by Andrew Keith
Alex took a deep breath. "You've always said that doctrine could be a strait jacket to trap a second-rate commander, Major. My father was never one to worry about doing it by the book, so I didn't think—"
"Aye, that's it, isn't it? Ye didna think. Doctrine untempered by imagination is a danger, aye, but there is always a good reason for that doctrine tae be there in the first place, and woe tae him who ignores it! Combined arms tactics are the very heart of a successful battle, where ye use all of your available units to the fullest possible advantage. Wasting an Archer in a hand-tae-hand fight isna using those assets wisely, is it?"
Alex looked away. "I guess not," he admitted reluctantly.
"Weil, then, today's wee scrap did ain thing, anyway, if it taught ye that lesson. I expect better of ye on the next exercise, young Alex. Dinna let me doon. And dinna let your auld faither doon. Understand me?"
"Yes sir," Alex said.
"Good. Tis the end of it, then, for the noo." McCall glanced at the old-fashioned clock on,the office wall between the door and the engraved coat of arms on its tartan background that was the only decoration in the small room. "Ye'll just have time tae shower and change before the emelt gets in. Dinna miss it, laddie."
"I won't, sir," Alex replied, checking his wristcomp against the wall display before picking up his cooling vest from the back of the chair, saluting McCall, and leaving the office. After the mess he'd made of the exercise today, the last thing he wanted was to be late for the maglev transport heading from the training compound into the capital. His father was off-planet, and Alex was supposed to deputize for him at an important ceremony tomorrow. If he missed that ...
Alex was still brooding when he reached the cadet quarters block. He was used to being on top, at the head of his cadet class in every course and on every training maneuver, but over the last few weeks he'd become ever more unsure of himself as the focus had shifted from ordinary operations to these more difficult command exercises. Lately it seemed as if he couldn't do anything right. Today had been bad, but last week's exercise, when he'd tried to push across the Tay River against heavy opposition, had been a genuine disaster.
The failures were sapping his self-confidence more and more, which only led to fresh failures. It's a no-win situation, he told himself angrily. Whatever McCall thinks, I'm just not cut out for this.
He barely noticed the pair of cadets who hailed him as he started down the hall to his room, and probably wouldn't have responded to his roommate if his friend hadn't opened the door and stood directly in his path.
"Aye, laddie, and ye look like ye've had a right royal reaming!" Davis Carlyle Clay mimicked McCall's accent to perfection. Showing a lopsided grin that accentuated his boyish good looks, he was freshly groomed and clad in his dress gray cadet's uniform.
Dropping the phony Scots accent, Clay kept up the banter as Alex pushed past him into their room. "I was just getting ready to check the medbay to see if they'd admitted anyone with his butt in a sling."
Alex's only answer was a distracted grunt as he stripped off his tunic and grabbed a towel from his locker. He wasn't in the mood for Davis Clay's particular brand of heavy-handed humor.
But Clay didn't give up. Still talking, he followed Alex into the washroom they shared with the two cadets in the next room, Farquhar and Galleno. "Hey, come on, man, say something! Auld Mac kept you in there for an hour after the debriefing and all you do is grunt at me? Let off some steam, for the love of Blake!" Clay laughed. "If I'd been through the Scottish Inquisition I'd be dying to share the grief. What did he say? Just the stuff you understood, of course, the ten percent in anything like English." He grinned again.
"Look, Dave, I don't want to talk about it, all right?" Alex said wearily. "I'm running late, and I'm just not in the mood for all this . . . nonsense."
Clay stepped back as if he'd been struck, then shrugged. "Sure, Alex. If you say so. Sorry." His voice was flat, neutral, but the look in his eyes was wounded.
As Alex closed the door to the stall and switched on the sonic beam, he was frowning. He'd known Dave Clay all his life, and they'd been best friends almost from the start. The other cadet was the elder by almost six years, and his irreverent, devil-may-care attitude contrasted sharply with Alex's more thoughtful manner, yet their bond remained unshakable.
Until now. Lately Alex had found his friend's jokes a little too barbed, hitting a little too close to home. He'd been keeping Clay at arm's length for weeks now, and Clay was obviously upset by the wall that had grown between them.
Not that Alex wanted that wall. He just didn't know how to keep it from getting higher and broader with each passing day. It was one more thing he couldn't seem to get right. One more thing to worry about.
By the time Alex finished showering and had donned his dress grays, Clay had already gone. The whole cadet unit, fourteen would-be MechWarriors waiting for a precious slot to open up in the Legion's five-company roster, would be attending the ceremony in the capital, and Clay had probably already headed for the maglev terminal with the others. Checking his wristcomp again, Alex realized he had precious little time to make it there himself. He found his kit bag, prepacked before the exercise and ready to go, and slung it over his shoulder. Perhaps there would be a chance later to take some steps toward solving the Davis Clay problem—if only Alex could figure out what those steps might possibly be.
But he wasn't the only one left in the barracks block after all. Cadet Caitlin DeVries was just outside his door, leaning against the wall with a frown creasing her usually attractive features. "It's about time you got moving," she said, picking up her own kit bag and falling in beside him. "I was sure we'd both be gigged for missing the emelt."
"You should have gone with the others," he said curtly.
"Somebody had to make sure our star speaker found the terminal," she said. Even though her tone was light, she was still frowning. "Dave left a while ago. Looked like he'd lost his best friend." She held out an arm to stop him and looked straight into his eyes, challenging. "Did he?"
Alex looked away. "He probably thinks so," he said softly. He pushed past her, his long legs carrying him out of the building and across the tarmac at a ground-eating pace. Caitlin strained to keep up.
"You want to tell me about it?" she demanded.
"Come on, Caitlin, you know what he can be like. I was in a hurry getting ready and he just kept on with the jokes. I was short with him. So shoot me."
"I might just. You're leaving a few things out, aren't you? Like the fact that you were mad about being raked over the coals by Auld Mac, and you were taking it out on Dave. Right?" She didn't let him answer. "For Blake's sake, Alex you of all people should know not to take Dave seriously. You're the one who told me that, back when I joined up. Or don't the same standards apply to the colonel's son?"
"Don't say that!" he snapped, immediately on the defensive when anyone accused him of trading on his father's position. As Grayson Carlyle's son he was destined for command some day—unless he failed to measure up, as seemed all too likely right now—but the idea that others might believe he thought himself better than the rest always galled him. Though he knew Caitlin was only trying to make a point, her words still rankled.
But she was right about Davis Clay. He was the oldest cadet with the Gray Death, and had been in the training program for almost a decade now. Since the Legion's last reorganization to become a mixed regiment of infantry, light armor, and BattleMechs, the process of recruiting new personnel had firmed up. The reputation of Grayson Carlyle's elite outfit made it one of the most sought-after mercenary billets in the Inner Sphere, but the unit also had some of the toughest recruiting standards anywhere. No matter how experienced or gifted, any Mech Warrior who wished to join the Gray Death Legion went into the training program first. But only those who proved they had what it took, mentally, physically, emotionally—even morally-wound up in an active-duty unit. Grayson Death Carlyle set high standards for his men, and especially for his
Mech Warriors.
Empty billets in the Legion were filled by cadets on the basis of a competitive test. Clay, despite an excellent training record, had failed the last three times he'd had a shot at advancing into one of the active-duty units. Anyone else might have given up and struck out on his own in search of another merc unit with less exacting standards, but Clay was a special case. His father, Delmar Clay, had been one of Grayson Carlyle's original Mech Warriors, a member of the inner circle almost from the beginning. The elder Clay had expected a lot from his son, but his demands for performance had never been matched by praise for the boy's accomplishments. When Delmar Clay died in the desperate fighting during the Legion's withdrawal from Sudeten, he left his son a hard legacy. Davis Clay was determined to live up to his father's expectations, no matter what it took. But his inability to win a permanent place with the Legion had taken its toll. His sardonic humor masked a fear that he would never be quite good enough to reach his goal.
In a way, Alex mused, Clay's problem wasn't that much different from his own. They were both trying to live up to a standard that might well be beyond their grasp.
"Dave just wanted you to know he was there for you, Alex," Caitlin told him, her voice softer now. "That's what friends do, you know. He deserves a little friendship in return."
"Yeah, I know. I wasn't thinking . . . Guess that mess this morning still had me wound up."
"Next time maybe you'll listen to your officers, huh?" She grinned for the first time. "Some of us actually know what we're talking about at times."
Alex mustered a feeble answering smile. "Go ahead, get it out of your system. I was a bad boy. I admit it. Can't we move on to something more pleasant now?"
"Is there anything pleasant to talk about in this pit?" she asked, her free arm taking in the training center with an expansive gesture. "I think the real reason this morning was so tough is that Auld Mac's been reprogramming the simulation computers. Did you get a load of the way those Commandos were scoring hits? No way that was a fair fight!"
Their talk drifted to technical matters as they hurried to the terminal. The PA speakers were blaring out the final boarding call just as Alex and Caitlin reached the MLT car. Their wristcomp transponders reported their arrival as they climbed aboard, checking them off the computer roster so that McCall would know that all were present and accounted for.
The emelt was already pulling away from the platform and gathering speed as the two found seats across the aisle from a group of senior technicians from the training center's maintenance unit. Leaning back in his seat, Alex swung up one of the entertainment vidscreens provided for passengers, and ran a hardwire lead from his wristcomp to the vidscreen's external input jack. A moment later the text of the speech he was supposed to give appeared on the screen. He would spend the hour-long trip studying it, but a part of his mind was still on the failed exercise, on Dave Clay, and on what it all meant for his own future.
3
Glengarry, Skye March
Federated Commonwealth
1 April 3056
Davis Carlyle Clay sat alone in the MLT car, staring out the window at the rolling hills of Glengarry's Braemoray District and thinking of home. He had been born on Helm, the Gray Death's first landhold. The planet had been awarded to the Legion by House Marik in exchange for the unit's service to the Free World's League at the height of the Succession Wars, but the mercenaries had been driven off Helm by their employer's treachery while Clay was still an infant. For as long as he could remember home had been Sudeten, a planet of House Steiner's Lyran Commonwealth—until the day the Clans had come.
It was ironic, he thought bitterly, that what had finally brought an end to centuries of continual warfare among the Great Houses of the Inner Sphere was another kind of war, this time against a common foe from beyond the vast reaches of human space. It was an even greater irony that the external threat had been spawned by exactly the same circumstances that had fueled the centuries of Succession Wars. In all its expansion among the stars the human race had yet to encounter another intelligent species, yet men never failed to find new excuses to wage war against one another. For centuries the Star League had united and ruled the stars, until that golden era had collapsed in civil war and chaos. In a mass exodus led by the most famous general in the history of mankind, most of the League's military had simply abandoned the Inner Sphere, disappearing forever into the unmapped space of the Periphery.
Left behind were the five Great Houses and their rulers, each of whom claimed to be the rightful heir to the throne of the Star League. For almost three hundred years the militaries of the Great Houses had fought one another to a standstill. The wars had been ruinous, with an inevitable decline in technological know-how and a virtual stagnation of cultural growth. The leaders had fought on regardless, Steiner and Kurita, Liao, Marik, and Davion, each one determined to emerge as the sole ruler of all human-settled space. Alliances shifted, leaders changed, ordinary people died in droves, but still the Succession Wars went on.
Then occurred a single political maneuver that had almost changed all that. In the year 3028 two of the Great Houses had actually united in more than just a temporary alliance of convenience. The marriage of Hanse Davion, Prince of the Federated Suns, to Melissa Steiner, daughter of Archon Katrina Steiner of the Lyran Commonwealth, had in one stroke united those two realms into a single overpowering political unit, the Federated Commonwealth. The mighty F-C army scored massive victories over their major rivals, and for a time the stalemate seemed ended. But even the Federated Commonwealth's drive stalled eventually, and a period of uneasy peace settled over the Inner Sphere.
It was at that juncture that the Clans appeared on the scene. Descendants of those who had followed General Alexsandr Kerensky into exodus after the fall of the Star League, the Clans had developed an entirely new society far from the rest of humankind. Their technology had moved forward while that of the Successor States had been losing ground, and their methods of training and motivating their fanatic soldiers were unlike anything the Inner Sphere had ever imagined. In a space of three years the Clans overran a third of the Successor States, forcing the leaders of the Great Houses into an uneasy alliance to fight the new enemy. Somehow the Inner Sphere had survived the onslaught, but only at tremendous cost.
After the betrayal of the Gray Death Legion on Helm, the mercenaries had sought service with House Steiner. Like Helm, Sudeten was awarded them as a planethold in exchange for their services, a base of operations for the Legion between missions. Clay still thought of the planet as home, the world where he had grown up, where he had first joined the Legion's MechWarrior training cadre. The world he had shared with his father.
Those had been happy days for him, once the shadow of his mother's untimely death had passed. He remembered how proud his father had been the day Davis announced his decision to join the Legion and carry on the family tradition. And he remembered the anticipation in the weeks before his first scheduled test for a permanent posting to his father's own command.
But the test had never come. Just days before it was scheduled, the Clans had launched their invasion of Sudeten, and in the desperate fighting that followed there was no time to consider cadet promotions. Along with the rest of the cadet class, Davis Clay had been ordered to assist in evacuating the noncombatants while Colonel Carlyle and his troops tried to hold back the foe. In the meantime Delmar Clay had fallen in battle while piloting his battered old Wolverine, trying to rally his troops for one more counterattack against a seemingly unstoppable enemy.
The Gray Death Legion, acknowledged as one of the best mercenary units of the entire Inner Sphere, had barely emerged from the campaign intact. Nearly half their men and machines were lost in the fighting on Sudeten and then on the nearby world of Pandora, where the Clans caught the Gray Death a second time.
So the Legion became homeless again, forced to evacuate Sudeten when the Federated Commonwealth government decided there was little to gain by sending
reinforcements to support the shattered mercenaries. Instead Prince Davion had reassigned the Legion to a new world, this world, Glengarry, and here the Gray Death had tried to start anew.
The Legion had replaced its losses and restored its tarnished reputation in a half-dozen small campaigns against various minor opponents along the Federated Commonwealth's long border. But Davis Carlyle Clay had been unable to forget the past. His performance in training had suffered, and time after time be had just failed to make the cut when the opportunity came to advance into the Legion's fighting arm.
It was three years now since his father's death, and still Dave Clay hadn't accomplished the one thing that would have meant the most to him.
He watched the hills of the Braemoray District hurtling past the emelt and bit his lip. There would be no more failures. The next time he had a chance, he would make his father proud.
4
Tharkad City
Tharkad, Federated Commonwealth
1 April 3056
"You'd think a chance to attend Court would make a man happy. But I guess you're going to be the exception to the rule ... as usual."