Текст книги "Bloodname"

Автор книги: Роберт Торстон

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"PERHAPS, STAR COMMANDER, YOU MISUNDERSTOOD THE QUESTION?"

Bast stood up. "You are a freeborn, after all. I forget that things must be spelled out. What I said, honored warrior, was that the Clan eugenics program produced superior warriors. Which, of course, means that it produces superior human beings. Therefore, wepraise the eugenics program here, quiaff?"

Aidan knew that he must respond, but he could not say it. Why did a simple afflodge in his throat?

Bast leaned toward Aidan, the stink of his breath rushing forward. "We praise the eugenics program here, quiaff? QUIAFF,you rotten freebirth!"

All restraint left Aidan in a rush. He grabbed Bast and roughly pulled him forward. Bast staggered backward. His eyes showed terrible pain. Aidan got Bast's neck between his forearm and squeezed it with a steady pressure. Then something in Bast's neck snapped and vision left his eyes forever. The man's body quickly slumped and Aidan threw him to the floor the way he would toss away litter.

BATTLETECH

LE5117

LEGEND OF THE  JADE PHOENIX

VOLUME 2

BLOODNAME

ROBERT THURSTON

ROC

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Books USA Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane,

London W8 5TZ. England

Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood,

Victoria, Australia

Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

First published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc.

First Printing, October, 1991 10987654321

Series Editor: Donna Ippolito Cover: Bruce Jensen Interior illustrations: Jeff Laubenftein Mechanical drawings: Steve Venters

Copyright e FASA, 1991 All rights reserved

Roc is a trademark of New American Library, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc. BATTLETECH, FASA, and the distinctive BATTLETECH and FASA logos are trademarks of the FASA Corporation, 1026 W. Van Buren, Chicago, Illinois, 60507.

Printed in the United States of America

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If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."

Prologue

Some years previously, when Diana was still a child, she had learned many things about her father.

"He is of the Clan and yet not of the Clan," said her mother, whose name was Peri.

"I do not understand Clan," Diana piped, her voice clear and precise even at the age of four years. Though she often heard other children or lower-caste adults use contractions in their speech, Diana never did, nor even slurred her words so that childish sounds might be mistaken for contractions.

"Clan is what we are, what we belong to, what we are loyal to. The Clan provides for us, for all castes within it. It is the Clan that makes sure all have useful work, work that contributes to the common goals. Someday we of the Clans will return to take our rightful place in the Inner Sphere, restoring the Star League that once ruled all the stars in that vast space."

"What is the Inner Sphere? What is the Star League?"

"In time, Diana, you will learn about both, but in the proper places."

"What is wrong with this place?"

They were in a corner of a large laboratory, the largest at the science station on Tokasha, where Peri had worked as a lab tech for more than five years. Even though their quarters provided for child care, Diana considered the lab her real nursery, the place where she loved to come and sometimes play, but mostly inhabit just to be with Peri. She was at the stage of not wishing to be parted from her mother.

Freeborns were like that, said a portly man named Watson, the project leader on Tokasha. In a sibko, on the other hand, the children could only depend on one another; their alliances were intersib. Because freeborns usually had at least one known parent to care for them, their tendency was to stay close out of fear that the parent might be taken away—by death or by the Clan. Children learned very early that the Clan did not respect freeborn parentage and did not hesitate to separate parents from children. Even at age four, Diana feared that more than she feared monsters or shadows in the night.

It was a legitimate fear, as events turned out. When Diana was nine, Peri was assigned to the Main Science Center on Circe, where her work would not permit taking the child with her. Now a full-fledged scientist, Peri sent fewer and fewer communications to her daughter. Her specialty was the study of how sibko members went from childhood to warrior training to the Trial of Decision, where they got their one chance to become members of the warrior caste. For each stage Peri compiled data on how many sibko members did not succeed in the Trial and into what other roles in Clan life they were channeled. She was particularly concerned with how many cadets made it to the Trial (damn few, as it alwaysturned out) and how many of those actually tested out to become warriors.

Diana's father had been a cadet who failed in the Trial, and one of Peri's goals was to establish for her own knowledge why that had happened. And, for that matter, Peri wanted to know why she herself had flushed out during one of the later stages of warrior training. (During this period, she often recalled the afternoon she had to leave the sibko barracks forever after flushing out, and the talk she had with the boy who would one day become Diana's father. As a result of that long-ago conversation Peri had conceived the ambition to do exactly the research that was now her work.) As her work began to absorb her more and more, the writing of reports superseded the writing of letters to her daughter. Her findings were, Peri was informed, an important contribution to a much larger project whose purpose was to discover methods to graduate more warriors from the sibko/cadet groups into the warrior caste.

Then Diana received her own assignment, and mother and daughter lost touch completely. But when Diana was four, they were still very close.

"There is nothing wrong with the laboratory," Peri said, smiling down at her daughter. "It is just the wrong place for you to learn about the Clan. There will be schoolrooms and training sessions and memory drills. You will know enough soon enough. Now is the time to be young."

"Tell me again the name of our Clan."

"We are the Jade Falcons."

"And what is a jade falcon?"

"A bird that may be mythical, although some claim to have sighted them and even trained them for the hunt. They fly high, it is said, and do not easily come down to ground level."

"Like my father."

Peri laughed. "Like your father. He wanted to be a great warrior, your father, but he tried a trick during what is called a Trial, a test by which warriors are chosen, and he lost his chance. Not long after, other warriors came here, to Tokasha, and took him away. I do not know what has happened to him since."

"And my father's name?"

Peri hesitated for a moment, but the child Diana could not have guessed that it was because her mother was uncertain about whether the child should know his name. In that brief instant, she must have decided it would do no harm, given the size of the Clan sector and all the possible planets where Aidan might eventually have gone.

"Aidan. His name is Aidan."

"I wish he would return to us."

"No, that would not be Clanlike. Whatever task he is fulfilling right now, he is a warrior at heart. He is from a sibko, which means that he did not have a mother and father, but was formed from what are called genes—and do not ask me to explain them. Warriors, even those reassigned to another caste, do not oversee their children, especially freeborn children."

Peri had never told Diana that she had once belonged to the same sibko as Aidan, a fact that should have prevented her from ever giving birth to a child in the conventional manner. Being a scientist, however, Peri had been able to alter her own body chemistry so that she might know the freeborn privilege (she thought of it as a privilege, even if most trueborns would not) of childbirth. She had never fully understood why this had become so necessary. Having failed as a warrior, she had known almost immediately that if she would not be seeing life through the viewscreen of a BattleMech cockpit, then she would never be able to go it alone. Diana had been the solution to her loneliness.

Later, after Peri had more or less abandoned Diana, similar thinking had guided her. Seeing Diana's potential, Peri had reasoned that it was best to cut the cord of parentage and leave Diana to find her own way. Otherwise Peri's own need might someday make her do something that would hold the child back. It was not an easy decision, but she had made it with the coolness of one bred and trained to become a trueborn warrior.

"Mother?" Diana asked after a long pause during which her brow was furrowed in what Peri knew was complicated thought. Diana was a specialist at complicated thought, very complicated for her age.

"Yes?"

"I do not think I want to be a scientist when I grow up." For the past year Diana had told Peri every day that she intended to be a scientist.

"Oh? And you would like to choose your caste? That is not like a freeborn, you know."

"No, it is not. But I know what I want to be. I want to be a warrior."

Peri's heart seemed to stop beating. These were not words she wanted to hear. It had nothing to do with wanting less than the best for her daughter, and more to do with the kind of treatment suffered by the few freeborns who qualified for warrior training. Sometimes they had to become cannon fodder for sibko cadets, while the few who made it to the Trial of Decision would face even worse odds than trueborn cadets. Peri did not like the idea of Diana going into that kind of life. Warriors were the most honored members of the Clan, and even menials from the lowest castes dreamed of becoming warriors, but some maternal instinct made Peri want an easy life for her daughter. In the warrior caste, life was never easy, whether you were free– or trueborn.

"You have plenty of time to plan your life, Diana. Be four years old for now."

"I amfour years old, mother."

"I know that. I mean—well, it does not matter what I mean. I see your father in your eyes. You will seek whatever you decide to seek. I cannot stop you."

Diana liked the last thing Peri said, and she would not let go of it for days. "You cannot stop me, mother. You cannot stop me."

Peri knew then how true that was, and she knew it later, when she had stopped communicating with Diana so that the girl could go on to warrior training without any complications. Yet Peri could not sever the bond completely. Though Diana would never know it, Peri maintained close observation of her daughter's career as she persevered through cadet training and became the warrior she had vowed to become at the age of four.

1

He was the picture of frustration, and his name was Kael Pershaw. For two years, for too long, he had been base commander of Glory Station, the Clan Jade Falcon encampment on the planet Glory. To his mind, the assignment might just as well have been to an asteroid in the farthest reaches of the universe. Though Glory was within each of the five original Clan worlds, it was still at the outer edge of the globular cluster, all those worlds that had become part of the Clan Empire. The Jade Falcons had only recently won half of Glory, the other half still awaiting challenge.

Even the planet's name seemed absurd to Pershaw. In this dreary place, the only glorious thing about Glory was its air. It was breathable, without need for adaptive mechanisms or uncomfortable implants to filter dangerous gases into air fit for humans. Pershaw had already done enough unpleasant time on the less atmospherically pleasant places during the peripatetic phases of his military career.

How Glory had earned its name was a mystery. Its mountains did not rise high, its lakes rarely shimmered, and its vegetation was often runty and sparse. The one distinctive geographical feature was a major jungle area near Glory Station, but even it was repellent and dangerous. Pershaw rarely left the main encampment, preferring to send others, preferably members of the freeborn Trinaries, out to such dangerous areas. It was not cowardice, but rather the certainty that his talents did not require him to risk his life except in major arenas. Was that not what it meant to be commander of a base?

Perhaps even more absurd were the forces Kael Pershaw could muster if another Clan demanded a Trial of Possession. Though his Cluster consisted of the usual four Trinaries, with three Stars each, only Striker Trinary was of any worth. Its complement of 15 true-born warriors and 75 of the genetically bred infantry known as Elementals was too small a force to undertake any Trial of Possession. The other three Trinaries had BattleMechs only, and were barely fit for garrison duty. Piloting those 'Mechs were older trueborn warriors (who had settled for demotion rather than volunteering to get themselves killed in honorable fashion) and freebirths. Pershaw did not know which was worse. To top it off, the 'Mechs were so outdated that these Trinaries would be more hindrance than help in battle.

"Could you stop working for at least a few minutes?" came a voice behind him. It was Lanja, the warrior who served as his coregn, or aide. He had chosen her from the ranks, where Lanja was, in fact, a skilled warrior in line to be a Trinary commander. Besides being Pershaw's personal aide, Star Commander Lanja commanded Striker Trinary's Elementals. In selecting her as aide, Pershaw had chosen well. In the field, she commanded her armor-suited infantry in perfect consort with Pershaw's BattleMechs. In garrison, her administrative skills were equally complementary. Lanja was shrewd, efficient, and—as he had discovered—sexually skillful. A sexual liaison was not so unusual between two people in such a close working relationship, but it was not always so delightful. He would regret her forced departure at the end of the current contract. Pershaw could not form a new contract with her until another coregn had served a minimum period of time.

Though Lanja towered at least two heads over her commander, she was shorter than most of the Elementals she commanded. Pershaw sometimes teased her about having freeborn genes.

"'I will always stop working for you," he said now, standing up to gather her in his arms. Even through her stiffly starched warrior uniform, Pershaw thought he could feel the soft curves of Lanja's body underneath.

He knew that he and Lanja were unusually passionate for Clan lovers. Had he not chanced upon a disk of some old Terran romances in a Brian Cache, Pershaw might never have known that human love could be intense and romantic. As a Clansman, he could barely grasp the idea of romance, but his liaison with Lanja was probably deeper than any he had ever known before—in casual sibko alliances, in previous relationships with warrior women, and in other coregns. In its way. their relation was as fathomless as any in those fanciful tales of love.

But Kael Pershaw was a warrior above all, and he did not relish the idea of someone stumbling into his office to find him and Lanja locked in an embrace. Perhaps that was why he let her out of his arms sooner than he wanted to.

Lanja brushed back some of her dark hair, which looked even blacker against her emerald green Jade Falcon headband. "Something is bothering you," she said, and her brow furrowed with worry. "The usual things?"

"In a way. The stagnation, I suppose you would call it."

"Stagnation is a good word, especially with Blood Swamp so near the camp." Perhaps it was the mere thought of the swamp that made her brush away an imaginary insect. Blood Swamp was not its real name, which was long-forgotten. From the first days of Glory Station, warriors stationed there had been struck by the reddish glint, almost like long, bloody streaks, cast by the reflection of Glory's moon shining over the swamp.

"You will be transferred someday," Lanja said. "I am sure of it."

"I know. Relocation and redeployment are Clan ideals, but I am not due for a while. I wish to go now. I want to be in a place where there is reason to be a warrior. I am tired of prodding troops with fake conflicts, just to keep their skills honed. They need real combat, and so do I."

"I had a dream that you were in combat. No, do not say it. My dreams. You do not believe in them. Even when you have seen them come true. Let us retire to the bedchamber. No, I do not mean to tempt you that way. It is just that your eyes look so very tired, like pools surrounded by dark earth."

"And are they stagnant, too?"

The remark made Lanja smile. "No, that they are not."

"Soon," Pershaw whispered. "We will go there soon. Just let me finish writing up some reports."

"They cannot wait?"

"It is only that I wanted to get this one about the brawl out of the way."

"The two Star Commanders? Bast and Jorge?"

"Exactly. What a blot on my command. That a free-birth could so easily defeat a trueborn in a foolish squabble."

"Foolish? As I recall Bast insulted Jorge."

"True. And if they were both trueborns that might not be a matter of shame. But Jorge soundly beat Bast—nearly broke his neck—while all those free-births stood cheering Jorge on. It was disgusting." Though Pershaw's face rarely registered emotion, this time the revulsion was obvious in his eyes and in the downturned corners of his mouth.

"Jorge is a fine warrior, freebirth or not," Lanja said softly. "I was not there, but I understand that he beat Bast rather convincingly."

"Nevertheless, Jorge should be intelligent enough to stay out of such a battle. I depend on freeborns understanding that I do not wish to have true/free conflicts in my command and it is up to them to . . . to . ."

"To stay in their place? To let themselves be trampled on by us trueborns? Not, in fact, to act like warriors at all?"

Pershaw smiled, a rare event that Lanja realized she would have to treasure for a long while until it occurred again.

"I accept the criticism, Lanja. The truth is that I despise having any freeborns in my command. If I could, I would ship the lot of them somewhere else, and deal only with trueborns."

"I understand. But so long as you command even one freeborn, you must expect trouble, especially if he is as independent as this Jorge. Did you punish him this time?"

"I tried. But the surkaiexonerated him."

Lanja's eyebrows raised. "Oh? I would not have expected Jorge to perform the rite of forgiveness successfully. His arrogance would—"

"I did not say that he performed the rite well. He was arrogant as ever. But I accepted it. I had to, quiaff?"

"Aff. And now you should forget it all."

"I cannot. Jorge is like a land mine. Step on him again and he will explode. There will be more trouble."

Lanja nodded. "Well, purge yourself for the moment with the report. Incidents like this will not look well on Jorge's codex."

Pershaw shrugged. "A freeborn's codex means next to nothing. Freeborns cannot become part of the gene pool, so it affects them little."

She touched his forehead. "You are thinking too much, Kael Pershaw. You need to rest. Join me soon."

She left the office. Pershaw labored over the report for a few minutes, but found it difficult to concentrate. Something had to change, he kept thinking.

But when the change did come, less than half a day later, he was surprised by it.

* * *

"How is a freebirth Star Commander different from a rock swine in a Clan uniform?"

"I do not know, Bast. How?"

"The rock swine can qualify for front-line duty."

Bast and the others laughed, a blend of brutish noises that only those who knew them would have interpreted as amusement. Aidan knew he was the Star Commander who was the intended butt of the joke, but he wondered if Bast realized that he had just entered the room and stood only a few steps behind him. How could the man be so stupid? He still wore a neck brace from the last time he had taunted Aidan and wound up with Aidan's elbow contracting his larynx. Aidan had an urge to sneak up behind Bast and crush the neck brace into what was left of the trueborn warrior's neck.

But there was an invisible leash around his own neck and he could not act. Not revealing the least sign that he had heard Bast, Aidan went to the bar of the officer's lounge and ordered a fusionnaire, the drink currently popular among freeborns, a blend so volatile that only warriors as defiant as freeborns would place it near their lips. Aidan not only drank it down quickly, he let it linger in his mouth, where it felt like it was melting the enamel off his teeth.

The lounge was as plain as all the other facilities on this outpost. Every interior was done in drab grays, mud browns, sickly greens. At times Aidan was actually happier to be in the jungle, even though it was said to contain lizards with tongues so poisonous they could immobilize a 'Mech's leg. That was only barracks exaggeration, of course, but Aidan had no inclination to test its truth. Unfortunately, his unit, freeborns all and therefore lowest in the command structure, were generally the ones chosen for any mission into that jungle. All they had seen so far were nightmarish twisted trees whose bark dripped with thick, noxious-smelling sap and with animals whose shapes were almost indiscernible because they vanished so quickly. Yet, in an off-duty moment he had discovered some flowers whose beautiful blood-red petals were speckled with bright yellow streaks. He had turned some over to the station lab, which had reported back that these flowers, now named blood-petals, had already been identified for certain medicinal applications. A serum drawn from them had been tested on some warriors and techs afflicted with a strange disease that sapped their energies and made them drowsy. Though the blood petal serum was not a cure, it did give the patients a few hours of vigor and alertness.

Aidan could use a bit of alertness right now, he thought, as the sudden impact of the fusionnaire momentarily clouded his vision. It was said that enough fusionnaires over a short period of time might make a person blind, but so far only these brief dizzy spells had impaired his sight. He did not mind the danger, for the drink provided the only escape from the dreariness of his present duty.

He had spent much time on such backwater assignments, one Glory Station after another, where his unit always suffered the worst assignments, not to mention the desultory and often rude treatment that freeborns always got from the trueborn warriors, whose status, regardless of time in service or rank, generally gave them the advantage in any situation. In any dispute between freeborn and trueborn, the officers tended to vote in council for the trueborn's side, unless the free-born's evidence was so overwhelming it could not be ignored.

Even when treated fairly, a freeborn always heard the resentful cadences in the voice of a trueborn superior officer. Aidan had been through so many Trials of Refusal, the challenge that any Clan warrior or military unit could make to protest a decision, that he now planned his reaction even before a single judge had heard his voice. The last time, after he had nearly broken Bast's neck, Star Colonel Kael Pershaw had obviously wanted to punish him severely, but Aidan had used the rite of surkaiagainst Pershaw. Although the commander had not revealed his reaction, Aidan left the office happy, believing he had left the man incensed by his tactic.

As he finished his second fusionnaire and listened to Bast begin a joke about two freebirths encountering one another in a war-torn village, Aidan wondered if he should just stand up now and yell out to all the trueborns in the room that he, too, was a product of the union of genetic materials in a laboratory, then raised in a sibko. Like them, he was trueborn. He would like to see their faces, all their sneering, overbearing faces, when they realized that this Star Commander, whom they continually reviled in their humor and conversations, was not, after all, a freebirth. That this warrior, known to them as Jorge, had assumed a freeborn's identity when the real cadet by that name, along with all the freebirth members of his training unit and their training officer, had been killed in a training exercise. At least that was the official version.

Aidan knew that Jorge's death had been a murder, arranged by Falconer Commander Ter Roshak to give Aidan an unprecedented second chance at the Trial of Position. In his first Trial, Aidan had failed because he had been over-eager in his strategy. Although cadets did not usually have a second chance at a Trial, Aidan got one, though the reason was known only to Ter Roshak. At first Aidan had been angry that so many others had to die so that he could climb into a BattleMech and prove that he did have the makings of a warrior, but the satisfaction he took from warrior status dimmed his anger over time. Worse than any doubts about how he had achieved reinstatement was having to keep the freeborn identity in order to be a warrior. He hated that, had hated it every day of every year of his life as a warrior. There had been so many times when, like now, he had wanted to shout to others that he was a trueborn.

But Ter Roshak had insisted that the switch be kept a secret. The second chance was so antithetical to the way of the Clan that Roshak could be executed if the truth were known. Any of his genetic legacy stored in any lab, any chance he had of being honored through gene transmission to a sibko, would be removed and destroyed. As Aidan later learned, the Roshak genes had been combined with another's for only one sibko, which had turned out to be undistinguished. None of its members had become warriors.

Aidan was signaling for another fusionnaire when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He knew without looking whose it was.

"You are not my protector, Horse," he said. "I do not need you to tell me when to quit drinking fusionnaires."

It had been a matter of honor for Aidan to return to the warrior style of speech, even if everyone else believed he was a freeborn. He had not used a contraction in years. Warriors sneered at anyone who did so, and Aidan had no intention of giving them that satisfaction.

Horse had a deep, rumbling voice that suited his imposing appearance, but it was his piercing gaze that now communicated disapproval. The two men had been together so long that Aidan could read Horse's thoughts by just such a look in his eyes or the way he held his body.

"You told me to stop you after the second fusionnaire," Horse said calmly, his hand remaining on Aidan's shoulder.

"Oh? Did I? I do not remember that."

"You never do, Commander."

"I am going to have that third fusionnaire. Look, the man already has it poured."

The bartender, a stocky tech with an expressionless face, placed the drink on the bar in front of Aidan.

"See, Horse? I have to drink it now. The way of the Clan and all that."

As he reached for the drink, Horse's hand seemed to leap off Aidan's shoulder and onto the bar. He grabbed the glass, seizing its edge in his fingers, just before Aidan's hand would have closed around it. Still holding it delicately by its upper rim, Horse tilted the liquid quickly into his own mouth, downing it in one smooth swallow. Then he placed the glass in Aidan's curved fingers, which had remained in place on the bar.

"Now it is drunk," Horse said.

"And I am not," Aidan said bitterly.

"You are on duty."

"All the more reason to—"

"You are trying to be ironic, quiaff?"

"Aff. As you well know, Horse."

Aidan squinted at Horse. His hand closed around the fusionnaire glass, as though it still contained something to consume.

"You like irony, I can see. It is because of your secret cache of books."

Turning toward Horse, Aidan raised a finger to his lips. "I thought you knew better," he hissed. "You must never mention the, the—you know—here. The, uh, you know are a violation, remember?"

"Of course I remember. But I am a freebirth. In social matters we slip up easily."

Aidan laughed abruptly. "Horse, you are trying to feed me raw coolant."

Behind Horse, Bast's voice had risen. "Then the freebirth says, 'No, but if you want to, please use a socket wrench.' "

The other warriors roared with laughter. Aidan had not heard the lead-in to the punchline, nor did he recall hearing this particular joke before. Bast seemed to come up with new ones regularly from his vast store of anti-freeborn humor.

Aidan noted the tenseness in Horse's body. He could see that his comrade was about to wheel around and hurl an insult back at Bast. He did not blame Horse, but Kael Pershaw had sent out a directive that specifically ordered Aidan's unit to stop fighting with the regular warriors. Aidan suspected that his freeborns had wrought too much havoc on the trues in most of their brawls, and that Pershaw was merely exercising command privilege to prevent any more damage. Ever since Aidan had arrived on Glory, Pershaw had regularly overruled Aidan's orders and generally encouraged the trues to insult him. It was only after a few trues wound up injured that Pershaw also set stiff penalties for brawling. No matter who started a fight, the Commander always sided with the trueborns over the frees. He, in fact, gleefully trumpeted his own inequitable judgments as a device to keep both sides stirred up.