Текст книги "Way Of The Clans"
Автор книги: Роберт Торстон
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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 19 страниц)
37
I was right when I decided to mastermind this second chance for Aidan, wrote Falconer Commander Ter Roshak. He has the grit, the tenacity, the bravery to become a good officer. He even has the guts to stand up to me!
He came to me tonight. I do not know how he was able to steal away from his barracks, how he made it past the innumerable Crash Camp guards to my quarters, how he even knew where my quarters were.
I was asleep, dreaming of, well, a young woman I knew when I was a young man. She has been dead for sixteen years, reduced to a charred mass in a 'Mech coolant accident, yet how vividly alive she is in my dreams. At any rate, I am sure I was tossing and turning with the disorientation of the dream when I woke up suddenly, knowing that someone was in my room.
Aidan was just standing there. He seemed to be staring at my prosthesis, which was lying on a table beside the bunk, where I had put it before retiring. I had an impulse to fit it on, but I do not like to display that particular weakness in front of others. With my good hand, I settled my pillow into a position against the wall and sat up.
"I could court-martial you just for being here," I said calmly. "How did you get in?"
He shrugged. "If you must do something, you find a way to do it. What happened to the real Jorge?"
Being careful not to remove my deformed arm from beneath its cover, I shrugged, too, if it is possible to shrug with only one shoulder. "He died," I said.
"I know that. You told me it was an accident."
"Yes, I did. I told you that."
"But it was not the truth."
I stayed silent. He was going too fast. I was not sure what he could know, what he should know. The look in his eyes was strange, unreadable. It is hard enough to read their expression when he is in a normal mood, but in an odd mood, they are impossible.
"You do not have to say, Ter Roshak. I know Jorge must have been killed on purpose, to make room for my identity. But why the others? Why the rest of his unit? Why his officer? Why Falconer Abeth?"
He caught me off guard with the last, and I am afraid I reacted guiltily to the mention of her name. She had unearthed most of the plot and brought the discovery to me, not knowing that the piece of information she was missing was my participation in it. I regretted having to kill her, but she was obviously the kind of officer to whom loyalty to the Clan was all-important. She would never have understood my motives. Killing her was expedient, and I admit that her death was the only one I wish had been avoidable. But, of course, I could not reason with Aidan about her disposal. I suspected he would not understand the necessity of it. He is too young to appreciate tactics.
"Why?" he asked again.
"There is no answer to that, Aidan. What is done, is done."
"But that whole unit—"
"Jorge's?"
"Yes. They were wasted just so I—"
"Forget them. They were mere freebirths."
"But they lived, they—"
"Do you mean to say you regard a freeborn as having the same right to live as we do, as does anyone created out of the gene pool and therefore superior to—"
"Yes, I regard their lives as valuable."
"Of value equal to ours?"
"I, well, I—yes, why not? They were here training to be warriors."
"Do you feel that a freeborn who succeeds in the Trial is therefore better than you, that he has caste status above you? Well, Aidan?"
"I do not know how to answer that. I am trained to think otherwise. But is it not true that the freeborn who succeeds at the Trial becomes a warrior of the Clan?"
"Yes, but only in a way. You rarely see freeborns on front-line duty. They are mainly useful in freeing up proper warriors for significant duty. They will never contribute genes to the gene pool and rarely earn a Bloodname."
"But at least they are warriors. I failed. I became a Tech. Yes, the warrior in the most unpleasant rear-guard duty is to be envied when you are back here as a mere Tech."
"Techs might argue that point, but I do think that you have been living among freeborns for too long."
"I have been one! I amone!"
"Do not get carried away, Aidan. Whatever you are and whether or not you have succeeded in the Trial yet, you are nota freeborn. No matter how much empathy you feel for one of that unfortunate genetic state, you cannot become one. At any rate, I trust that you will do well in your next Trial and all of this puerile discussion will be rendered moot. Why are you here?"
He seemed stunned, not able to speak. I had the sensation of my missing hand grabbing fistfuls of sheet and pulling at them.
"I—" he began, then stopped and took a breath. "I want to be a warrior, but I want no one killed to promote my success. If this killing is to continue, I respectfully request that you return me to the technician caste, and this time I promise to stay there."
The words came out in a labored way, and I had to respect his courage.
"There is someone else who knows about your background?"
His answer came too slow. "No, there is not." I knew there was.
"Aidan, I will return you to the technician caste if you will answer me just one question."
He scowled, puzzled. "All right."
"Do you want to become a warrior? Do you want it more than anything else in your life?"
"That is not fair! It is—"
"DO YOU WANT TO BE A WARRIOR?"
"YES! I WANT IT MORE THAN—"
"Then that is enough. I will not interfere with your progress further. You are completely on your own. I admit to nothing that has happened in the past, and you will never again accuse me. You agree, quiaff?"
I became instantly furious when he hesitated. Then he said, quietly, "Aff."
"Very well. You are dismissed. Return to your unit."
For once, I could read his eyes. I saw in them a thousand things he wanted to say, and his resentment at me for blocking them. What I felt at that moment perhaps corresponds to what fathers feel for their children at moments of crisis. But of course I could not become thatsentimental.
He left, but traces of his presence seemed to linger in the air.
I had lied to him, of course. Anything I can do to facilitate his passing of the Trial, I will do. I will risk the consequences. But I must be more subtle, I suppose. I surmise that the person who has suspicions is the unit's other falconer, the one named Othy. But this one I cannot kill. I must arrange a necessary transfer, and then dispose of him later, after the Trial. It should not be too hard to manufacture his removal.
If he goes, then the unit is without training officers. Someone else must move into the spot. And I know just the logical candidate for the job. I feel the wheels turning. It is always exciting when the wheels are turning.
38
Their new training officer, a tough bird named Falconer Joanna, really dislodged the equanimity of the freeborn unit. Louder than the late Falconer Abeth and more demanding than the departed Falconer Othy, she was a martinet who suffered no excuses, forced a cadet to lick up any dirt he had not cleaned up, ran a quicker march, demanded better performance, and seemed to despise every freeborn in the universe. She was especially hard on Cadet Jorge, even though he proved time and again that he could do anything she could dream up for him to do. Indeed, she seemed to get special pleasure from finding new challenges for him.
Aidan thought Joanna was just being herself, and then some. When she first arrived and found an excuse to take him aside, she said: "Make no mistake about it, Aidan—"
"Jorge—I am Jorge now."
"I know that."
"But what if someone overhears?"
"If I say it, it does not matter if someone overhears." She glared at him, but he sensed that she almost smiled. "You understand that, quiaff?"
"Aff."
"Let us make this as easy as possible. I am not patient, yes? All right. As I was about to say, I am not happy about this assignment. I am here because Ter Roshak said somebody had to be, especially since Othy came down with that influenza."
"Did he then? I mean, he is all right, is he not?"
"If you call lying under a dozen blankets and delirious with fever all right, then he is just fine. Why do you ask?"
"No reason. Why do you so dislike being here? It is no worse than ordinary training."
"But it is. I cannot stomach being around freebirths all day. How can you?"
"It is not so bad. They are ordinary, friendly—"
She seemed shocked. "Of course they are ordinary. How can you stand that?But never mind. They disgust me, and I am only glad that my stay here will be a short one."
"Falconer Joanna, you should give them a chance."
"Stop, I have heard such pro-freebirth talk before and I despise it as much as I despise them. I am going to hit you now. They are watching us."
She did not give him much time to think about it. With the back of her hand, she whacked Aidan hard on the side of his head, dizzying him for a short time. Then she bellowed an order and walked away. When he went back to his fellow cadets, they were all smiling. Thinking of what Joanna had said, and recalling warrior beliefs about freeborns, he wondered if he shouldfeel so comfortable with them.
Several days later, Joanna rousted them out of bed before dawn with the announcement that they were marching to a special duty. The march was long and it was well after daylight before they reached their destination. Joanna handed rations around and told them they had been chosen to participate in the first stage of a Trial that would be held in this area in two hours. They would deploy with weapons in the forest a kilometer away and attack the cadets as they came through. The weapons were equipped with stun potential, as were the weapons of the cadets taking the Trial.
"It is a chance for you to observe a Trial in action and provide a valuable service for the trainees, sharpening their instincts and presenting them battle conditions before they reach their 'Mechs. Any questions?"
Looking around him, Aidan suddenly recognized the area. It was the same one where he had taken his own Trial. He could see the tips of the hills beyond the forest.
When Joanna was finished and the others were wolfing down their rations, Aidan approached Joanna. "Yes, Cadet Jorge?" she asked. "Permission to speak with you privately, Falconer."
She glared at him briefly. His request was against procedure, especially during duty, but she knew that Jorge was regarded with such admiration by the others that they would believe whatever explanation he invented.
When they were a sufficient distance away from the others, Joanna said, "Ter Roshak does not want you to participate in the exercise. When I have deployed the others, you will come with me as if to be placed on the other side of the course as a sniper. Then we will get you clear of the main action. When it is over, you will return. That way, you will—"
"Stop it, Joanna! You lied to them. You told them both sides were equipped with weapons set at stun. You know as well as I do that only the freeborns have the weak weapons. They can be killed."
"That is the risk, yes. Only a few do wind up dead, however."
"But that is murder."
Joanna looked away from him, her face showing disgust. "Ter Roshak must be mad to back you. I have no idea what it is about, but I wish I was not under orders to see that you get through."
"I thought you said you were not to interfere."
"Another of my lies. Forget that. Just do what you are ordered. You will never become a warrior with your rebellious attitudes and softheaded emotionalism. You must strip away both." She took a deep breath. "It is not murder. It is a part of training. Like other phases of training, the risk of death is always present. You saw others in your own sibko die, and the risk is the same for freeborns. If they die, so be it. If they survive, it is because they have shown some mettle, despite being freeborns. Your orders are to accompany me and stay out of the action. Why should you even consider the fate of these foul freebirths? You killed five freeborns in your own Trial. Ponder that for a while. That is all. Return to your unit."
Aidan wanted to say more, but he knew Joanna would not allow it. As he returned to the others, he considered telling them what to really expect, but that would mean revealing his cover and he could not do that. Nobody would gain from it. He would not get his second Trial and the unit would still have to risk their lives in the forest.
"Looked from here like you two were having an argument," Tom said.
"No," Aidan replied, "I was just proposing extra rations for tonight after the long march back."
He hated every word of the lie. It seemed to tie him in a tight chain to the lies of Ter Roshak and Joanna. Looking around, he saw Horse watching him intently. Suddenly the magnitude of his lies struck Aidan. Horse knew who he was and was keeping quiet about it, while Aidan's lie was setting the other cadets up to possibly be killed. Was that what it meant to be a warrior? To make hard decisions coldly, to sacrifice friends when necessary, to order allies into battle with the odds against them? The lessons the sibko had learned from Dermot tended to support such views.
Joanna would say that Aidan must turn his back on Horse and let the young freeborn shift for himself. Perhaps she was right. But it was hard for Aidan to be unfair with someone who had been so fair to him. Pretending he needed to make a weapons check, he walked away from the group. Only Horse seemed to notice.
After Joanna had found strategic positions for the others, she led Aidan away, ostensibly to select his deployment.
"This will be far enough away from the action," she said after they had walked about fifteen minutes. She indicated a small open area where he could sit with his back comfortably against a tree. "Stay here and relax. I have other duties in this Trial, and I hear the personnel carrier arriving."
As she walked away, he, too, heard the arriving vehicle. Laying his head back against the bark of the tree and shutting his eyes, he remembered himself," Bret, and Marthe arriving for their Trial, the anticipation he had felt, the wild dash through the forest and (as Joanna had so astutely pointed out) his killing of so many freeborns, the exhilaration of being in the 'Mech, the thrill of the battle, even the despairing excitement of failing. For the first time in a long while, he recalled the sensation of sailing through the air in his ejection seat—the ground coming up to meet him, the landscape extending far in all directions.
Opening his eyes, he noted how peaceful the forest seemed. Above him a branch bobbed lightly. At first, recalling his Trial, he thought it was a sniper. Somewhere in the foliage a small bird must be traveling along the branch. The bobbing stopped and another branch moved. He got a glimpse of some blue and white feathers between a pair of leaves.
Suddenly he could not sit still either. It felt wrong to sit here while the others were in danger. In spite of Joanna's orders, he at least wanted to be nearer the action. Hiding out for his own safety was simply not in his nature. Even Joanna should have known that.
Moving cautiously, he went back the way he had come with her. His survival training had instilled in him an instinct for noting geographical features and remembering particular trees. It did not take too long to find a location near where the members of his unit were hiding. Going to ground, he crawled back to the edge of the forest. In the clearing there, he could see the hovercraft, landed and quiet. Nearer were a group of training officers, and among them, the two trainees about to take their Trial, a male and a female. They looked as much alike as he and Marthe had. Both were tall, about the same height, and both held themselves with a kind of eager pride that reminded him, not only of himself and Marthe, but of several of his sibkin. For a moment, he saw his sibko as it had been when they had first arrived on Ironhold and played their ludicrous game of team tussle in front of the scornful officers. Perhaps the sibko of this pair of Trial candidates had been similarly foolish on their arrival before going through the long stages that had whittled their group down to this duo. The sibko experience might be identical for all. He would never know that. Most would not have cared to know, and he wondered why he did.
He could see that the course officer was about to give the signal to start, so he edged back into the forest. Standing up, he tried to retrace the path to his comrades. It amused him to think of how furious Joanna would be to know he used that word for them even in his thoughts. But this time his tracking instincts failed him. He could not remember just where Joanna had positioned any of them. He would have to wait until the Trial started and watch for events to develop.
Returning to the wood's edge, he looked out from behind a tree. He was further down the course now and had a different angle on the scene. The signal was about to be made. The two candidates were more eager than ever for the Trial to start.
At the signal, both broke into a run and disappeared into the forest. Aidan worked his way toward where they had entered the forest. He spotted the male candidate and tracked him, a difficult task because the cadet moved so fast.
Aidan had to stay far enough behind so that he did not become a target himself. In a particularly dense part of the woods, he lost sight of the cadet.
Ahead of him was a slight rise. He ran to it, hoping for a better view. What he saw surprised him.
Falconer Joanna was in the forest and moving stealthily away from him. She could not have seen him. Using trees as cover, he worked his way toward her. Because she was moving slowly, he was able to get quite close.
They had reached an open area, one he recognized now as the place where Joanna had assigned Horse. What was she up to? Did the falconers observe their charges from positions inside the forest? He began to doubt that possibility when he saw her draw a laser pistol and hold it tight against her side.
Looking beyond her, Aidan saw Horse leaping out of his hiding place onto the back of the male cadet, who apparently had been ripe for ambush. The two wrestled briefly and Horse came up with the candidate's weapon, a short-barreled rifle that could be worn in a holster. Horse immediately pointed it at the young man's face and looked as if he was going to blast the trueborn's head off.
At the same time Joanna raised her pistol, and Aidan realized she intended to kill Horse. That was against all the rules of the Trial. An officer could not interfere with any part of it, not even to protect the primary candidates.
Leaping from his hiding place, Aidan's hands brushed against Joanna's arm just before she fired, and her shot streamed high into the air. He looked into the clearing. Apparently Horse had not been aware of Joanna's ambush, so intent was he on his own. The cadet had made a futile grab to get his weapon back, but Horse had merely kicked him to the ground. He shifted his aim from the trueborn's head to his legs and shot him there. The cadet grabbed his right leg in pain. Hurling the rifle away, Horse quickly vanished into the forest. The true-born tried to stand up, but his leg collapsed beneath him. Aidan could appreciate the look of disappointment on the young man's face.
"You rotten freebirth!" Joanna muttered. "You had no right to deflect my aim. What are you doing here anyway? I told you to stay—"
"You have no right to rebuke me, Falconer. I may not have followed orders but what you were doing was worse. You would have killed him, is that right?"
"Of course I would. He is only a freeborn. Why should I care about killing him? After all, he was going to kill a trueborn, a potential warrior."
"Not any more." He indicated the trueborn's sad, weary crawl out of the clearing. "At any rate, I do not believe you. You were not protecting the candidate. That was just a convenient excuse. You were here to kill Horse."
"Do not be ridiculous. Horse had the cadet's gun, a liveweapon. I was just protecting—"
"Save your excuses. I know what it is all about. I do not know how Ter Roshak discovered it but—"
"Ter Roshak had nothing to do with it."
"Another lie of yours. I told him I would abandon the warrior training if he interfered again. He has interfered again. Another convenient accident, with Horse the victim, and the Trial a fine place to create an accident."
"You cannot abandon—"
He held up his hand to stop her talking, for once giving his own order. "Take this message back to Ter Roshak. In a way he has won. I will go on. I realized in coming here today that I need to be a warrior too much to allow someone like him to drive me away from it with his manipulations. Tell him there is no need to interfere again. I will not fail this time."
The two stared at each other for a long while. Aidan despised the hint of victory in Joanna's eyes.
"Goodbye," he said suddenly and began walking away from her.
"Where are you going?"
"There is something I want to see."
Along the way, he found Horse and the two ran to the other end of the forest. At the rim, they were joined by Spiro and Tom.
"Nigel was killed," Tom said softly. "Blown up by a grenade. The woman had a grenade."
Nobody said anything else.
Aidan pointed forward. They could just see the female candidate running up a hill toward her 'Mech. She took long strides and Aidan marveled at the grace of them.
They watched her scale the heights of her 'Mech and then get it operational. They watched her rapidly initiate its trip up the hill. They watched the 'Mech take strides that were not as lithe as its pilot's, but had a certain grace of their own. They watched the 'Mech reach the crest of the hill and begin to descend the other side. Gradually, the legs, then the torso, then the head vanished behind the hill.
Aidan and the others stayed at the edge of the forest and listened to the sounds of battle. They could see some of the firing streak high through the air. Finally, they heard a 'Mech fall and were agreed in their hope it was not the female cadet's.
Later, back at barracks, Aidan stayed awake while the others slept—fitfully, it seemed. He was sorrowful. Now Nigel had been added to the list of victims scattered over his trail on the way to becoming a warrior.
