Текст книги "Way Of The Clans"
Автор книги: Роберт Торстон
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"I SEE THAT YOU DO NOT LIKE THIS, CADET."
"Get used to it," she said. "It is your training." Without giving any indication that a punch was coming, Falconer Joanna jabbed Aidan in the nose, and he felt something break. She hit him again in the same place, and the pain was so bad he could not see straight—or, rather, he could see too well, in too many images. The third punch knocked him to the ground.
He looked up to see Falconer Joanna standing over him.
"Are your through yet, nestling?"
He tried to sit up, and she gently pushed him down.
This time he stayed there.
"This one might test out all the way," she said to Falconer Ellis, who now stood beside her. As she spoke she was putting on the falconer gloves, whose star-shaped studs caught some light and sparkled. She held each glove, palm side toward her, directly in front of her face as she pulled it on. Her face grimaced as she stretched it tight. "He does not, as you saw, give up easily. Let us keep track of him– make his stay with us especially hard."
BATTLETECH
LE5101
LEGEND OF THE JADE PHOENIX
VOLUME 1
WAY OF THE CLANS
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,
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Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood,
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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 Dutton Signet, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc.
First Printing, August, 1991 10 9 8 7 6
Series Editor: Donna Ippolito
Cover: Bruce Jensen
Interior Illustrations: Jeff Laubenftein
Mechanical Drawings: Steve Venters
Copyright © FASA, 1991
All rights reserved
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REOISTRADA
Printed in the United States of America
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To Rosemary and Charlotte
Prologue
A Kind of Fate
At different moments—say, the night before a battle begins or the night after a love affair ends—the Commander usually seeks a quiet place. Unlike most Clan warriors, he looks for isolation rather than camaraderie when in the grip of an emotion. This time he does not choose the cockpit of his 'Mech or a dark place in a forest. This time he goes to the inlet of a quiet lake with an abbreviated beach whose quietly lapping water is only four or five steps from the edge of the woods. He sits, back against the stump of a tree (burn marks and missing bark suggesting that the tree had once, like him, been a battle victim—except he had survived). He watches moonlight sketching intermittent highlights on the few ripples in the water, listens to the weak breeze almost shyly send ripples of sound through the woods behind him.
In a book that had been burned in battle, a book that the Commander had carried with him into the cockpit of a 'Mech whose shards had been scattered across the landscape of some embattled planet he no longer recalled, he had read a story that he wished he had memorized. In it a father mourned a son killed in battle. The battle had been primitive, a war over some nonsense about which side possessed some valued object, the death the kind of tragedy that was not quite a tragedy (no falls from great heights, no individual ravaged by a single, identifiable character flaw). The war had been a thousand accumulations of sorrow, a thousand rewardings of honor. Like most wars. The boy had died because someone else had made a mistake. After the boy had saved someone– a friend, a lover, a child, an enemy (there were so many stories, the Commander thought, how could puny details be remembered?)—he had been killed by a projectile from whatever weapon belonged to that era. His father dug him out of a battlefield pile of corpses, the smell of blood not yet become the stench of decay.
The father looked at the tortured face of the boy. His eyes still seemed to stare with life, but now they gazed at some point just past the father's shoulder and not into his eyes. A thousand memories, a thousand fragments of the boy's life, rushed into the father's mind. The moments went from the cradle and childhood frolics to the important experiences of growing up, through all the choices that seemed to lead directly to this pile of corpses, in a straight line of events with a strange sort of inevitability to them, a kind of fate. And of course, in the world of the father and his son, it wasfate that had guided them. Fate was the point. Fate was the last remaining expression in the boy's eyes, which the father now shut with gentle urges of his fingertips.
That was not the end of the story. Events had propelled the father into a deeply complicated plot where in some ways he redeemed himself from a taint and in some other ways reconciled himself to his son's death. Whether or not the father survived, the Commander could not recall.
The Commander, however, had survived. His special talent, survival.
His Clan upbringing had long interfered with his understanding of the story and, for that matter, many other stories in many other books from among the volumes he had so long ago discovered in that Brian Cache where he had done such dreadful and enervating duty. The concept of father had initially troubled him. What was a father? Naturally, he understood the technical meaning of the word, but what did it really mean? What had it meant for the devoted father of the story?
The Commander, the offspring of genetic engineering, of genes from a sacred gene pool, had several father figures but only knowledge without awareness of his actual father. All he could fall back on was imagination to understand any concepts about natural parents in the books he had read. He had been raised with others also genetically matched, in a sibling company, a sibko. He had a fine understanding of what siblings felt, but how could he have really comprehended the sorrow of a parent over a lost son or daughter? At least back then, the concept had puzzled him. Now he understood it better. Now it was easier even to feel. Now it was his own private sorrow, not only previously unknown but forbidden to be known.
The idea of fate was easier to comprehend. The Clans had a notion of fate, though it differed from the fate portrayed in the story. A Clansman tried to control his fate, measuring it methodically against the vagaries of chance. Everything in life required a bid. If a man was good at bidding, he controlled his fate. A successful bid in warfare meant he led his warriors into battle, planned the execution of their maneuvers, planned the battle itself, reacted to chance interferences with the skill of a battle-worthy strategist, beat chance with the action of his adept-at-strategy mind, overwhelmed what fate appeared to have in store. Of course, for the other warrior, the pilot in the cockpit who saw fate rushing right at him, the outcome of the engagement, the loss, undoubtedly seemed like fate.
Clan officers met before a battle and bid for the honor of fighting it. It was an intricate and complex procedure. The first officer to bid removed one or more of his units from the battle strategy. The next bidder had to duplicate that move, then up the ante by eliminating a unit or more of his own or by replacing a strong unit with one ranked below it. A 'Mech could be substituted for an aerospace fighter or five Elementals, the Clan's genetically bred, battle-suited infantry. Bids flew back and forth until one commanding officer was left with low bid, the bid below which no fellow officer could commit personnel and materiel. But a bidder could not hold back a low bid for too long. An opponent might beat him to it, making the winning bid he had intended and leaving him back on a DropShip, watching his rival lead his forces into battle. There was no position so uncomfortable as sitting in a plush DropShip chair observing the military triumphs of the officer who had beaten you bidding.
All Clan men and women took delight in the victories of others, but no success was more satisfying than that of the warrior doing the winning. A certain regret inevitably crept into one's praise for others. It was not envy that fueled it, nor was it loss of face. Every Clansman respected the wagering skills of a good officer, and there was no shame attached to losing a bid. But there was another kind of loss of face, a kind the Commander well understood. It was the loss of face within oneself: the realization that one had not quite made the grade. That was the true loss of face, when you gazed at yourself in the mirror of your mind and had to look away.
The Commander remembered a fellow warrior who had graduated from all levels of training spectacularly, had risen through the ranks rapidly, had become one of the youngest Star Captains in the history of Clan Jade Falcon. But he had proved to be inept in the prebattle ritual of bidding. Too often he gave away too much manpower in his desperate attempt to gain the bid. Undermanned, he fought too many losing battles or marginal victories, endangering his troops and materiel. Though one of the fiercest warriors ever to charge an enemy, the man's bidding deficiencies finally cost him his command, even lost him his 'Mech. When he finally met his death in battle, he was not a victim of fate but of destiny. The Captain's genes were not passed on in the gene pool so sacred to all warriors. But what point was there in a warrior's living and dying if his genes were not judged worthy of the gene pool?
The Commander knew that when one controlled the key aspects of his destiny, fate did not matter. There was no fear of fate among the Clans. As he had read in a Clan saga, in a passage he could not quite remember accurately:
Fate sits high in the bidder's chair Trying to subdue the Wolf Clan And failing;
Trying to outbid the Ghost Bears And losing;
Trying to make the Jade Falcons listen to reason And listening instead.
What was he doing, thinking about fate at all? He always tended to become dangerously reflective before battle, allowing his mind to wander around his past. Too many books, too many stories with unsettling doubts in them, too much reflection altogether. His life had been difficult, much of it, with failure, shame, loss, hard success. But he had struggled through it all. Survived.
Some people said they would change nothing if they had their lives to live over. As for the Commander, he would not repeat a moment of it—well, maybe a moment here and there—even if it meant forsaking his present high position in the Jade Falcon chain of command. Too many events had warped his thinking, too much hardship had made him the perpetual outsider. Of the Clan, yet outside of it.
I have read too many books, he thought. I am beginning to think like one. And we cannot have that.
Still I would like to go back in time, confront myself at the moment I began training, tell myself the mistakes to avoid. I could bargain for myself a more ordered life, bid for the kind of existence I should have had.
Ah, the training.
They had been young, so young, mere children. He might have been wise beyond his years at the beginning of training, but still only a child when the rough-hewn, rough-clad instructor-officers had taken him and the others in hand. Sculptors of people, yes, even more sculptors of the mind, they had remolded him, part by part constructing him and the others like the vaulting of a great cathedral, making them the buttresses of their units, their Star Clusters.
In the Commander's memory, the others were young, too, but (at least in his mind, now) somehow younger than he. Where were most of them now? Some, of course, were dead. The Clan did not recognize the sanctity of life, one of those Terran and Inner Sphere concepts he had read about; all Clan warriors could be fodder, and rightly so, as long as their deaths forwarded the goals of the Clan. War and the Clans made a good combination, especially in their heartlessness toward human life. There was no sanctity to it all, only survivors. The 'Mech won or the 'Mech fell, that was what happened.
But if a messenger were to bring him word now that Marthe had been killed, if he had had to meditate on her passing while sitting on this beach and staring out at this roughly sketched lake, he would have been sad. Un-Clanlike, he would have been sad.
The Commander had survived. That was the final resuit. The Clan was as proud of its dead warriors as its live ones. The courage of all justified the Clan. He had learned to accept the Clan, his Jade Falcon Clan. He had even come to love it. It had taken time, but it had begun the day he and the others stepped off the hoverbus onto the cold (even through heavy boots) ground of the training center on the Jade Falcon planet of Ironhold.
1
Across the great expanse of a grassless, rocky plain, other vehicles were also arriving, each dumping new trainees—from uncharacteristically anxious sibkos—onto the landing site, where in threatening packs, the training officers awaited their charges, their next set of victims. These strange-looking men and women hardly seemed to notice the newcomers. Instead, they talked among themselves, their barked-out words frequently interrupted by raucous laughter. They often pushed against or elbowed each other in ways that looked to Aidan neither friendly or even human. They were more like hawks crowded together in a cage, each ready to start a bloody battle if nudged out of place by another.
In spite of the cold, the blasts of wind that had reached even into the hoverbus to chill its passengers, these warriors, these combat survivors, were scantily dressed, unlike Aidan and his sibko, who had snuggled into tunics of thick animal hide, broad-brimmed fur hats, and light but well-insulated leather boots.
Each training officer wore what had apparently once been a fatigue jumpsuit, but with ragged holes in the sleeves and torso and with the legs cut off unevenly, exposing lower limbs that were bare down to light, low-slung boots. Sleeves were shortened, too, just below the elbow. Over the cutaway jumpsuits, some wore fur tunics, the only apparent concession to the intense cold.
On the chests and sleeves of the jumpsuits were many patches, some indicating rank, some indicating past units in which the warriors had served, some indicating battle achievements. A few of the officers wore thick gloves, the well-padded kind used in falconry.
It made Aidan recall the first day he had launched his favorite bird, a peregrine he had named Warhawk. Standing on the crest of a promontory, he had been sending her out to hack—to fly free and obtain that sense of liberty so essential to a bird that would spend most of its life tied to blocks or carried on the wrist-end of a padded glove. Hawking was a practice of all those in the Jade Falcon Clan who had chosen to honor their name by cultivating the ancient art of falconry.
Aidan had spent the rest of that morning hoping that Warhawk would return. Of course, she had, proving to be one of the coolest, most successful hunting falcons in Aidan's sibko.
But that was long ago. Today, stepping onto the ground of the training site, tension overwhelmed him. On his side, on the side of the sibko, there was closeness, trust, the answering of needs. On the other side, on the side of the training officers, there was indifference, danger, contempt. However, there was also—in the occasional sidelong glance and in a certain bodily stiffness—a sense of the enemy ready to spring.
Aidan looked over at Marthe, found her staring at him. Though her eyes were calm, he knew her well enough to perceive in the uneasy set of her full-lipped mouth (shaped so much like his) that she was just as apprehensive.
Sibkos rarely met their genetic donors. At the time the first ilKhan, Nicholas Kerensky, was instituting the first genetic programs, theorists warned him that contact between donors and their sibko children could cause dangerous influences. They were especially wary of what they called unhealthy parental inclinations. Such feelings, they advised, had to be eliminated so that the genetically created warriors would not suffer the personality complications and character flaws that could so easily lead to the mistakes that lost battles and failed whole campaigns. By law the donors must be the best warriors society could offer. The best warriors should, they reasoned, not even want to see their sibspring (a linguistic corruption of "sibling offspring").
Though everyone in the sibko had the same genetic background and resembled one another, Aidan and Marthe looked more alike than either of them resembled any of their sibkin. They were the only ones who had the high forehead tapering down to a narrow chin, a shape akin to a perfect triangle. It was said the look came from their maternal side, and was the famous appearance of Star Commander Tania Pryde, many of whose combat and sporting exploits were excitingly recorded in Clan Jade Falcon annals. She was still among the Blood-named, but like all warriors who had reached the age where custom dictated they must retire from combat, she was fulfilling a noncombatant assignment somewhere or retired into another caste.
Less was known about Galaxy Commander Ramon Mattlov, the paternal contributor of the genes for Aidan's sibko. Rumor had it that his exploits were as impressive as Commander Pryde's, but the accounts had somehow not found their way into Clan or sibko lore. Aidan had been told that he and Marthe resembled Mattlov in their height and slimness. They were the tallest members of their sibko, with Marthe topping Aidan by only a few centimeters.
However, the characteristic that really set off the pair was their eyes—blue as the summer sky on the planet Circe and just as deceptive. As a Circe storm could seem to descend on the planet from nowhere, a swirling tempest preceded only by the slightest change in the serene skies, the calmness in the eyes of Aidan and Marthe when confronted by opponents was the lull that preceded their storms. That serene moment before they sprang into action often gave them the edge against an adversary of equal skills.
Aidan shivered. Even in the thick garments he wore, the harsh wind blowing across the plain made him feel exposed. The other members of his sibko appeared to be shivering, too. They had been instructed that the only clothing they could bring to training camp was what they wore to the landing site. Some of Aidan's sibkin had put on a couple of extra layers; now he wished he had, too. The cold air discovered any ingress into clothing, any place where the material did not quite meet the skin, then rushed in to thoroughly chill every epidermal surface.
"I do not trust any of those non-kin," said Bret, the smallest of the group. "Non-kin" was a term that differentiated their sibko from other sibkos and, for that matter, anyassembly of people outside the sibko. These unkempt, ill-dressed, indifferent officers, for example.
Bret's smallness had seemed to guarantee his early elimination from the sibko, but nobody had counted on his tenacity, courage, and the discipline that had made him exercise for hours every morning. Now he had a strong and muscular body, and the others relied on him for leadership, as much as fiercely independent sibkin could accept anyleader.
"They have planned something for us."
"What, Bret?" Marthe said.
"I do not know, but based on how vicious and unfeeling those who will train us are said to be, I suspect their casual indifference right now is a fraud to hide something devious instead."
"I doubt they will make us stand here for long," Aidan commented. "It would not be Clanlike."
"Clanlike? Are you being sarcastic?" Bret asked.
He was, but Aidan did not want Bret to know that. Bret, who had no concept of the humorous, often commented that Aidan treated life too lightly. The smaller boy had been so intent on his own survival in the sibko, his own proof of kinship with the others, that he never understood a joke. Around a campfire, on hunting expeditions, his laughter always rang false, the laughter of a serious person trying to blend in with others by following their ways. The only jokes he ever told were ones he had heard from others. His nervous manner and the catches in his voice when he delivered punch lines made his listeners doubt his understanding of the joke's humor. The sibko needed Bret's shrewdness and quick decisions at those times when the entire group was being tested, so they excused his lack of humor.
"Neg," Aidan responded. "I am being factual. We are not often allowed relaxation, quiaff?"
"Aff. You know what I think? I think they are testing us right now. See the sidelong glances? They are assessing us, I am sure."
"And at the same time agitating us, quiaff?" Marthe said.
"We should try to look calm," Rena said. "Show we are ready for them, ready to be warriors." Rena was unusual among Aidan's sibmates. Though a bit overweight, like all the survivors of the arduous customs, testings, and retestings of a Clan upbringing, she was in good physical condition. Rena liked to use her unimposing appearance to catch people off guard. She could flip an attacker over her well-muscled back, then wrestle him to the ground faster than anyone else in the sibko. The wrestling was often a prelude to coupling, which she carried out with a similar athleticism. Aidan often let himself be tossed by her, in prospect of having the painful blows evolve into amorous caresses.
"I believe Rena is right," said Bret. "Best to ignore them. How about a team-tussling session? You all up for it?"
There was immediate agreement among the sibko's dozen members. Automatically splitting into their usual three teams, they squared off. Team tussling was both an exercise and a game that, Aidan had once noticed, harmlessly ritualized the kind of grand melee that occurred during a Trial of Position.
Team tussling had developed naturally out of the sibko's intense gymnastic competitions. Once any such activity started, all members of the sibko wanted to be the best at it. In a tussle, they used acrobatic talents along with the combat skills they had been learning, it seemed, since they were trying to kick their way out of their cradles.
The ritual began ceremoniously. Two members of each team formed a "chair" with their hands while another stood on or sat in it. Aidan was certain this beginning had originated from falconry. In a team tussle, the competitors were launched just like the birds. Bret stood on the surface offered by his team's quartet of thinly gloved hands, then his holders hurled him forward. He executed a single flip in the air, landing in front of Rena, who was thrown forward from a sitting position, rolled into a somersault, and then landed at Bret's feet just as he came down.
This opening was well-ritualized by now. Rena grabbed at Bret's ankles. Bret anticipated the move and jumped aside, landing in the path of the first-out acrobat from the third group, a stocky, quarrelsome young man named Endo. He had entered the fray by leaping from his holders' chair onto his hands, "walking" a few steps, then flipping onto his feet just in time to give Bret a hard chop to the side of his head with hands that Endo had hardened with practice on any material he could find. Each member of the sibko had a fighting specialty; chopping with his hard-heeled, calloused hands was Endo's. Bret reeled sideways and encountered Rena driving her shoulder into his midsection.
Aidan watched with the other members of his team, as always nervous and eager for the moment when they all could enter the battle. At one time, team tussling had been simply a boisterous free-for-all. Refinements had gradually been introduced until the game evolved into its present form, where—in imitation of the Clan's military bidding procedures—each team sent out its minimum effective force, one fighter, to do battle for a precise two minutes before the others could join in. If that single fighter was rendered ineffective by an opponent (a difficult task when there were three or more teams) or, as sometimes happened, was knocked out cold, that team was defeated and its other members were not allowed into the mock but hard-fought combat. This was the overwhelming fear of the tussler, that he or she would work up all the restlessness and energy necessary for a good scuffle and then be deprived of the chance to let it out. Aidan, not the best gymnast of his team, was unable to offer a stylish opening gambit for the beginning of tussling, and so rarely went out first. He hated these moments of being denied battle.
Marthe, beside him, was equally restive. She liked a good fight as much as Aidan and never shied from it. In their sexual encounters, she had shown similar appetites, which was why she was, among all the members of the sibko, his favored partner for coupling. Unfortunately, others felt the same and getting to her was often more arduous than a team tussle.
A sibko survived, they had been told often enough, on its ability to function as an effective unit as well as on the intensity of its internal competitions. A sibko member was always battling, on the outside and the inside.
He looked over at Marthe. The back of her left hand was against her hip, and she was rubbing it nervously up and down against the rough material of her short trousers. The skin visible between her trousers and her high boots was prickly with goose bumps. He glanced down at his arm, which was also showing the effects of the cold. A few more seconds, and if Rena stayed true, he could get warm by mixing it up in the center.
Rena almost got caught out by Endo, who, by throwing himself onto his back and kicking his legs high, knocked her off balance. Endo then rolled into the back of her legs and flipped her over his hunched back. She landed, uncomfortably, her head pressed against a large rock, her eyes less than clear but not dazed, her right arm under her body, her left flailing ineffectively. Endo, who moved quickly in spite of his stockiness, jumped on her and nearly pinned her, but his head was snapped back by Bret, who, by the rules of the game, could not stand by and let one individual defeat another. In a team tussle, a physical exercise as much as a competition, it was forbidden to win by allowing your opponents to defeat each other. Inactivity was inglorious.
The whistle-signal came from the Timemaster, in this case Dav from Endo's team. Screaming like hawks, the others ran, leaped, twisted, and elbowed their way into the melee.
Aidan rushed right at Tymm, a clever but stolid in-fighter who could often be dazzled by diversionary tactics. At almost the last second before Aidan would have rammed into Tymm (and received a skillful defensive blow in response), he veered away, as if his choice for combat were someone else. He ran another three steps, stopped, and—without looking at Tymm—launched himself sideways while bringing up his elbow, making contact with the side of his opponent's jaw and sending him off balance. A quick kick to the back of Tymm's knee and he fell to the ground, where Aidan quickly placed his right hand firmly but safely against Tymm's neck to hold him down. This act, held for five seconds, signified Tymm's defeat. Aidan had no time to watch Tymm get up and slink away, for he had to cope with Orilna, the skinny but lithe martial-arts specialist. She was just a bit off with a chop to the back of his neck, and he merely stumbled a few steps, recovering in time to block her elbow strike, then deal her a just-barely slowed-down punch to the stomach. She took the blow well, not even doubling up, but her next attempt, a weak heel-palm strike, was obviously affected by his attack. Bending low, Aidan tackled her about the waist and wrestled her to the ground, his arm gripping her through her right leg, the back of his forearm against her chest. He was just about to do the five-second mock stranglehold on Orilna when a booming voice drowned out the sounds of the scuffle. "STOP THIS IDIOCY!"
The voice had so much of the sound of command, the sharp consonants of authority, the drawn-out vowels of wrath, that Aidan froze in position, his hand reaching for Orilna's neck, his other arm still entangled in her legs. Orilna, too, like all the other sibko battlers, stopped fighting and tensely held still.
Aidan looked up to see a trio of training officers, two of them with arms akimbo, the third gesturing wildly as he spoke: "Is this harebrained sibko, this fluttering nest of eyasses, so foolish as to think a demonstration of its belligerence would in some way impress us?" Eyas was the word for a hawk just taken from its net before it could fly. "You are children still, quiaff?No doubt you spit up your cereal and go behind rocks so no one can see you defecate. Has there been a mistake, comrades? Have they sent us a sib-nursery instead of a sibko on the verge of becoming warriors?"
The officer to the speaker's left laughed raucously, a sound analogous to the roar of a sudden Circean wind. When she spoke it was in a voice that, if anything, was louder than her colleague's: "Freebirth! If these whelps are our training unit, I think I will make myself a bondsman to the laborer caste, because what use will be there in going to war? With novices such as these, we might as well bid for surrender as combat."
