Where did this pain come from? But he knew.
Finishing bodily functions, Kisho used a quick-squirt sponge to wipe away the worst of the salt-encrusted sweat and ungummed his eyes—it felt like snails had crawled into the corners and died and dried during the night. As he opened the hatch and stepped into the corridor, he ignored the source of the headache. Ignored it about as well as he ignored the pain, as well as he ignored most things of late.
Not well. Not well at all.
“I have two DropShips on an intercept course to the Santin, Star Admiral,” the technician casteman said. From her position at the sensor board on the bridge of the Comitatus-class JumpShip, the woman tapped through several screens, verifying information. “Ten thousand kilometers and closing at G plus two.”
“Relative position?” the captain responded, voice no more hurried than for a discussion of a new wheat hybrid by two merchant castemen.
“Twenty-two degrees, downspin. Aft.”
“Another JumpShip?”
“Aff, Star Admiral.”
From his position, ensconced in a corner of the bridge—only there due to his mystic status—Kisho nursed a small water bulb, trying to rehydrate his tongue. Must be a dead surat in there. While he fought against the slowly abating pain, helped by the Star admiral finally terminating the proximity-warning alarms, Kisho took in the surroundings.
Several dozen meters across, the circular bridge contained numerous banks of computers in several rows, centered around a large holographic display. Unlike many JumpShips, the Comitatus did not have a forward viewport. Off to the right (was that starboard?) of the holoprojection, the Star admiral sat in his mag-chair, a grandfather with peppered hair and just-wrinkling hands, proudly taking in his whelps—almost a dozen personnel, all frantically working to bring the admiral relevant data. Though Galaxy Commander Ket Lossey stood on the bridge—almost at the Star admiral’s elbow, but just outside the discomforting field of the mag-chair—in this situation Star Admiral Bavros, despite Lossey’s ultimate command of the entire force, held the reigns of decision-making.
The worst situation for any MechWarrior . . . to be attacked while in transit between worlds, where their fate rested in the hands of someone else. Kisho nodded in sympathy at the distaste on Lossey’s face.
“The rest of the fleet is due?”
“Seventy-four minutes, by my mark, Star Admiral.”
Enough time for the Comitatus, as the most heavily armed of any JumpShip in known space, to clear away any obstacles this side of a WarShip. With the pain lessening to manageable levels, Kisho’s sardonic smile flared momentarily. And if we run into a WarShip, then it is all over anyway.
Star Admiral Bavros decisively stabbed open an intercom. “Star Commodore Leroux, I want both Stars deployed immediately. Those ships are not to close within a thousand kilometers.”
“Aff, Star Admiral.”
The man shifted position slightly—whether by design or not, the chair slowly bobbled in the magnetic field that allowed the admiral to spin it in any direction when needed—opening up another commline. “Star Commodore Jit,” he said, voice still casual enough for a night in a local bar.
“Star Admiral?”
“We have company.”
“I noticed that.” The sarcasm in the DropShip captain’s voice surprised Kisho, especially considering the frown creasing the Galaxy commander’s face. But Bavros only smiled.
Long-time friendship, that one.
“Fighters are scrambling. Your Sacred Rite will act as last defense. Can you manage?”
Several smiles washed features, as even Kisho appreciated the humor. The Sacred Rite, a Noruff-class DropShip, could put the fear of the Great Father into even some smaller WarShips. Between the Comitatus, the Sacred Rite, and its complement of twenty of the finest aerospace pilots in Clan Nova Cat, they were eminently prepared to blaze a trail into any system. And that didn’t include the other aerospace fighters attached to individual Clusters on board the incoming Odyssey- and Invader-class JumpShips.
Laughter boomed back. “Quiaff?
“Aff,” came the smiling response.
“Star Admiral,” Galaxy Commander Ket Lossey said, harsh voice filling the sudden vacuum.
As the admiral signed off, his fingers gently coaxed the chair around and the two warriors squared off. “Galaxy Commander?”
“You cannot destroy these forces out of hand.”
“I cannot?”
Ket’s minuscule nod almost verged on disrespect. “I would request you not destroy this force out of hand. It is paramount we find out who they are. We are only a jump from the first of our designated targets. Have they discerned our arrival and are they preempting it? Has our arrival been given away?”
Kisho nodded. Glad to see I am not the only one leery, like her or not, of Warlord Tormark and her ultimate motives.
The admiral nodded. “Of course, Commander. They shall not all perish.” He spun the chair back to the holoprojection. “Technician Tiral.”
“Star Admiral?” a diminutive man responded, peeking over a computer console, as though he were a crèche child attempting to be a man before his Trial of Position.
“Tap into battlerom feeds and ship beacons. Feed the data into the tank. I want a holoprojection of what’s unfolding.”
“Aff.” A flurry of keystrokes bespoke instant response, despite the admiral’s surface lackadaisical attitude.
He runs a tight ship.
Several minutes drifted by in relative silence as the star admiral settled into the mag-chair, setting it to angle back as though he were reclining in the most decadent of Spheroid loungers, while setting it spinning slowly. Kisho was confident his half-slit eyes missed nothing.
After a shorter time than he believed possible, the holoprojection burst to life. A rainbow of hues cast the bridge into harsh contrast, the shadows highlighting sharp edges until everything but the holoprojection looked like a two-dimensional image; the depths washed away like running ink from rain. Like a stravag Spheroid voyeur peaking into a forbidden rite, Kisho actually leaned forward to try to grasp the nuances unfolding before him. As a swarm of aerospace fighters met a like swarm, trying to shield the incoming DropShips, the information fell into a confused sensory overload of flashing lights and gyrating images, and suddenly the pain began to mount once more.
Kisho immediately closed his eyes and leaned back to try to avert the return. Anything but that. As he did, the memories, as though conjured by the aerospace battle unfolding in the deep cold of space, surfaced and the nightmare surged.
He’d had nightmares. All mystics did. What else could you expect as a result of their . . . training? But this. To be so frightened and yet not remember a single thing. No, this was different somehow. Something new. Fingers clenched in frustration and nostrils flared, pulling in stale air, while his ears stoppered against everything around him. Nightmares always stalked whenever he began to unwind and let down his inner defenses, as when he talked with Hisa. But not like this.
He breathed deeply three times, then let it out in a single long exhalation and slipped into a trance. To forget about a nightmare! To forget about the fear—no, not fear! unease—of the crumbling walls between him and Hisa. Of the sharing of his darkest secrets, even if he only scratched the surface. He pushed all thoughts aside and floated in a void of nothing.
“Mystic.” The word rudely intruded, a reedy light in luxurious darkness. Kisho ignored it.
“Mystic.” It came again, more determined, though still respectful. In a haze of contentment, Kisho waited, unwilling to answer. Yet training could not be ignored, years of indoctrination. He slowly cracked lids, to find a technician casteman solicitously standing before him.
“Mystic.”
“Aff.” The word seemed strange, as though it were the first spoken in ages.
“The admiral requests you leave the bridge.”
The words jarred with his contentment, to the point that he slowly leaned
forward from his slouched position, opened eyes wide, and glanced around the bridge. Consternation prickled flesh at the almost empty bridge; neither the Galaxy commander nor the Star admiral were present and the bridge appeared to be on a low-duty shift. The battle?
He looked again at the technician and hated what came next, but there was no helping it. “What happened?” He chewed his tongue for a moment to abate the anger. Asking a lower casteman!
“You were in a trance, Mystic. The battle is over, the ships returned.”
“What?” He chewed on that, surprised. Not often did he lose control of a trance. Almost never. What had he been thinking about? Hisa? The stravag nightmares. He slowly realized the man still stood before him.
“Who was it?”
“What?”
“The ships we fought, surat. Who was it?” The man winced as though struck full in the face. Weakling.
“Mercenaries.”
“Mercenaries?!” He slipped a hand towards his back, massaging a cramped muscle. Was The Republic now hiring mercenaries? Had they fallen so far? Become so desperate?”
“Aff, Mystic. Mercenaries hired by Lambrecht.”
Confusion stripped away a measure of arrogance. “Lambrecht?”
“Aff, Mystic. They’ve declared independence and hired mercenaries to try and blockade against any Republic counterattack. Once they realized who we were, they hailed us. Begged us to let them be.”
He cocked an eyebrow.
“We allowed one DropShip to limp away.”
“Watch those contractions,” Kisho said absentmindedly, standing and moving away without giving the man another thought. It is as I feared. How I saw it on my first trip to this rotted husk of a failed empire. It is shattering.
Breaking apart under the strain.
Kisho reached the hatch and began to make his way back to his quarters, knowing he must review Tivia’s codices one more time. But he could not help a final thought.
Shattering. As am I.
Interlude II
Three.
Joy rampant,
Yet so few know,
And fewer understand.
But so it must be.
—The Remembrance (Clan Nova Cat),
Passage 481, Verse 1, Lines 3–7
Ways of Seeing Park, Barcella
Nova Cat Reservation, Irece
Irece Prefecture, Draconis Combine
18 March 3129
Ghostly lights wove a skein of second skin across Kanaye’s features—a multijeweled mask of light to hide behind. One more layer. One more mask. Would it be the beginning of the last? His shoulders bowed under the burden.
“Subject Seven, eliminated.” A disembodied voice echoed in the darkness.
Kanaye ignored the comment as he finished his role in the previous disqualification. Regardless of his own actions, he almost shuddered at their detachment.
“Outside the appropriate parameters,” another responded with equal discourtesy.
“Hai. Failures are almost beyond projections.”
“Four remain?”
“Hai.”
“Then the projections still remain viable.”
The two individuals seemed to soak in the darkness, as though more accustomed to shadows than light. He tried ignoring their conversation as more numbers scrolled across multiple monitors.
Subject One seemed a statue of ice: cool, total control, moving forward with absolute precision. His numbers were way off the chart. Twice, now, he’d almost failed, one leaving him wounded, and yet not an emotion moved his features. Kanaye shook his head, though, well aware the eyes would be hot enough to melt ’Mech armor. That one projects cool, but the depths . . . ah, the depths. Despite misgivings on Kanaye’s part, Subject One seemed to surpass all expectation. A reedy desire blossomed. Perhaps.
Subject Two, in chamber three, progressed well. Polar opposite to Subject One, he savagely clawed forward, even bypassing some sections through stunning mental agility. His emotions hung on his features, disdaining to hide the usual Clan arrogance, tempered by a mystic’s training. Zealot.
Subject Three, in perfect mimicry of her usual decorum, ghosted through every angle, passed every obstacle. Without the savagery of Subject Two, but also lacking the apparent detachment of One, Subject Three possessed a self-assurance at her age that most adults lacked. She appeared a perfect blend of the other two. The one that should have sparked Kanaye’s interest. And yet, no matter how many visions he sought, no matter how many times his mind cast within for answers, she fell below the radar. Needed, of course. Useful, absolutely, if she passed. But the one? She should be. But he could not convince himself.
Subject Four? Kanaye barely glanced at his numbers, knowing with absolute certainty he was on the verge of failing.
Kanaye glanced away from the monitors momentarily, sinking down and within to find that vision, while allowing his eyes to reacclimatize to the darkened room outside the kaleidoscope of holographic images on which all their hopes hung.
A scant fifteen meters on a side, it seemed more the home to a crazed computer fiend than to the five individuals trying to find a place amidst the blizzard of computers, monitors, and endless tangles of wires, like the stripped muscles of some mammoth beast. A ’Mech howl leapt to mind, screaming at the depravity of a shorn-off limb, left to molder in darkness, disgrace. As we molder? He pushed that aside, knowing the answer. All for a single purpose. All to monitor and track the ongoing Trials begun by ten individuals. Only four were left.
A Trial of Mysticism.
“Subject Four progresses well?” Despite attempts otherwise, the voices of the two interlopers (technically not, but Kanaye would forever consider them such) focused him back to immediacy.
“Hai. Well within operating parameters. He might succeed.”
“The others?”
“The modeling shows two. Subject Three.”
“Subject One is too detached.”
“Two, too savage. Undesired.”
“Hai. Both. Undesired. Numerous cross-referenced modeling demonstrates a ninety percent probability of failure.”
Glad for the darkness, Kanaye stared with fury and mocking in equal measure at the hunched forms clustered closer to the monitors than the technician castemen assigned to monitor each candidate’s progress—aged Spheroid crones, needy, desperate. And they were desperate. Desperate for contribution. Desperate to maintain a hold on a program no longer theirs, a program from which they would only get the cast-offs from now on.
He smiled, a cruel, satisfied smirk hidden among secret shadows and comforting darkness. You made the deal and now you must abide by it. A quarter century is more than enough affront to these sacred chambers.
Of a sudden, a part of Kanaye’s mind centered and then spiraled down as his face slackened slightly, focusing him in an instance of recognition. The time is now. He glanced back to the monitors, ignoring the endless regurgitation of raw data fed through a mesh suit worn by each candidate and augmented through an endless series of relays and additional sensors buried throughout each chamber, and found an actual holodisplay. As though immersed in the image, as though having an out-of-body experience, as though he were a specter irrevocably tied to the supplicant—everything but Subject Four sloughed away.
The thirteen-year-old boy—sharp eyebrows, high forehead, and gray-eyed (genemother heritage breeding true, despite the new mix of genefather; as always), muscles still not fully developed, the hint of the child still apparent in the preman—wove through an intricate landscape of mathematically generated terrain: cubes, trapezoids, decahedrons, rhomboids . . . a bizarre, endless topography climbing away not simply in two dimensions, but in three, as the chamber slowly rotated—a massive, existential Escher landscape to warp minds and rend souls. Quantum mathematicians would trade their lives for the prospect of once, just once, sitting within such boundaries and contemplating the endlessness of perceptual existence and the absolute exquisiteness of numbers . . . despite the kno
wledge they would lose their sanity.
Every dozen paces, as the boy moved up and down and around the wicked landscape, he would freeze, a kilometer stare (mirrored exactly by Kanaye at that moment) savagely slicing away all humanity from his features, as though he contemplated things none else might see. After a moment, his face animated with some small emotions, he began moving again.
“Two minutes.” A small thread of Kanaye’s concentration eased away from the boy’s experience into another trough of contemplation.
Out of the corner of his eye Kanaye noticed the two interlopers huddled over the monitor displaying raw data and, despite resolve, he almost whirled to strike them. Look at the boy. Look at him! Look what we have done to him. But he would not. For all relationships come with crosses to be borne and this one was no different.
Perhaps more importantly (he wallowed momentarily in the spitefulness of it all), he assuaged his anger with the knowledge that he’d surpassed their modeling. His vision had shown him Subject Four would fail this test, despite the endless modeling that they so clutched to their chests like the vain to the smooth skin of youth. He ignored the bass rumbling of knowledge that he was to blame as much as any for what he put these possible mystics through.
Subject Four continued his stop, go, stop movements, young limbs easily transitioning through such chaotic maneuvering, but the strain began to tell in the fluttering of hands and quickened breathing Kanaye noted. The boy’s face still moved through the nightmarish transformation of dehumanization at each stop as he strove to focus his vision and discern the exit.
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