Trial by Chaos

by J. Steven York

  She turned and ran. The bear dropped and came after her on all fours.

  She zigzagged through the maze, taking the sharpest turns, the narrowest passages, to slow her pursuer. But she could hear the bear behind her, see it, when she dared look back. Bounding after her, great jaws open, small eyes glittering at her from under heavy, arched brows.

  There was no rage there, no hatred, only grim determination.

  Kill to eat.

  Eat to live.

  She was no enemy to the bear. She was only meat.

  She ran. Ghost bears were supposed to hunt by ambush; strong sprinters but quick to tire. Not this one. Her heart pounded, her legs ached, her chest burned with every breath of frozen air. She felt she might die before the bear ever touched her.

  She had to turn and fight.

  Ahead, she saw a cave opening in a hillside. She scrambled up the rock, hearing the bear's thudding stride as it came after her. Just at the mouth of the cave, under an overhang, a slab of rock provided a kind of platform. There, she could face the bear eye to eye. There, she might have a chance, if she could get the bear to rear up and give her a target.

  She turned, raised her arms to make herself look as big as possible, and roared her challenge at the approaching bear.

  He did not stop. Did not respond. Did not return her challenge.

  She was beneath his notice.

  Except as meat.

  Except as prey.

  She ran into the cave, barely a step ahead of the bear. Cracks in the roof had allowed water to seep down during the rare summer thaws, and great stalactites, stalagmites and columns of ice decorated the chamber. Light came through from somewhere, refracting through the ice, turning blue and green, magically bathing every corner in soft color.

  It was a beautiful place to die.

  The bear reared enough to grab at her with its front paws. She spotted a narrow space between two ice columns, and ducked under the bear's front legs, its bristly white hair actually brushing her face as she dived for cover. She slipped into the narrow opening and pushed herself backwards as far as she could, until her shoulders were jammed against the stone wall of the cave.

  She could see nothing. The only sound was the bear breathing, the sniffing as he sought her scent.

  Then the bear's paw shot into her hiding place with terrifying suddenness. It was like being struck at by a cobra the size of a small horse. The claws swept past her. shredding her jacket and cutting a gash in her arm.

  The bear drew back slightly, then struck again, trying to find a way to reach deeper into the hole. She jabbed at the paw, stabbing the point of her spear deep into the pad.

  The bear roared in pain, jerking the paw back and ripping the spear from her hands. She could glimpse the bear through the opening. It sat on its haunches examining the injury, then shook its paw violently until the spear flew free and clattered away to the floor of the cave.

  The bear licked its paw for a moment, then looked back at her hiding place. It roared. This time it was angry, and with just cause.

  She pushed herself as far back as she could, just as the bear's paw passed within inches of her leg. And she discovered that she could push herself upwards, that the ice and the cave wall formed a small chimney.

  She jammed her back against the ice, digging her toes and fingers into whatever openings she could find in the rock, and pushed herself upwards. Centimeter by centimeter she ascended, all the while listening to the unhappy bear searching for her just beyond the ice. She had little doubt that the bear, had it been determined to do so, could have smashed the ice columns to reach her. If it became any angrier, it might yet do that.

  At last she reached a kind of ledge and another narrow passage out between the ice columns. She crawled through the gap. The opening was nearly blocked by a thick stalactite of ice. She looked down, and she could see the bear pacing just below her.

  She shifted her weight, and a crust of frozen blood cracked and broke off from her tattered jacket, landing on the floor next to the bear.

  The great animal stooped, sniffed the frozen blood and suddenly looked up directly at her. It bellowed, reared up towards her and almost seemed to leap as it flailed its front paws just below her. The animal seemed to lose its footing, and fell heavily against the column below her.

  The world seemed to tremble. She saw jagged cracks race like black lightning through the ice around her. Chunks of ice and loose stone rained down on her from above. She struggled to keep her footing on the narrow ice ledges that supported her.

  The bear stared up at her, then reared up.

  Again it missed. Again it reeled into the column. She almost fell forward out of the hole, catching herself on the stalactite. It cracked loudly, and shifted slightly under her weight.

  The bear glared at her from below.

  She was unarmed against the mighty ghost bear. The only weapon she had was her brain.

  It would have to be enough.

  She carefully placed her feet, and leaned out to shove on the stalactite. She pushed and shook it. Again, she heard cracking. Small bits of ice rained down. She had to break loose the hanging ice, and do it when the restless bear was directly underneath.

  Her first attempt failed. The bear moved into position and she pushed, but the ice did not break.

  When she looked down again, the bear was off to one side. She waited as he paced the room, finally settling down beneath her again, sitting back on his haunches, looking up.

  She threw her weight against the ice.

  It gave but did not break.

  The bear, seeming to sense danger, started to move.

  She pushed harder.

  The ice snapped, suddenly falling away, throwing her off balance.

  She teetered for an instant, the ice falling below her. Then she tumbled out into empty space, falling right toward the bear's waiting maw.

  The blunt point of the ice struck the bear directly between the eyes. The bear grunted and lurched forward.

  She landed directly between the bear's shoulder blades, thick layers of fur and fat breaking her eight-meter fall. She rolled, struck the stone floor with enough force to knock the air out of her lungs, rolled again and ended up sprawled facedown, gasping, on the cave floor.

  She waited for the death blow.

  It did not come.

  When she regained control of her breathing, she lifted her head and saw before her a rolling mountain range of white fur and flesh. The bear lay sprawled on its back, chest barely rising and falling as she watched, pink tongue hanging from its mouth.

  Helpless!

  She moved, trying to get up. Her hand fell on something solid and round.

  The shaft of the spear!

  She struggled to her feet, took the spear in both hands and, marshaling her strength and courage, climbed onto the bear's belly. She stood over it, spear held high and aimed the point for the spot on the chest from which she could actually hear the great heart beating.

  Then she saw the woman.

  She was tall and looked strong, dressed in leather and fur. Not bear fur, Isis noted, but from the arctic hares and snow grazers that were the ghost bear's most frequent prey. She stood inside one of the great ice columns. Isis had seen that face a thousand times in history books and in official paintings.

  It was Sandra Tseng.

  Yet there was one startling difference from every picture of the woman that Isis had ever seen. The hair of the woman before her was snow-white, the color of the ghost bear. The look on Tseng's face was one of deep concern. She looked at Isis with compassion in her dark eyes. "Will you kill the bear?"

  Isis looked down. Under her feet, she could feel the bear's breathing, the thudding of his heart. His life was her firmament.

  "Will you kill the bear?"

  She stood frozen, indecisive. A bear does not act in haste. A bear does not hurry. The bear twitched, the head moved, the tongue drew back into the mouth.

  "Will you kill the bear? It will
wake soon. You must decide now." Her eyes looked deep into Isis' soul. "Will you kill the bear?"

  Before she could answer, she heard a man cry out—

  * * *

  She sat up in the darkness, her eyes wide, but the woman was gone. The bear was gone.

  She was gasping, her heart pounding. It took her a moment to orient herself, to realize that she was in Vince's apartment rather than her own.

  She remembered now the impassioned proceedings on the congressional floor, the awkwardness afterwards, and the moment when longing had overcome their mutual confusion.

  She rarely slept in his bed. Usually they would couple, enjoy each other's company for a while and she would return to her own quarters. She was never really comfortable in Vince's apartment. It was too large, too ornate, too full of useless, inefficient clutter.

  From across the room, a small fish tank gurgled, and in its dim light she could just make out her surroundings. She glanced over and saw Vince staring at her, rubbing his wrist. Suddenly, for the first time in her life, she felt naked and clutched the sheet, damp with her own sweat, to her chest.

  "Are you okay? I thought you were going to break my arm."

  She swallowed. Her mouth and lips were dry. She wanted water. "I just had a dream."

  "A nightmare?"

  She twitched. Nightmares were for children, not warriors. But certainly, the dream had disturbed her. "I dreamed about Strana Mechty, and the ghost bear.

  "I dreamed about Sandra Tseng."

  She could just see his eyes reflected in the dim light. "Are you saying you had some kind of vision?"

  She laughed nervously. "I'm Ghost Bear, not Nova Cat. I don't believe in visions." She hung her head, letting her hair fall across her face. "But we used to say back in the sibko, sometimes a dream can be a message.

  "A message from yourself."

  10

  From the Great Work of Galaxy Commander Isis Bekker

  I will never see Strana Mechty, where our Clan was born. That world was lost to us in the horror that was the War of Reaving.

  This saddens me. not only that I will never see this place, but that none of our warriors will.

  I cannot help but feel our Clan has lost something, something more important than land or territory, and I am not even sure what it is.

  The life spans of warriors are traditionally short. It has been more than eighty years, almost two average warrior lifetimes, since the Ghost Bears abandoned their worlds in the Kerensky Cluster and moved nearly all their people and possessions to the Inner Sphere.

  For the young warriors under my command, the time in the old Clan territories is ancient history.

  Though we have struggled to maintain our traditions and ways, we are not the same people as the Ghost Bears who traveled back along the Exodus Road. I wonder if they would recognize us now, if they would look at us as our Clan brothers back in the Kerensky Cluster now look at us, and wonder if we can still be of the same body.

  As I see it, two great forces have reshaped us in those eighty-plus years. The first is that we have lived among non-Clan people all this time. The natives of the occupied worlds far outnumber our people, and though our Clan's population has continued to grow, even our laborer caste remains a minority on the worlds we call our own.

  We have struggled to keep ourselves above and apart, to maintain our rigid traditions and our warrior-bound honor.

  But every day our young Clansmen and women see people around them who do not share their discipline and, more importantly, do not labor under their responsibility. It is not the way of the Clans to believe the quality of one's life is measured in material possessions or in hedonistic pursuits, but these things are seductive, and we have been exposed to them for a very long time.

  And along with those things comes a lifestyle of free— some would say lax—thinking and independent action.

  In retrospect, it hardly seems surprising that many of the lower castes, especially the laborers, succumbed to those temptations. They did not have the benefit of a warrior's rigorous training, the fellowship of the lifelong bonds of the sibko, or the release of the rituals and trials of blood. And it is also not surprising that we, as warriors, increasingly isolated from those other castes, did not see what was happening until it was too late.

  But the warriors had their own problems, and their true crisis arrived in slightly more recent times. In the 3080s, The Republic of the Sphere was formed under the leadership of Devlin Stone. So shining was his vision for his new republic that many factions within our Clan began to believe he held the key to forming a new union that would be the rightful successor of the Star League.

  And so, despite much controversy, the Ghost Bears threw their full support behind his effort.

  When Devlin Stone called for the Great Houses to decommission most of their 'Mechs and build a new, peace-driven economy, the Ghost Bears felt compelled to support him, much as it ran contrary to their instincts. They made a great show of being among the first to disarm, tearing down their OmniMechs and parting them out for scrap, and converting the factories that made them to other goods. Or so it seemed.

  Their efforts were successful. Shamed that Clansmen would choose to lay down arms before they would, the other Great Houses followed suit. But what they did not know was that many of the 'Mechs were not destroyed. Some were stripped down to shells, which were hidden or buried against future need. Some were partially scrapped, with parts from different 'Mechs collected so that they might be reassembled into a single functioning unit on short notice.

  Some 'Mechs were simply hidden, placed in caves or abandoned bunkers, or sunk to the bottoms of lakes.

  Though we lost countless 'Mechs and most of our immediate production capability, the Ghost Bears were never as helpless as we made ourselves appear. Though we believed in Devlin Stone, we did not trust the Great Houses, and we felt we had to be ready to defend The Republic if and when the time came.

  Our fears, of course, were justified.

  But while we waited for that inevitable betrayal, we faced the second force that would change our Clan. Our tradition of trials by combat was thrown into disarray: MechWarriors faced trials with no 'Mechs to fight in.

  There existed a whole generation of MechWarriors who had never sat in the cockpit of a real 'Mech. Some warriors were diverted into conventional armored forces or infantry, but such forces have never held much prestige in the Clans, and even these forces were greatly reduced during the peak years of The Republic.

  During that time, it became common for trials to be fought in simulators rather than with real 'Mechs, tanks or aerospace assets. In a way, it seemed an ideal solution.

  Clan simulators are stunningly realistic, and a warrior can get far more cockpit time in a simulator than they ever could hope to experience in a live 'Mech or other high-value combat vehicle. Using simulators, both training and trials could be carried out in secret from the rest of The Republic, maintaining the illusion of the "peaceful" Ghost Bears. Many warriors thrived in this environment, spending countless hours in simulated battle, honing their skills to a razor's edge.

  It can perhaps be said of the MechWarriors of that period that they were the most technically skilled in our Clan's history.

  Skill alone does not matter.

  Warriors need far more than skill in battle. They need courage. They need composure under fire. They need the ability to fight through pain and injury.

  Some warriors are born with these things, but despite three centuries of the eugenics program, the scientists have yet to isolate those particular genes. Some warriors must learn these qualities. Still others will never possess them, and should be culled from the ranks before they can endanger others in combat.

  Those things cannot be determined in a simulator.

  After Devlin Stone withdrew from The Republic and the need to rearm became clear, there were too few 'Mechs to allow for any but the most important and high-profile trials. The average warrior still settled
disputes or fought for rank in a simulator.

  When I assumed command of Omega Galaxy, I set out to end all that. I declared that all trials must be trials of blood, all combat must risk mortal injury.

  For many Ghost Bears, that meant hand-to-hand combat, as our long-standing emphasis on such skills has made most of our warriors deadly in their use. But trials by knife, sword or even using small arms became more common. Warriors facing a Trial of Position were required to prove their technical skills in simulator trials, yes, but that was only a preliminary to the trial of blood.

  During this time I began wearing my ceremonial sword in public as a sign of my devotion to the principle of mortal combat, even for Mech Warriors. I participated in my share of trials as well, and in each, I prevailed.

  The effect on warrior morale was immediate, and I felt that the core of my forces became immeasurably stronger. Other Galaxy commanders obviously thought so as well because they also adopted the practice, and at last it was endorsed by vote of the Clan Council— even if by then others had attached their names to the idea.

  But I also faced criticism. Warriors died in trials, and this potential for fatal injury was a new phenomenon to this generation. The ranks were thinned further by warriors testing down to lower castes. I accepted that these men and women should never have been warriors, and believed that we were stronger without them, even if our numbers were reduced.

  Not everyone agreed. I made enemies. It was then I discovered that, in the upper power structure of a Clan, strength can be weakness.

  I have always had a talent for working with individuals outside the warrior caste and with those outside the Clan. I suspect this is why I was placed in command of the Omega Galaxy, the Raging Bears, which has a long tradition of adopting Inner Sphere tactics and being deployed only to fight against, or even alongside, non-Clan forces,

  This principle of fighting fire with fire has been quite successful and given us some glorious victories, but the Omega Galaxy has always been held in low regard by more traditional Ghost Bear units. It has traditionally been treated by the Khans as a necessary evil, useful to have around but never to be celebrated. There have always been those who felt the unit had gone too far from the traditional ways and should be dissolved, or even completely Abjured from the Clan.