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  Hohiro stiffened at the man's patronizing tone. "Tojiro is just an idiot, as his strategy indicates. Your folly defines new depths for negligence and malfeasance. If you both continue your conduct of this battle, I will relieve you of your responsibilities!"

  "By what authority? I command here." Tojiro jammed his fists onto his hips. "I care not what rank your father presumes to hold. My authority comes to me by your grandfather. I will command until he relieves me of it."

  Hohiro pounded the table with one fist. "Listen to me, you chimpera. This whole operation has been run counter to everything we have learned about the Clans. You have let them choose the battlefields. You have not employed your air forces against their 'Mechs. You encourage single combat against a foe that has every advantage against you in that department. About the only thing you've done right is to scatter your supply depots so your troops can resupply themselves on the run, but you're not putting them into a position where they can utilize those supplies or that strategy!"

  "I would expect such talk of a man with a yakuza for an aide." Kwi-Nam snarled angrily. "True warriors do not run and hide like bandits. We meet the enemy on the field of honor and kill him or die in the attempt! There is no life without honor. I will not order my troops to dishonor themselves!"

  "Then you are surely mad!" At that, one of the guards began to move in, but Hohiro stared him back to his post. Then he returned his steady gaze to Kwi-Nam. "You should be out there in a 'Mech with your troops."

  Tojiro began to pale. "I can better direct them from here, away from the confusion of battle."

  Hohiro's cry of frustration filled the comcenter. "No, fool, not to fight! Have you read none of the reports about the Clans?" Hohiro's hands opened wide to encompass the whole cylindrical bunker. "Trapping yourself here is suicide. One strike and they wipe out the brains of this operation. In this case, though, it might help."

  "Impossible. There's not a Clan 'Mech within fifty kilometers of here."

  " 'Mechs, no, but Elementals, yes."

  As if summoned by Hohiro's words, a series of clumps sounded from the roof of the bunker. Reacting reflexively, Shin seized Hohiro's right arm and spun him away toward the wall. Hohiro flew out of the way and across a desk, which toppled over on him. A moment later, Shin turned and dove for similar cover, but never made it.

  The explosive charge set on the bunker's door blasted it from its hinges and sent it whirling like a blade through the bunker. It passed over Tojiro, missed Kwi-Nam, then sliced through one commtech. Like a giant axe-blade, it bit into a communication's relay, destroying it in a shower of sparks.

  The force of the explosion propelled Shin further and faster than he had ever intended. He few into a desk and felt an agonizing jolt accompany the sound of ribs breaking on his left side. He slid to the ground with a bump, which sent another wave of pain washing over him. He grabbed the pain and held onto it to block the blackness nibbling at the edges of his sight. I must not faint!

  The first Clan Elemental turned sideways to squeeze through the doorway. Over two meters tall, the humanoid figure wore bulky black armor with a blue blaze in the center of the chest. The Nova Cat Elemental raised its left arm—the one that ended in a three-fingered mechanical claw—and raked the room with fire from the machine gun mated to the underside of his forearm. Screaming as the slugs ripped scarlet holes through them, Techs fell thrashing to the bunker floor.

  Shin brought his gun up and rested the barrel on the top of his right knee. Aiming more by instinct than design, he hit the firing stud on the laser. The ruby spears traced a flaming line up the front of the Elemental, then punctured the V-shaped viewport. The Elemental jerked back, his shoulders hitting either side of the door, then fell forward as smoke poured from his faceplate.

  Another Elemental filled the doorway and Shin jerked the trigger on the shotgun. He barely felt the pain as the automatic cocking mechanism cut parallel lines across the top of his knee. The slug hit the Elemental just beneath the right breast and staggered him. The specially designed ammunition consisted of an extra-long lead bullet on top of a magnum load. No one expected this stuff to kill an Elemental, just to hurt them.

  One of the guards stepped forward and stabbed the muzzle of his assault rifle into the dent Shin's shell had created in the armor. As the guard burned the clip from his rifle, the Elemental grabbed the man's chest in his claw and cut him in two with the underslung machine gun. A wave-of blood washed back over the briefing table, shorting it out in a flash of green flame. The Elemental, dropping the torso of the soldier, fell back into a sitting position, half-blocking the doorway.

  A third Elemental stood beyond the doorway, his entrance into the room prevented by the large missile-launcher assembly mated to the back of his armored suit. He raised his right arm and let the anti-'Mech laser mounted there sweep the room. Everything and everyone the beam touched burst into flame.

  Shin dropped onto his right flank, and paid for it with a grinding pain in the left side of his chest. He stabbed the assault rifle forward and jerked the shotgun trigger twice before the recoil twisted the weapon out of his grasp. One of the shots hit the Elemental in his right knee, bringing him down, but also swinging the launch tube on the short-range missile launcher in line with the doorway.

  If a missile goes off in here, we're all dead!

  Hohiro popped up from behind the desk, machine pistol in hand. Roaring with each shot, the weapon lipped flame more than thirty centimeters long. Hohiro held the trigger down, in two seconds pumping out the full ten shots in the clip. Though Shin knew Hohiro's gun had been loaded with shells similar to those in his shotgun, the lighter-weight pistol cartridges would have less effect than his shots.

  Then a nova exploded outside the door.

  Seeing the fireball blossom in the launch tube, Shin thought it must be an SRM starting on the path that would obliterate the bunker. Fire streaked out the back of the launch pack as he had always seen it do, but flaming tendrils also curled out the front and sides of the pack. In a second the top corner of the launcher evaporated in a white-gold flash, then a series of thunderous detonations ripped the Elemental apart.

  The explosion boosted the bodies of the dead Elementals into the room and drove debris back in a narrow cone starting at the door. One Elemental bounced into a set of data-relay banks, scattering them like ten-pins while the other cartwheeled straight back like a zombie acrobat, hitting the wall beside Hohiro's shelter.

  Shin tried to scramble out of the way as the data relay banks fell, but his whole chest felt as though it was collapsing as he clawed at the floor for traction. One cabinet dropped across his legs, pinning him in place in time for a second to slam into his ribcage. Shin screamed as lightning ripped its way through his body, then stopped fighting the darkness and fell unconscious.

  * * *

  A throbbing sound he couldn't identify greeted Shin's return to awareness. Opening his eyes, he saw himself strapped to a stretcher about to be hoisted into a helicopter. As confusing as that was, seeing Hohiro standing at the foot of the stretcher made even less sense. "Shosa, what has happened? Where am I?"

  Hohiro smiled at him. "I'm having you medivacced to the DropShip. You're heading back to Luthien."

  "You're not coming?"

  The Warlord's son shook his head. "I relieved Tojiro and Kwi-Nam of their commands. I've scattered our troops and am sending them to ground. We will fight the sort of war we should have been fighting all along. I want to stretch things out and make the Clans earn their pay."

  Shin tried to get up, but the tightness in his chest stopped him. "Shosa, do not send me away. These broken ribs are nothing. Let me stay here with you. Let me help you."

  Hohiro smiled gratefully. "You have to go. I need you to act as my personal envoy." He lifted his end of Shin's stretcher and helped deposit it on the deck of the helicopter. Sitting chained to a bench with scowls on their faces were Tojiro and Kwi-Nam. Both were drenched in blood, but Shin instinctively knew it was
not their own.

  Hohiro crouched down and shouted into Shin's ear over the competition of the helicopter's rotor. "Those two are under arrest and are in your charge. The DropShip and JumpShip captains are your people. These two will not be able to subvert them. I would have shot them here, but they demanded the right to see my grandfather."

  "They will make trouble for you, Shosa."

  "They will try, Shin. You must see to it that they do not." Hohiro rested his right hand on Shin's right shoulder. "It'll take you a month to get back to Luthien. Tell my father I will need another regiment and a half to take this world or to evacuate it in good order. I can hold out for the time it takes for your total round trip, but be quick. Anything much over four months is going to put me in a bad way. As I said before, we will go to ground and just harass the Clans until reinforcements show up."

  "I will do as you ask, Shosa." Shin forced a smile. "And I will be back with reinforcements as soon as possible." He glanced at the two men Hohiro had deposed. "I will bring you help even if I have to strike a bargain with all the demons in the Christian hell to do so."

  Hohiro nodded solemnly. "I know you will, my friend. I am counting on it."

  The rotor's pitch increased as Hohiro stepped away from the helicopter. Shin tried to turn his head to watch Hohiro until he vanished in the distance, but his restraints prevented him from doing so. He thought he heard Hohiro shout a final "Sayonara," but he could not be sure.

  Somehow, deep down, Shin felt a dread that no matter how swiftly he returned, he would never see Hohiro Kurita alive again.

  5

  Alyina

  Trellshire, Jade Falcon Occupation Zone

  19 January 3052

  Lean and hungry, Kai Allard crouched beside the roadway. He waited until the truck's taillights vanished around the curve through the forest, then sprinted to the other side. Clutching the ragged swath of camouflage sheeting around him like a cloak, he knew anyone near enough to see him break from cover would probably think him a terrifying ghost.

  The fortnight since his stranding on Alyina had not been kind to Kai. He had moved as far as possible from the battlefield where he'd looted Dave Jewell's 'Mech on the first night, pausing only to rest or when he heard people moving. As he headed inland from the peninsula, the amount of destruction decreased. He had not thought himself following any specific course, yet eventually he came to the place where his lance of 'Mechs had waited for the Clans to make landfall.

  The tattered piece of camouflage he carried with him had initially hidden Yen-lo-wang from infrared and magnetic resolution scans, but now did little more than keep him warm at night. That was no small grace, however, because the monsoon rains soaked him to the bone every afternoon and morning. The camouflage did help keep some of the rain off, but Kai found it too bulky to wear all the time, especially if he wanted to move at all quietly through the rain forest.

  Initially he regretted having stressed to his men the necessity for maintaining a tidy camp because now he found little or nothing to salvage beside the 'Mech camo from the Icestorm lance area. Moving a bit north along the line established for the Tenth Lyran Guards, he had more success plundering Frostfire lance's garbage midden, but he was careful in his scavenging to leave no clue of his passing.

  From the first, his caution was rewarded. Several Clan patrols swept through the area, picking up stragglers who had not been as lucky as Kai. The Elementals, both in their armor and out, impressed Kai with their size and strength. He breathed a silent vow to avoid tangling with them if at all possible. By taking refuge high up in trees during the day, he frustrated the searchers. After ten days, the patrols dwindled.

  His rations lasted for the first week, and then hunger forced him to expand his foraging range. The Clans, he discovered to his dismay, pressed captive warriors into service as clean-up crews. They salvaged their own 'Mechs, but left the enemy machines behind where they fell. They also cleaned up any deposits of material that fugitives might find useful. When small supply caches began to show up in places Kai had never seen them before, he knew they were bait for a trap. No matter how tempting they looked, he avoided them.

  Watching one such crew of captives, Kai noticed that the Elementals guarding the crew did not treat them harshly. Each captive wore a braided bit of white cord on his right wrist and seemed to receive a certain amount of respect. He heard the Elementals address the captives as "bondsman," but he attached no real significance to that title. It did strike him that he saw far fewer captive warriors than he would have imagined, given the haste of the FedCom retreat. There must be more hiding somewhere.

  Watching other captives started Kai thinking about his chances of liberating compatriots and leading them in a revolt. None of those he saw looked mistreated or malnourished, so he imagined them still to be in fighting trim. Yet most of the captives were MechWarriors and hardly schooled in the tactics of an irregular infantry.

  Seeing no way to organize a force that could throw the Clans off the planet, Kai decided his real duty was to remain free, and if the chance arose, report back to Hanse Davion and his father about the military situation on the world. He knew that if he could get them credible intelligence, they would send a force to liberate Alyina and to rescue him. Gathering that information would mean traveling around enough to see what the Clans had left on the world, and then reaching a ComStar facility from which he could send his message home.

  On the far side of the road, Kai ran down into a small gully and walked along in the chilly stream running through it. Fifty meters downstream, he exited onto a flat bed of rock and went up the far side of the gully into a finger of forest. He waited, listening and watching for any signs of other life, then slowly but surely worked his way forward. Stopping in the shadows of thick pines and carefully avoiding stepping on anything that would make noise, he picked a zigzag path through the woods to the garden he'd harvested two nights before.

  Stepping over a low fence made of chicken-wire, Kai dropped to his knees beside a patch of tomatoes. Just as he reached out for one, a light flashed on, accompanied by the sound of a shell being racked into a pump-action shotgun. Kai froze, narrowing his eyes against the harsh glare of the flashlight strapped to the gun's barrel.

  'Told the wife raccoons didn't brush away their footprints when they left." The voice came gruff from the big silhouette, but Kai heard no hostility in it. "Your name Jewell?"

  Kai started to shake his head, but nodded as he realized the man with the gun was reading the name off the breast of his jumpsuit. "Yeah, Dave Jewell, that's me. Now that you've caught me, what are you going to do with me?"

  The light flashed off. "Take you to the house. Clanners can't punish us more for having two Feds under our roof than they can for one, jal C'mon."

  Kai stood slowly and stepped back out of the garden. A voice inside him screamed that he should be running away, or at least disarming the man, but he held back. The farmer gave him a fair amount of room, but Kai knew the shotgun was his any time he wanted to take it. Kai nodded and let the farmer lead the way.

  The small, two-story wooden house to which his guide led him showed yellowed lights around the edges of drawn shades. Enough of it spilled out across the porch to show Kai which loose, weathered boards to avoid. It also gave him a brief glimpse of his grizzled host, but he could not remember ever having seen the white-haired old man before. Still, by the ease with which the man held the shotgun in one hand, Kai guessed he'd seen military service.

  The farmer waved Kai into the building. To the left of the door, a small lamp burned on a dining table surrounded by six chairs. Beyond it, in the far left corner was a kitchen with a wood-burning stove that kicked out wave after wave of welcome warmth. Dominating the center of the room, a staircase led up to the second floor. Off to the right side of the door, a group of chairs had been arranged around a circular carpet to form a comfortable conversation nook. Back in the far right corner, the walls were stacked with shelves containing both old, re
al-paper books and a host of holovid books along with a reader.

  "Welcome to our home, Mr. Jewell." The farmer set the shotgun in a rack beside the door. He turned and pointed to the white-haired woman by the stove. "This is my wife, Hilda. I am Erik Mahler, formerly a MechWarrior in the service of the Archon of the Lyran Commonwealth."

  Kai smiled and accepted the man's hand. "David Jewell, Tenth Lyran Guards."

  "Tenth Guards?" Hilda smiled and wiped her hands on her apron. "Then you will know out other guest." She walked to the stairs and called softly. "It is safe, my dear. Come down."

  Kai loosened the string tying his camo around his neck. Letting the sheeting slip to the floor, he started to remove his backpack, but it hung forgotten as the Mahlers' other refugee descended the stairs. She was tall and slender, with short black hair that barely brushed the collar of her flannel shirt. The yellow discoloration on her brow he put down to the last vestiges of what must have been a nasty bruise. Her blue eyes lit up with surprise when she saw him. "Kai!"

  Stunned, Kai dropped his pack. "Deirdre? Didn't you get off with the others?"

  She stiffened. "The Clans overran our hospital. I fled with the others." Her right hand rose to touch the bruise above her right eye. "I hit something, I don't remember what. I don't remember anything until I woke up here."

  Erik smiled. 'This far was the eye in a nasty storm. The battle raged all around, but no one came here. I found Deirdre wandering through the woods and I brought her back here." His right eyebrow arched. "She called you, 'Kay.' "

  Kai nodded, "It is a nickname that's stuck since my time at the New Avalon Military Academy. I used to say 'okay' so much that my classmates started calling me 'Kay.' The regiment picked it up. Some folks think my name really is David K. Jewell."

  Deirdre's expression of pleasure at seeing Kai began to drain away, but she gave no indication she would betray his deception. Mahler, looking from Kai to Deirdre and back again, either noticed nothing or decided to disregard whatever conclusions he was drawing about the two of them.