"Please, Horse, no contractions."
"Now I know that something is going on with you. You only get upset about contractions when you go back to seeing yourself as trueborn. You're on your high horse, Jorge. This Joanna has taken over your role and you're looking for revenge. I hear it in every response you give her. And maybe this urge for vengeance goes all the way back to Ironhold, am I right?"
"I just do not want trigger-happy intruders killing wildlife native to—"
"You are reaching for straws. Since when were you so worried about wildlife? You're angry at her for pulling rank. You want to exert control, even if you have to do it secretly. Pull strings from behind the scenes."
"Give it up, Horse. We have a mission here."
"Just don't put the rest of us in jeopardy for your own private vendetta, Jorge. We may not have the same genetic brand as you, but we have served you well."
"I know that, Horse. I grant you that I resent Joanna, and I would welcome the chance to get her into the Circle of Equals and crush her this time, but-"
"This time?It has happened before? You two have fought before?"
Aidan recalled the time Joanna had beaten him in an honor duel within the Circle. And suddenly he saw that Horse's speculation was quite accurate. He wanted to avenge that defeat, neededto. There was a moment when, back then, he had vowed that he would. The vow was as good as a Clan oath to him.
"There is no need to discuss this further, Horse. We have a mission."
"I hate it when you turn trashborn."
"I am trashborn and you know it."
"Yes, I know it."
Horse's voice was unusually bitter as he abruptly cut his link to the commline. The one person in the universe Aidan did not want angry at him was Horse. They had been together for so long that, in a skirmish, they acted in concert without communication. They had qualified in the Trial together and had served in the same units since. He would have to make it up to him.
When he thought of Horse as the single person whose approval he needed, Aidan realized that it was not quite true. There was Marthe, too. Since the last time he had seen her on Ironhold, she had, he assumed, risen quickly in the ranks. She was probably a Star Captain by now. She had, after all, entered the warrior caste with two "kills" in her Trial, which started her at a higher rank. Aidan never asked others if they had heard about her and never checked rosters of other Clusters on other worlds for her name. They had grown up together in the sibko, and until Marthe had surged ahead of him in warrior training, had been very close, closer than most sibko members ever became. Joanna would probably know where Marthe was now. But he would have gone on his knees and begged Kael Pershaw for the information before he would ever ask Joanna anything.
12
Star Captain Dwillt Radick's BattleMech, a Viper,surged with power and what he liked to think of as confidence, as the 'Mech's own eagerness to get into battle, an alacrity that duplicated his own. As he settled into the cockpit's command couch for another check of his instrumentation, he called up terrain maps onto his secondary screen. Kael Pershaw's choice of combat site had surprised him. It was a relative flat-land, and except for a swamp into which no Mech-Warrior would take his 'Mech by choice, offered few hiding places. A lot of scrub and large clumps of shaggy bushes dotted the ugly, so-called Glory Plain. This area deserved neither the name of plain nor of Glory. Plains were meant to be magnificent, even majestic—fields of grain moving with the wind, brilliantly green grasslands, open spaces with few civilized interruptions.
From what he knew about Glory, very little of the planet reflected the honorable name given it by some mad cartographer. It was a hellhole where no sensible person would come unless he or she had a damned good reason. The Pershaw gene heritage was just such a reason. The Pershaw line was a solid one that had consistently produced the kind of warriors Clan Wolf respected. No gloryhounds, just heroes with an astonishing victory ratio. Clan Wolf scientists had sifted through Bloodnames from several Clans, and the Pershaw line had checked out as among the most superior. Because neither Radick nor even Mikel Furey was privy to the major goals of Clan Wolf, Radick could only suspect that acquiring genetic strains with a glorious tradition was part of the rumored program to make the Wolves the most powerful of the seventeen existing Clans.
Looking into the distance, Radick saw some hills to the left and Glory Station to the right, but neither landscape was any more interesting than the one before him. Behind the Clan Wolf forces, at the foot of a long slope, began the infamous Blood Swamp. Pershaw's strategy of setting the Clan Wolf forces in front of the swamp had an insidiousness to it that Radick admired. He was not especially eager to fight with a swamp at his back, but it was a drawback he could easily turn to his advantage. He had already given his Cluster a stirring speech about their having so little room behind them because Clan Jade Falcon obviously knew that Clan Wolf would never retreat. The enemy, on the other hand, had plenty of room for retreat, proof of their cowardice. But all that was mere rhetoric. Radick knew that Pershaw and the warriors of the Jade Falcon Clan were brave and famed for tenacity. Pershaw had chosen this troop deployment for some strategic purpose, perhaps related to his already-diminished manpower. Radick had already sent a couple of 'Mechs into the swamp to see what might be gained if he were forced into it. He hoped those scouts could find their way back.
"Star Commander Ward!"
"Yes, sir?"
"What do you make of the Jade Falcon deployment?"
"It is strange. It reminds me of what I have heard of ancient Terran warriors battling in front of city walls."
"Freebirth! You are improvising. City walls, indeed. Kael Pershaw would not know anything of pre-Clan military history."
"As you say, sir. It was merely an observation."
"Instead of observing, calculate. What will be the Jade Falcon's first move?"
"To wait for ours, I expect."
"No, we will wait for him. He is undermanned. It is only fair that we, out of courtesy, allow him the first move. How much time until the battle may commence? "
"Three minutes."
Radick returned his attention to the terrain, trying to find in it a clue to what Kael Pershaw might be up to.
* * *
"Lanja!"
"Yes, sir."
"Time?"
"Two minutes, sir."
"Are your Elementals ready?"
"As always."
"Yes. I need not have asked."
Kael Pershaw was performing his last prebattle checklist. He had stared at charts and screens for hours, it seemed, and no matter how he analyzed and reanalyzed, he did not have good numbers for going up against Clan Wolf. Star Captain Dwillt Radick had the extra Trinary on the field, while Pershaw's was off somewhere beyond Blood Swamp, perhaps twisted in wreckage, or disabled, or lost. And then there was Jorge's Star. Pershaw hated to admit it, but with the impressive enemy array in front of him, he would not mind having that contingent of stinking freebirths in the field right now. Lanja had told him often enough that they were good fighters—a bit unorthodox, but good. Still, he would be happier to be on a planet where there were no freebirth warriors.
"It is almost time, Colonel," Lanja said. "One of my Point says he knows of Dwillt Radick, and that the man will wait for you to make the first move."
"How civilized of him. Our first move, as you call it, must be a majestic one, quiaff?"
"Aff. We await your order. The time is up."
At the same moment Pershaw gave the order, the LRM-equipped 'Mechs in his command sent off a barrage that might have been compared to a similar massive flight of warrior arrows in some ancient battle. Unlike arrows, of course, these missiles were riding invisible beams to their targets. He had ordered half his 'Mechs to fire the long-range missiles at a flat trajectory, while the other half lobbed theirs in a high arc. If nothing else, this forced the Wolves to allocate their anti-missile systems to one group or the other, with the chance that some of the other missiles would hit without being engaged.