"They have more reasons than you have bad habits, Captain."
Joanna could not talk. Anything anybody said these days made her angry. As a delaying tactic, she ran her hand through her long hair. It felt bristly and disheveled, a battered victim of Sudeten's frequent winds. Touching it made her think of the thick streaks of gray that now alternated with her darker tresses. Before the invasion and the truce, she had been unconcerned about her gray hair. Now she wished that, like a village fishwife, she could eliminate the gray with some dark dye. Though Joanna believed a warrior should never use cosmetic subterfuge, there were moments when she would have preferred it to a blatant display of gray hair. Ah, well, she thought, I guess I am long over the hill, as much as a warrior can get.
"Horse," Diana said, leaning away from her tree, "I swear, you become more of a 'Mechhead every day. Talk straight to us. I want to know about the canister babies, too, especially if they are handing us cheap insults."
Horse's glance at Diana was filled with affection. It was not the affection of a lover, for he and Diana had never coupled, despite the many opportunities. It was the affection of a family friend, which was, after all, what he was. Diana was freeborn, as was he, a shame they'd both had to confront all their lives. They usually won any battle that reached honor duel stage, yet they knew that—in spite of their skill and courage—they would never really be accepted, even by fair-minded trueborns. Trues always believed that their genetic origins as beings created from carefully chosen genetic materials in Clan laboratories made them superior to frees conceived and born in the old ways, so there was always a holding-back among trues, even in their friendly associations with frees. A trueborn saying went: Trues do things, frees are things.
When Horse looked at Diana, he saw his trueborn friend, the Jade Falcon hero Aidan Pryde. The close resemblance was not surprising to a freeborn like Horse. There was, after all, some consistency to freeborn genetics. While trues from the same sibko tended to look like each other in a generic way, a free's physical attributes came from his or her parents. Horse had never known Diana's mother, Peri, but he had known Aidan better than anyone else in the Jade Falcon ranks. In certain lights Diana resembled her father strongly. Of course, since Peri had come from the same sibko as Aidan, Diana must look like her, too.
What had been strong features in Aidan were equally strong in Diana, but hers were more artfully sculptured. She was, Horse thought, a beauty. Like drawings and paintings of blue-eyed damsels, the kind he had seen illustrated in some of the books Aidan had collected. Books were not exactly popular among warriors, or the common folk for that matter, but Horse had grown to like them. He had learned from Aidan the virtues of nonessential reading and now loved the collection as much as Aidan had. Like Aidan, he kept the small library hidden away, but often disappeared to peruse one of the volumes.
"These replacements are a new breed, Diana. It as if they have been pushed out of the nest too soon, before they are ready to become falcons."
"You do them a kindness, Horse, to call them falcons at all. But I agree. I have never seen any warriors like them."
Joanna growled. It was the sound of a caged animal. "They are jackasses," she said. "Freebirths."
Diana caught her breath. She never got used to the casual and vile use of the term freebirth for her kind. But she knew Joanna respected her as a warrior, and the term was not intended to insult her.
"Star Captain Joanna," she said, "these jackasses have proven themselves qualified to be warriors. They passed their Trials of Position. They are warriors. Trueborn warriors."
Diana's irony was lost on Joanna. "I know a freebirth when I see one. Whatever sibkos spawned those imbeciles must have had some defective genetic strains somewhere."
Horse laughed. "You demean Clan science. The new warriors come from so many different sibkos. Do you mean to say the whole program is being sabotaged by defective DNA?"
"You mean that as sarcasm, quiaff?”
“Aff. I like the idea of defective DNA ruining some strains."
"I could report you for merely saying that, Horse.”
“You could, but you will not."
"Do not depend on it. I am a trueborn Jade Falcon warrior and proud of it. Praise the Clan."
"Praise the Clan," Horse responded, then added with a gleam in his eyes. "And praise Aidan Pryde."
Horse's ridicule of the oaths irritated her, but the sarcasm in his voice was so subtle he could never be accused of it. "Praise Aidan Pryde, that is what the new ones keep saying, the imbeciles. They treat Aidan as some kind of god."
"I say it is one of the few good things they do."
"Nothing they do is good. Aidan would have hated being fawned over."
Joanna vividly remembered the ceremony where Aidan's genetic materials had been accepted for inclusion in the Clan Jade Falcon gene pool. It had been a stirring celebration, made more so because it redeemed Aidan's years as an outcast. Had he died before the Clan invasion of the Inner Sphere and his subsequent heroism on Tukayyid, he would now be mere dust on some insignificant planet, his genetic materials decomposed with the rest of him. Of course, the basic genetic materials still existed, in Diana, but few people knew she was Aidan's natural daughter. Perhaps Diana would have children and then—ah, the mind could explode with theories like that.
Odd the way things work out, she thought. Time and opportunity guide a warrior's fate. While Aidan was one of the few people she admired, Joanna was aware that his worth would never have been known had fate not placed him in the battle for Tukayyid. And even before Tukayyid, fate seemed to have also played a part in the winning of his bloodname. Aidan had not even been nominated. He'd had to qualify through a melee, a free-for-all among unnominated candidates. After that victory, he had gone on to prove himself with the bravery and the skill to be expected of a well-trained Jade Falcon warrior. Of course he was well-trained. I was his falconer.
Unlike her trainee, Joanna had failed to win a bloodname in several vigorous and hard-fought attempts. In each try she had been one of the last to fall. Fate, no reason to fight it. Hate it, yes, but why do I dwell on it so much? I'll die without a bloodname, and that is that.
2
Western Training Zone
Pattersen, Sudeten
Jade Falcon Occupation Zone
1 July 3057
Diana saw that Joanna was contemplating her existence. Her metallic eyes got a little distant and her mouth formed a hard, bitter line whenever she was thinking about her life, her fate.
Unsettled by the look in Joanna's eyes, Diana turned her attention to the ruined factory and the depot beside it. One of the unattached heads was a Timber Wolf's, the same type of BattleMech in which her father had met his death. Her memory of his death was confused, especially since she had been going in and out of consciousness, injured and trapped in her own 'Mech. She had heard Joanna tell Aidan that Diana was his freeborn daughter, but not his reaction. That her father had protected her while the Elemental Star Commander, Selima, rescued her, made Diana believe that Aidan might have been affected by Joanna's revelation. His defense of her and the valiant fight he put up to help other groups of warriors escape in the DropShip Raptor, together with all his heroic acts on Tukayyid, had earned him fame as a hero and his deserved place in the gene pool.
Diana's thoughts of her father were interrupted by the appearance of five warriors at the base of the hill. So deep in thought, she had not noticed their arrival till now.
One of them said something that made the others laugh uproariously as he pointed up at the three veterans on the hilltop. The laughter was accompanied by some hearty back-slapping and arm-punching. Maybe Joanna was right about these new warriors being fools and jackasses. Come to replace the brave Jade Falcons who had died during the invasion, they did not seem worthy of that honor. They were a bit too arrogant, conceited. They had accomplished nothing, yet they preened as if their genetic materials had already been selected for the gene pool.
&nb
sp; The quintet started walking up the hill, their strides long and almost in sync. To Diana, they looked like an army of vanity, marching in exaggerated step. Each wore recreational fatigues, which were basically martial arts uniforms in battle colors. The cloth was starched and clean, the fit tight. Diagonally across their chests, each also wore a wide band whose color combinations indicated their original sibkos, the bands as carefully arranged as the rest of their outfits.
The practice of displaying sibko colors on dress uniforms was unheard of. Any warrior would prefer signs of his or her achievements to symbols of origin. At shoulder level on the band each wore a Jade Falcon patch that showed a mighty falcon in flight. The whole display seemed ridiculous to Diana.
"What do these fools want?" Joanna muttered.
"Nothing we have to worry about, quiaff?" Horse said, his voice characteristically laconic.
"Shove your quiaff. We should kick their worthless backsides all the way back to their homeworlds."
"Calm, Joanna, calm."
"You never address me by my rank anymore, you insolent freebirth."
Horse guffawed. "My abject apologies, Star Captain Joanna."
"Oh, stuff it, Horse. Apply for a transfer. I will grant it even before the disk is in my hands.”
“Unlikely, Captain, unlikely.”
“I hate you, Horse.”
“Just like you do everyone else." She grunted. "What is the name of the fool in front?”
“Cholas," Diana said. "They say he is a skilled fighter.”
“And the others?"
"The big one is Ronan." Big might have been a kind word, for the man was muscle on the verge of fat. He had odd, secret eyes, made even more strange by the masklike tattoo of his neural implant. "Castilla is the tall one." Rather slim except for broad hips that were probably to her advantage in close combat, Castilla might have been beautiful but for the hard, thin line of her mouth. "The dark one is Haline." A rather large woman, Haline was nearly as muscular as Ronan but much shorter. "Oh, and that other one is Fredrich." He was neither tall nor short; neither big nor small; neither handsome nor ugly. Diana found him thoroughly ordinary.
Watching Cholas lead the way up the hill, she had to admit he was an impressive figure, so tall and well-muscled, with a certain grace to his movements. They had coupled one night soon after his arrival, but he had behaved with such detachment and with such a distant look in his eyes that Diana wondered if he was bored. They had not coupled again, and she did not regret that.
"Star Captain Joanna," Cholas called as he came near, "we have been seeking you."
The colors of his sibko band were particularly garish, orange thrust against yellow streaked with red. Snakes in fury.
Joanna growled her response. "For what purpose, MechWarrior?"
"It seems you will be needed back at base shortly. A new arrival has entered DropShip skies and will be here presently. You should be eager to meet him."
Joanna glanced back at Horse and Diana, her look showing scorn for the intruders. "I should be eager to meet him? I should be eager for anything? And why is that, Mech Warrior Cholas?"
"He holds special interest for us all. He is one of the wonders of Jade Falcon warriordom."
Horse roared. "Jade Falcon warriordom?"
Cholas walked to Horse. "You laugh. Why?"
"Nothing, friend. Just the phrase. I find it ... eloquent."
Cholas did not seem to comprehend the sarcasm. "I am glad you do, freebirth."
Cholas turned away, missing the quick change to anger in Horse's face. He returned his attention to Joanna. "The new arrival is our new Cluster commander, and I must tell you he is an officer of esteem. His defeat of his three opponents in the Trial of Position was so impressive that he entered the ranks as a Star Captain. Then he immediately sought his bloodname and—"
"Bloodname?" Joanna asked. "Immediately? How in hell could he go after a bloodname before being tested in actual combat?"
"I did not mean immediately, actually."
"Then why did you say it, eyas?"
The word eyas, the name for a newly born falcon, was a grave insult to anyone who had won his Trial of Position to become a warrior. Cholas started to reply, but Castilla came forward to say coolly, "It was not, of course, immediate in actual time. But in relative time, it has seemed so. The star colonel did—"
"Star Colonel? This fledgling is a star colonel, too."
"Of course," Castilla said coolly. "To be our Cluster commander, he would have to be, quiaff?"
"Oh, aff. I am not used to such a rise in the ranks."
"It is the new dream," Cholas interjected. "You warriors who preceded us in the Inner Sphere invasion have paved the way, and we give you honor, but now—when this blasted truce ends—it will be our war, and we will smash our way straight through to Terra, you will see."
"I will not hold my breath. Do you realize you will no longer even be young when the truce ends?"
"Only if the truce is not broken. But we doubt that."
"I am cheered by your certainty. You were about to say, Castilla?"
"I was going to tell you that the star colonel was blooded before winning his bloodname."
"In our invasion? I heard of no young hotshot star colonel who—"
"No, not as part of the invasion, though I am sure you would have heard of him if he had been. He won his fame wiping out bandits in the homeworlds. He bid particularly low, then won the day practically singlehanded, slaughtering many and—"
"Excuse me, but are you praising this hero for a skirmish? A skirmish? Is that how a warrior becomes eligible to compete for a bloodname these days? A bit of combat seen while exterminating vermin or with some discontented laborers and techs—"
"Star Captain Joanna," Castilla interrupted, struggling to keep control of her voice, "the rebels were hardly illequipped villagers. They had stolen sophisticated weaponry and even had their own BattleMechs."
" 'Mechs, I suppose, that they could operate with the skill of trained warriors?"
Castilla was a bit disconcerted. "Well, I guess the filthy freebirths had not much training, but their leader was a free-born of extraordinary skills, a worthy opponent who had undergone training with—"
"I am unconvinced. I will meet with this ... this hero in my own good time, Cluster commander or not. Dismissed."
Cholas stepped angrily toward Joanna, but Castilla held him back with an exquisitely shaped, multi-ringed hand.
"We have not finished telling you about him yet. His name is Star Colonel—"
"I have heard enough about this new brand of hero. I do not wish to hear his name.”
“—Star Colonel Ravill Pryde." Castilla supplied the name with satisfaction in her voice. Her diagonal mouth seemed more than ever like a slash, a scar.
For a moment all three veteran warriors were speechless.
"Pryde," Joanna finally said weakly. "His bloodname is Pryde."
"Yes," Cholas said loudly, his arrogance restored. "Ravill Pryde. He is of the same bloodright as Star Colonel Aidan Pryde, hero of Tukayyid." He examined the disbelieving stares of the three veterans before announcing further, "I would think that you all, as survivors of that battle, would want to meet someone of that noteworthy genetic heritage."
"Praise Aidan Pryde," Ronan said in a voice that seemed too high for his bulk. The others joined in the invocation.
Joanna shuddered. Shuddering was a new reaction for her, but how could she avoid it when she had to listen to the foolish words of these new warriors? Even though she had admired Aidan's bravery, she hated the way these imbeciles invoked his name.
"You served with Star Colonel Aidan Pryde, Star Commander Joanna, quiaff?"
"Aff. Of course I did!"
"And you scorn our praise of him."
"No. Well, yes, I do."
Ronan pushed Haline aside and stepped forward. "Be careful what you say, quiaff?" he said menacingly, and Haline nodded agreement. Castilla's mouth was twisted angrily, and the
ever-silent Fredrich glared. Only Cholas appeared calm.
"Careful?" Joanna said. She walked to Ronan. Although she was tall, Ronan hovered over her. "Why should I be careful? Because I knew him and you five did not, I am a better judge than you of what was or was not praiseworthy in him. He was a hero, I agree. I was there with him on Tukayyid and when he made his last stand, and you were not!"
"That gives you no cause to mock him or us," Castilla said.
The remark drew a smile from Cholas. Horse glared at him, thinking that this was the one you would not trust. One of the major Jade Falcon virtues was a belief in directness and a hatred of deception. When either value was in jeopardy in battle, Horse believed, the battle could be lost.
"I mock only you," Joanna said, her voice low. The backs of all five warriors stiffened. Joanna looked at each one, in turn. "Aidan Pryde was a human being. He was also the hero you claim, but he was not—not a legend, not some superhuman clown of myth." Ronan and Castilla bristled at the word clown. "Look, my dear eyasses, there was a battle and—like all battles—there was much confusion. At the end of it, we were retreating. Retreating. Most of us would have died if Aidan Pryde had not sacrificed his life to help others escape."
And while I escaped, Diana thought.
"It was a heroic action, yes," Joanna continued, "but should we not view it as the act of a Jade Falcon warrior doing his duty—instead of a god visiting us briefly from some far-off place? How much—"
"His genetic materials were used in the Jade Falcon eugenics program sooner than any warrior's in history," Cholas said calmly.
Joanna whirled on him. "And—?"
"And I believe that proves that others of Clan Jade Falcon regard Aidan Pryde in the same way we do. Praise Aidan Pryde."
"Praise Aidan Pryde," the others echoed.
For a long moment Joanna stared at Cholas. Then she said quietly, "This discussion is over. You must give me respect. Dismissed." None of the young warriors moved. "I said, dismissed."
I am Jade Falcon Page 2