* * *
Ter Roshak had spent the last evening writing in a journal he had kept since his cadet days. In it he poured out his thoughts.
He wrote that, whatever happened, his career as a Clan warrior was now finished. Even in the unlikely event that the council cleared him of all charges, he could never return to his position as Falconer Commander of training. His authority would be undermined by the cloud of doubt and suspicion that would follow him everywhere. He could not have that.
And he was now too old to return to active duty as a warrior. Age was the one unpardonable sin among the Clans, and few had been able to surmount it.
He could have requested demotion to a lower caste, to live out his life performing some useful service, becoming proficient at some craft. But what real warrior could accept that? What glory could he find in adjusting a calibration or shaping clay into pots?
No, only death awaited him now. And he aimed to face it with the will and ferocity of a proper Clan warrior. This trial was merely a tedium he had to endure. He knew the outcome, almost to the exact numbers. Oh, it was possible that some council members might switch their vote at the last moment, but it was not likely to change things.
In the days before the trial, Roshak had spoken with all the Bloodnamed warriors he knew, especially those who owed him favors. Persuading several of them of the inevitability of the verdict, he told them he wished to reduce the level of dishonor so that he could take proper measures. If he could get the verdict down to three-to-one, or at least four-to-one, he could enact his plan, the one recourse that would allow him to finish off his life with some sense of honor, but the one secret he could not commit to his journal.
Whatever happened in the council, he wrote, the life of Ter Roshak is over. There is no more need for this journal.
When he had closed the covers of the last volume of his journal, he took the many he had filled over the years and fed them to a fire he built outside his quarters. Watching the flames consume the pages was like watching the destruction of his life. Each page was a period of time. As it went up in flames, that period disappeared, as if eliminated by the hand of an unseen god. There was no god, seen or unseen, Roshak thought. Or perhaps he, Ter Roshak, was the god. He took some satisfaction in enacting his supreme judgment on the life of one of his imperfect minions. The pages, as they gave themselves to the fire, did not curl submissively. Rather, like the man who had written them, they danced among the flames as if defying them.
Ter Roshak had not expected that Star Captain Joanna would be one of the witnesses. Her role in his deception had been so small, at the level of a functionary running errands for him, that he lamented her becoming one of the defendants. But, with all her cleverness and wary suspicion, she had uncovered just enough of his deception to make the accusation justified. She should have turned him in back then, but she had not, and so her career would be dragged down along with his and Aidan's.
Unless, of course, his new plan worked. There wasan outside chance of that happening, but victory was not his goal. He merely wanted to die, and to die in the same manner he had lived. As a warrior. Dying as a warrior meant more to him than any achievement in his past, and certainly more than any fraud.
* * *
"Star Captain Joanna, you knew Star Commander Aidan was being given a second chance, quiaff?"
"As well you know."
The Loremaster interrupted. "There is to be no sarcasm, insult, or anger in your responses, Star Captain Joanna."
She glanced at the Loremaster. She did not know his name. He was a bit old for a warrior, with many touches of gray in his hair and weariness in his eyes.
"I am sorry, Loremaster. I intended no disrespect, but I will be more careful in my words."
"Thank you, Star Captain Joanna."
"What did you know at that time?" Lenore Shi-Lu asked.
"I knew that he was being given a second chance. I trained him in how to act his role of freebir—of freeborn. In the last days of training, I was the training officer for his unit. I was also in the BattleMech that ended his Trial after he had made the required kill."
"Then it is safe to say that you were implicated in the fraud, quiaff?"
"Aff. Quite safe to say, Inquisitor."
"How do you justify your concealment of the facts?"
"Orders. I was following the orders of Falconer Commander Ter Roshak. Furthermore, he had solicited my vow of secrecy before I knew about what he had planned."
"Once you discovered that Ter Roshak's orders were based on fraud, did it not occur to you that this released you from vows of obedience and secrecy?"
"No, it did not. Vows must be kept."
"There is not a higher vow, that owed to your Clan?"
Joanna felt trapped by Lenore Shi-Lu's grim words. "Inquisitor," she replied, "I am aware of the theories of the higher vow, and I have considered them often. But I did not want to see a capable officer destroyed, one whose record as a training officer has been, I believe, unsurpassed. I believed that Ter Roshak's abilities surpassed the higher vow, and I still do."
Ter Roshak's eyebrows shot up at Joanna's remark. He knew that she had many good warrior qualities, but had not suspected loyalty to be one of them.
"You have a unique sense of Clan philosophy, Star Commander Joanna."
"Perhaps it is because on the field a warrior must go up against scum—"
"Star Captain Joanna!" the Loremaster shouted, and she quickly apologized.
"I believed I did right," she said quietly.
"Purely out of loyalty."
"No, not just loyalty. I realized that Star Commander Aidan would not have a real warrior's life by posing as a freebirth. Even if his qualifying broke the rules, he would get no real reward for it, considering the kind of workhorse backwater assignments that would be, and have been, his destiny. I did not see any harm as long as he could not do any harm. I had not anticipated the harm he has done."
"Well-spoken, Star Captain. However, as your forced presence here shows, your action was, at the very least, questionable, quiaff?"
"Aff."
"Do you believe that Star Commander Aidan is worthy of the Bloodname he seeks?"
"With all due respect, Inquisitor, I thought that his Bloodname worthiness was not an issue in these proceedings."
Lenore Shi-Lu smiled. "You are correct, Star Captain. But most members of the council wish to know. I nevertheless withdraw the question. Let me substitute another that is also on the mind of many council members. Do you believe that Ter Roshak's actions were in any way justified?"
"No!"
"You have no sympathy with his backing of a warrior candidate whom he apparently believed to have suffered an unfortunate defeat in his Trial?"
"No! Star Commander Aidan, regardless of his considerable abilities, had failed. If a cadet fails, he gets no second chance. That is the way of the Clan."
"But he has received a second chance and done well, quiaff?Why do you remain silent? Would not the defenders of Glory Station have gone down to defeat if not for the valor of Star Commander Aidan?"
"They would. But perhaps that might have been for the best."