"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