us down. The only way he could make us pay would be to whip his people into a suicidal frenzy that would destroy all he has sought to preserve."

  "But you have told him you have no interest in the Capellan throne."

  Kai shrugged in exasperation. "But each denial seems only to convince him that I am trying to lull him into a false sense of security so I can crush him."

  Hohiro's head came up. "Perhaps that is because he hears beyond your words to the truth."

  "What?"

  "You yourself said it earlier. We are both warriors. We know that some problems can only be solved by violence, and we have accepted the responsibility of the power given to us. You deny wanting to rule the Capellan Confederation, and that may be so, but you and I know it is not the whole truth. If Sun-Tzu turned out to be as mad as his mother or your grandfather, if people were being slaughtered wholesale for his amusement, if minorities were being killed in some genocidal drive for a pure race, I believe you'd go after him. And you would do anything to destroy him."

  "No."

  "Yes." Hohiro folded his arms across his chest. "I've watched you, Kai, and I also read carefully the reports the ISF has prepared on you. Our analysts have labeled you a coward. They claim you are afraid of war and only became a MechWarrior so that you would not disgrace your parents by not doing so. They interpret your tendency to overwork plans as excessive timidity. They insist that your victory on Twycross was sheer accident, that your escape pod's rocket blasted the shielding from your fusion engine in a malfunction."

  "Is that what you think?"

  Hohiro shook his head. "What I think is that our ISF agents are fools. You're not afraid of war. You're afraid of what would happen if you ever let yourself go. You're terrified that you would not stop, that you would not know how to draw the line. At Twycross, you ordered a half-dozen men to return to their post and to blow the Gash. You had to issue that order—it was the right one at the right time—because you had no way of knowing you would make it into the Gash. If their 'Mechs had been a half-minute faster, you would have arrived too late. What you fear is that you are capable of ordering men to their deaths without a second thought.

  "I come from a tradition where life is not held so dear. Instead of ordering men into battle against foes, I can 'invite them onward.' A pretty euphemism for ordering someone to die, isn't it? I have that sort of power of life and death over anyone in my realm. Because of it, I also share your fear."

  Hohiro hesitated a moment, then plunged on. "I know what it is to look in the mirror and wonder what kind of a monster I could become. That is natural, and what's more, it is vital. My father has taught me that if we did not question ourselves about the uses of power, we would never notice the boundary between just use and despotism until we'd overshot it by light years. If we did not question ourselves, we might not have a clue that we had gone too far until we started to drown in the blood of our victims."

  Kai winced as Hohiro's words seemed to touch the core of his being. "No, no, you're wrong."

  "He's right, Kai." Victor joined them, with a nod toward Hohiro. "I heard what Hohiro had to say and I concur fully. Morgan Kell first brought the same point to my attention, back when we all arrived on Outreach in January. He said you were one of those rare warriors who keeps a tight rein on himself because you fear what would happen otherwise. 'Just be thankful he's on your side,' Morgan said. 'If he ever cuts loose, there's not much in the Inner Sphere that could stop him.'"

  Hohiro bowed his head in a salute to Victor. "Colonel Kell is a shrewd judge of character, and a warrior of long and distinguished career. It does not surprise me that he saw this so clearly."

  The Kurita Prince stepped forward and rested his hands on Kai's shoulders. "Kai, the power we possess is given only to a few because of the immense responsibility that comes with it. We are the arbiters who must sometimes decide whether to risk a small group to prevent suffering by a greater number of people. Even at the best of times, in the most clear-cut of cases, this is not an easy decision. You just have to trust yourself and your innate sense. You have resolved to do the right thing, and you will."

  Kai turned away. "I've wrestled with this demon since Twycross, and even before that. I thought my initial solution was right, but Twycross proved me wrong."

  He turned around again and let his arms fall to his side. "I've decided the potential for wielding such power in error is too high. In the future, if ever I am forced to issue orders that are suicidal, I will give them. But I will also lead those troops personally."

  A slightly lopsided grin spread across his face. "Perhaps your ISF people were right, Hohiro. Perhaps I am a coward. I believe it is much harder to live with the knowledge that I had to push people into a situation that caused their death than to die with them in that effort. I refuse to treat life so cheaply, no matter what the cause or how great the justification. If that proves to be my epitaph, I will rest well through eternity."

  15

  Kerensky Sports Centre

  Strana Mechty, Beyond the Periphery

  1 June 3051

  "So, when you dropped your 'Mech down on its haunches and cranked the torso back to give your arms more range, I had to break off. It was a good move."

  "Thank you, Carew." Phelan Wolf nodded solemnly as his companion finished his explanation of the exercise they had just completed. Carew was a small, slender man of the type common among Clan pilots. His unruly shock of blond hair made his head seem yet bigger, and his large green eyes gave him a look of childlike innocence. Still, in all the time Phelan had spent training in antiaircraft maneuvers with him, the MechWarrior knew his friend to be anything but childlike or innocent.

  Carew shrugged. "With Natasha, Ranna, Evantha, and me training you, the only question when you test out is whether you would do it as a MechWarrior, a pilot, or an Elemental."

  Wearing shorts and T-shirts in place of their cooling vests, the two men marched up a grassy slope to a massive plateau. The flat expanse had been sectioned off into a score of playing fields, each carefully delineated by a chalk line. Each field was split in half across the middle and each end had a circle surrounding a goal approximately two meters square and located four meters from the end line.

  The players out on the field wore helmets with a mesh cage to protect their faces, padded gloves, arm guards, and padded torso protectors with a red or blue circle in the center. They carried sticks whose length varied, depending on the player's
position on the field, but all had triangular nets on one end. Phelan noted that defensive players carried sticks as tall as they were. As most of them were Elementals, that meant they were long, indeed. Offensive players, mostly pilots like Carew, had short sticks that could be whipped around very quickly. Midfielders carried sticks about a meter and a half in length, as did the goalie, but the net on his stick was four times the size of the others.

  Phelan smiled. "Hey, lacrosse. We used to play this on Outreach and I played for the Academy during my time at the Nagelring."

  Carew nodded. "I think you'll find this game a bit different than what you played on Outreach." He held up his hand to forestall Phelan's question. "I've been talking to Natasha's archivist about the differences between how we play here and they play there. But if you go on this field thinking the game is the same, you'll get yourself killed."

  Phelan looked out at the field and watched the players chase the ball around for a while. The red team caught and tossed the small white ball back and forth, working it in toward the blue goal. One of the midfielders cut across the middle, caught a pass from a forward, and sent the ball whistling in at the goal. The goalie scooped it up and started it heading back down the field.

  "I hear what you say, Carew, but aside from a lot of butt-ending by players, it does not look that different."

  "Butt-ending?"

  "Smacking another player with the aft end of the stick. You know, a foul."

  "Foul?"

  Out on the field, one blue player jabbed his stick into the ribs of a red player, crumpling the victim. "Yeah, like that, spearing. That's a foul. It's illegal. Against the rules."

  "Phelan, we have no fouls. You get points for that sort of thing."

  "Oh." Phelan watched the game for a moment, winced as another player got hit hard, then shrugged. "Well, that's almost the way we played at the Nagelring. It's not that different."

  The small man smiled. "Ah, but that's the difference that makes all the difference. If you have the ball, you are considered 'live.' That means anyone who hits you with the butt end of his stick in the circle takes a point from your team. You can poke back, but while you're carrying the ball, that's not usually a good move. Each goal is worth fifty points to your team. The game goes for an hour, or until a team is forced into negative points. The teams start with one hundred points, but forcing a team to retire early is less difficult than you might think."