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  Phelan chewed his lower lip. "With so many Clansfolk considering me an inferior, my only chance of making the list is probably through the preliminary battling. But giving any consideration to that is folly, Quiaff? I have not even been accorded full status as a warrior."

  Natasha waved away those concerns. "I'll have you up to speed in that department quickly enough. Just remember that Vlad hates and fears you not only because you threaten his chance at a Blopdname, but also because of what you did to him on the Rock. You outsmarted him in combat. Had your 'Mech been the equal of his, your tactics and daring could have killed him. You are the only Ward that Vlad is not certain he can destroy. Be careful he does not find a way to kill you before you two ever meet in a Bloodname contest."

  Soft ringing tones echoed throughout the ship. Cyrilla smiled as the jump-warning sounds faded away. She stood and quickly punched a button that raised a window in the hull. Returning to her seat, she joined the others digging behind their seat cushions for the restraining straps. Once buckled in, she turned her chair to face the porthole.

  A set of five tones sounded, then the Dire Wolfs Kearny-Fuchida drive engaged, warping the space around the JumpShip. At that moment, Phelan felt as though the universe had folded in on itself a thousand times, smashing him down and compacting him into the space of an atom. The light from the stars outside the window expanded until it was as white as a viewport into a blizzard.

  Just as suddenly, the universe unfolded again like a huge origami flower. The disk of white filling the viewport fragmented into countless small star dots, and Phelan rubbed his eyes to erase the afterimage. In the space of a heartbeat, the Dire Wolf had hurled itself more than thirty light years away from the realm he had once called home.

  Cyrilla punched the release button on her restraints and stood framed in the viewport. She smiled, then turned to point toward the blue-green ball striated with white that showed through the window.

  "Here we are, Phelan. Welcome to Strana Mechty. Welcome to your new home."

  3

  Wolf's Dragoons General Headquarters, Outreach

  Sarna March, Federated Commonwealth

  5 February 3051

  In a headlong sprint, Hanse Davion dashed from behind a boulder to the ruined wall of an out-building, then threw himself forward in a long, rolling dive as yet another target popped up. Twisting into a squat .ball, he planted his right foot and tried to turn back toward the mannequin, but the loose gravel gave way and sent him sprawling flat on his face. Dammit, I'm getting too old for this nonsense, he cursed inwardly. Spitting out rust-colored dirt, he flopped over onto his back as a series of laser bolts lanced through the air above him.

  Hanse jerked the trigger on his laser rifle, returning the mannequin's fire. The ruby darts from his weapon ripped a bar sinister across the target, but not before it adjusted and tracked him. He felt the searing heat of three bolts as they stitched a track down his right flank and leg. Immediately his leg stiffened, locked in a mechanical rictus because of the bulky exoskeleton he wore.

  "Justin, I'm hit!"

  Without waiting for a reply from his partner in the run through the Dragoons' live-fire range, Hanse dragged himself behind the wall he'd originally sought and levered himself up to his feet. He put all his weight on his left leg and let the rifle dangle from its pistol-grip in his right hand. "I'm mobile, but in name only." He forced a chuckle into his voice. "My kingdom for a horse!"

  Hanse marveled at how easily and fluidly Justin Xiang Allard moved from point to point as he crossed to the Prince's position. Still possessed of the litheness and strength of youth though he was close to Hanse's age, the Secretary of the Federated Commonwealth's Ministry of Intelligence molded his body to the available cover and gave the targeting mannequins no opportunity to track him.

  Justin glanced at Hanse. "I've got one at two o'clock from your position." He measured the distance between them carefully. "Cover me and I think I can nail it when I'm halfway home."

  Hanse nodded and shoved the snout of his rifle around the edge of the wall. With his first bolt, the mannequin oriented toward him and brought its rifle to bear. Hanse clipped off two more shots, both of which passed over the target's head, then he saw Justin's shots burn a triangular grouping just above the robot's midsection.

  "Hanse, down!"

  Spinning back away from the edge of the wall, Hanse saw another mannequin rise from the ground to his right. Even as he brought his own rifle around and awkwardly pivoted on his locked right leg, he realized he was blocking Justin's line-of-sight to the target. As the mannequin's rifle centered itself on his chest, Davion also knew that he'd never get off a shot in time to prevent getting killed.

  When three laser bolts suddenly blasted into the side of the robot's head, the mannequin's laser rifle drooped to the ground without firing a shot. Hanse, heart pounding in his ears, sagged back against the adobe wall and closed his eyes. Rivulets of sweat plowed through the layer of red dust on his face and neck. That's closer than I ever want to come again.

  "Are you all right, Highness?"

  Hanse opened his eyes and saw the concern on Justin Allard's face. "I'll survive. I'm just tired. That was fancy shooting."

  Justin jerked his head toward the target as two other men walked around the corner. "Thank them, not me."

  One of the approaching men, small and silver-haired, smiled wryly. "My shots missed. You have the Kanrei to thank for saving you."

  Taller and more slender, Theodore Kurita barely acknowledged the mention of his title. He surveyed the surrounding area, his tension betrayed only by a vein pulsing in his forehead. It paralleled an old scar that ran from mid-forehead down into his left eyebrow.

  I know that look, Hanse thought. It's the warrior's edge. For him, this is no game. Letting everyone see that the exo-skeleton had locked up to simulate his wound, Davion took two halting steps forward. Shifting his rifle from right hand to left, he offered Theodore his hand. "Thank you. Your skill is most impressive, Kanrei."

  The Prince of the Federated Suns half-expected Theodore to snub him, but the Kurita Warlord accepted his hand and shook it firmly. "Perhaps my skill with a rifle is impressive, but my sense of direction is not." He glanced back at his partner. "I fear Prince Magnusson and I are lost. If we had not gotten off our side of the course, I never would have seen your target."

  Before anyone could comment, a hiss of static from the communications devices both Justin and Haakon Magnusson wore presaged a message from the Rangemaster. "Range Control here. Time limit's up, gentlemen. Your run is over. Please remove the power packs from your rifles. We'll pick you up a klick out on a heading of oh-four-five degrees."

  Justin hit the talk button on his radio. "Roger, one kilometer at oh-four-five degrees. ETA one-half hour. One of us got hit."

  "Limp in whenever. We'll wait. Range Control out."

  Theodore popped the clip from his rifle and slid it into the open slot on his belt. "I do not believe I have ever found an exercise that so accurately recreates combat conditions."

  Magnusson agreed. "Our rifles may have been powered down, as were those of the mannequins, but not by much. I touched a spot where a shot had gone awry and it was still hot."

  Hanse slapped a hand against his ribs. "Where I got hit feels like a nasty sunburn. I assume the Dragoons wanted to impress us with the gravity of the current situation."

  "A wise approach," Theodore said quietly. "Some among our peers seem not to fully comprehend the danger the Clans present to the Inner Sphere."

  Hanse stopped. "Do you refer to Lady Romano, or is your comment directed at me?" He asked the question without recrimination, but Magnusson looked as though Hanse had deliberately insulted Theodore. The Warlord of the Draconis Combine, on the other hand, seemed to weigh his words carefully before speaking.

  "May I speak frankly with you, Prince Davion?"

  "I would prefer it, Kanrei." Hanse hobbled toward a wind-sculpted rock to lean wearily against it. "What is
on your mind?"

  Theodore drew in a deep breath. "What concerns me is fighting a two-front war. Both of us know, from our own sources as well as from briefings Jaime Wolf has provided, that the Clans have hit the Draconis Combine as hard as they have hit the Lyran portion of your realm." In deference to Magnusson, Theodore bowed his head in the other man's direction. "Of course, neither of us have lost as much as the Free Rasalhague Republic, but we have been hurt.

  "I fought against your surrogate twenty years ago and I tasted my share of defeat as well as savoring a few minor victories." The Kanrei slung his rifle over his shoulder by the strap. "Ten years ago, I battled you directly. In each contest, I have found you more than capable, and if not for a trick or two that you did not anticipate, I might have been left with utter defeats instead of the stand-offs I obtained."

  Hanse's blue eyes narrowed. "You underestimate what you have done. After the Fourth Succession War, you rebuilt the Draconis Combine Mustered Soldiery into a force with more flexibility and bite than ever before. In ten short years, you turned it from a military I could have shattered easily into a force I could not destroy. Your drive into my territory in the '39 war forced me to divert my second wave in order to counter your thrusts into the Draconis March. It was a bold strategy that worked."

  "It was a gamble." Theodore smiled warily. "A bluff that you could have called. Had you pressed me, you could have cut off my troops from their supply lines and poured straight into the Combine."

  "But, Prince Kurita, it was a bluff I could not call." Hanse looked over at Justin. "As my esteemed colleague can confirm, our intelligence reports did not indicate how thinly you had stretched your troops. You had new units with new tactics and new 'Mechs that we did not anticipate. Conquering some worlds in the Combine allowed me to put a victorious public face on the whole enterprise, but we all know how close to a disaster it truly was."

  Theodore bowed his head before the compliment in Hanse's words. "That, however, is not the situation now. Your Intelligence Ministry has been most successful in boring new holes into my command structure. You now have the intelligence you need to see what I have where. Deny it if you will, but I cannot afford the luxury of believing you.

  "And that, Prince Davion, is what concerns me. When I leaked word that my son was being posted to Turtle Bay, and you responded by posting your son Victor to Trellwan, I had hoped we were silently agreed to let the next war fall to our heirs. I did not imagine a threat like the clans appearing, but it does make our squabbling over a throne vacant for three hundred years look quite foolish."

  Hanse nodded in agreement. "I did post my son to Trellwan in reply to your gesture. I also agree that the Clans are the greatest threat our states have ever faced, individually or collectively." Hanse heaved himself away from the rock and began walking toward the rendezvous point. "United we stand, or divided we fall."

  Theodore fell into step with Hanse, and the other two men flanked them as they marched down the dusty trail. It wound slowly down out of the broad canyon that housed the live-fire range and skirted the edge of a dry riverbed. The air was clear as far as the eye could see, and the bright sunlight deepened the red of the rocky landscape.

  "I had assumed you would be of that opinion, Prince Davion, but I am advised against acting upon that assumption. On one hand, you stripped troops away from the Dieron district and sent them to the front with the Clans at the same time as I did. This I took as our agreement that the Clans must be stopped, but it also provided you with an opening you could have exploited hideously. My advisors caution me that when you struck at us in 3039 it was because you assumed us to be weak. They believe you are an unscrupulous man who waits to take advantage of us."

  Hanse brought his head up. "Do you want my word that I will not send troops into the Combine while the Clans exist as a threat? And would you trust me if I did?"

  For a long moment, Theodore said nothing. The only sounds were the whispering desert breeze and the crunch of gravel underfoot. "Would I be wise to trust a man who is also known as the Fox?" Theodore asked rhetorically, then shook his head. "What I can trust, however, is that the Fox is not so foolish as to weaken himself by launching an offensive against a lesser enemy while the Clans threaten the very survival of the Inner Sphere. If nothing else, I have to believe that you will allow the Clans to grind my troops down to give you less to fight when you come for us."

  Theodore opened both of his hands. "And that is the thing of it, Hanse. I have no choice but to devote all my resources, if need be, to defend my father's realm from the Clans. Were I speaking with Morgan Hasek-Davion and he and I were to strike a non-aggression pact, I could trust him to uphold his part of the bargain. With you, I must trust that you are too smart to repudiate it."

  You know me well, Theodore. Perhaps too well. "I may be an old dog, Theodore, but I am capable of learning new tricks. I admit that my soul has at times ached for a chance to destroy the Combine. Your father and I are old foes, and our rivalry colors the relationship between our two Houses ..."

  Theodore stopped in his tracks, bringing the other three to a halt around him. "Understand this, Hanse Davion, my father is still the Coordinator of the Draconis Combine. From him, from Luthien, will come opposition to anything you do. They will call you a treacherous dog, and castigate me for entering into a pact with the devil. That, however, is rhetoric. My father will never willfully interfere with defending the Combine from the Clans. So I ask you not to listen to the sound of the Dragon's voice. Rather, you must watch his claws."

  Hanse smiled slightly. "I understand," he said, offering Theodore his hand. "I pledge to a non-aggression pact between our realms for the duration of the Clan threat, provided you agree to the same and will not assist your Kapteyn partners in aggression against me. I'll not have you descending on me if I decide Romano Liao needs to be punished for her foolishness."

  Theodore met Hanse's grip firmly. "Well-spoken. Had you not included that caveat, I could never have agreed to the deal, for I would surely have believed you mad. I pledge that your state is safe from my armies as long as the Clans remain a threat to the Inner Sphere."

  The Dragoons' helicopter raised a cloud of dust some 500 meters down the trail as it went to ground in a cleared landing zone. The Rangemaster dismounted from the craft, but did not head out to meet the quartet as they came in. "Must be that this hike is the last part of our training," Magnusson offered jokingly.

  Without warning, another target mannequin snapped upright in the riverbed. Hanse stabbed his rifle at the target and tightened his finger on the trigger. Nothing happened. Damn! No power pack!

  From his right, a green spear of coherent light flashed across the reddish landscape. It slammed into the center of the mannequin's chest, burning a black hole in the laser-sensitive coating. Sparks shot from the hole like a volcano spitting magma, then the robot exploded. Shrapnel and burning bits of cloth decorated the desert in a circle around the blackened, smoldering skeleton.

  Hanse and the others stared at Justin Allard. He held his left forearm parallel to the ground, his mechanical hand snapped back as far as it would go. From his wrist, surrounded by the smoking remnant of his jumpsuit cuff, the muzzle of a laser gun pointed at the target. With a jerk, Justin flexed his metal hand down into a normal position and the laser muzzle dropped back into its hiding place.

  Hanse shivered. "I'd forgotten you had that laser built into your arm."

  Justin smiled as he tore away the burned cuff. "This refit has the same modified design as the one Aldo Lestrade had built into his artificial arm. It's certainly more efficient than the old one." He sighed. "It's nice to know I've not slowed down that much."

  Magnusson stared at Justin in wide-eyed amazement, but

  Theodore showed no surprise. "The refit, it was done by the dwarf, Clovis Holstein? Is it true he is Lestrade's illegitimate son?"

  Justin shrugged. "He did the redesign, but we refitted the arm at the New Avalon Institute of Science. As for the
other, I don't know. I've never asked him directly about Lestrade, and my agents in the Lyran Sector seem to have no file on him. But I do believe this device is similar to the one Lestrade used."

  The Kanrei smiled. "Then I hope you have better luck with it. The laser didn't prevent an assassin from getting Lestrade."

  Justin laughed lightly. "I'll practice until I get faster."

  The Rangemaster, ruddy-faced and nearly breathless from his run, drew to a halt. "Are you all right?"

  The Prince answered for everyone. "No problem. But I never expected to become a target outside the range."

  The Rangemaster pulled off his cap, wiped his forehead on his sleeve, then smoothed the cap back down over his blond hair. "No, I don't suppose you would." He shot a glance at Justin. "Must have been a malfunction that triggered a dummy. We only use it in special cases ..."

  Hanse exchanged a glance with Theodore and knew instantly that their thoughts ran parallel. The Dragoons came from the Clans. Perhaps this is the lesson they want us to take away from this exercise: Expect only the unexpected. Maybe they want us to realize that it's our only chance to survive.

  4

  Wolf's Dragoons General Headquarters, Outreach

  Sarna March, Federated Commonwealth

  5 February 3051

  Victor Davion accepted the cup of water from Kai Allard-Liao with a mute nod of thanks. Glancing around the large, rectangular conference room, he saw the others looking almost as bored as he felt. Padded, ladder-backed wooden chairs lined the briefing room walls and surrounded the conference table at its heart. Hohiro Kurita and Shin Yodama, his aide, had seated themselves in chairs at the far corner Of the windowless chamber. With his back to the wall, Sun-Tzu Liao sat opposite Victor and the others in the Davion contingent, leaving Ragnar Magnusson the only person who had opted to sit at the massive oaken table that dominated the cathedral-ceilinged chamber. Despite the bright yellow of the walls and the warm gold of the carpet, the room's atmosphere remained cold and full of suspicion.