Battletech - Legend of the Jade Phoenix Volume 2

Battletech - Legend of the Jade Phoenix Volume 2

BLOODNAME

by Robert Thurston

[There is a glossary at the end of the e-book for anyone unfamiliar with Battletech Terms]

*** TRUEBIRTH —Born in the laboratory, these genetically engineered soldiers train to be the ultimate warriors. They are the elite pilots of the Clan's fearsome BattleMech war machines.

FREEBIRTH —Born of the natural union of parents, these too are soldiers, but pale imitations of their truebirth superiors. Despised for their imperfections,they fight where and when their Clan commands.

Aidan has failed his Trial of Position, the ranking test all truebirth warriors of the Clan Jade Falcon must pass. He is cast out. Disgraced. His rightful Bloodname is denied him.

But with a Bloodname, all past failures are forgiven. With a Bloodname comes respect. With a Bloodname comes honor.

Aidan will do anything to gain that name. Even masquerade as the thing he has been taught to despise.

A freebirth. ***

Prologue

Some years previously, when Diana was still a child, she had learned many things about her father.

"He is of the Clan and yet not of the Clan," said her mother, whose name was Peri.

"I do not understand Clan," Diana piped, her voice clear and precise even at the age of four years. Though she often heard other children or lower-caste adults use contractions in their speech, Diana never did, nor even slurred her words so that childish sounds might be mistaken for contractions.

"Clan is what we are, what we belong to, what we are loyal to. The Clan provides for us, for all castes within it. It is the Clan that makes sure all have useful work, work that contributes to the common goals. Someday we of the Clans will return to take our rightful place in the Inner Sphere, restoring the Star League that once ruled all the stars in that vast space."

"What is the Inner Sphere? What is the Star League?"

"In time, Diana, you will learn about both, but in the proper places."

"What is wrong with this place? "

They were in a corner of a large laboratory, the largest at the science station on Tokasha, where Peri had worked as a lab tech for more than five years. Even though their quarters provided for child care, Diana considered the lab her real nursery, the place where she loved to come and sometimes play, but mostly in-habit just to be with Peri. She was at the stage of not wishing to be parted from her mother.

Freeborns were like that, said a portly man named Watson, the project leader on Tokasha. In a sibko, on the other hand, the children could only depend on one another; their alliances were intersib. Because freeborns usually had at least one known parent to care for them, their tendency was to stay close out of fear that the parent might be taken away—by death or by the Clan. Children learned very early that the Clan did not respect freeborn parentage and did not hesitate to separate parents from children. Even at age four, Diana feared that more than she feared monsters or shadows in the night.

It was a legitimate fear, as events turned out. When Diana was nine, Peri was assigned to the Main Science Center on Circe, where her work would not permit taking the child with her. Now a full-fledged scientist, Peri sent fewer and fewer communications to her daughter. Her specialty was the study of how sibko members went from childhood to warrior training to the Trial of Decision, where they got their one chance to become members of the warrior caste. For each stage Peri compiled data on how many sibko members did not succeed in the Trial and into what other roles in Clan life they were channeled. She was particularly concerned with how many cadets made it to the Trial (damn few, as it always turned out) and how many of those actually tested out to become warriors.

Diana's father had been a cadet who failed in the Trial, and one of Peri's goals was to establish for her own knowledge why that had happened. And, for that matter, Peri wanted to know why she herself had flushed out during one of the later stages of warrior training. (During this period, she often recalled the afternoon she had to leave the sibko barracks forever after flushing out, and the talk she had with the boy who would one day become Diana's father. As a result of that long-ago conversation Peri had conceived the ambition to do exactly the research that was now her work.) As her work began to absorb her more and more, the writing of reports superseded the writing of letters to her daughter. Her findings were, Peri was informed, an important contribution to a much larger project whose purpose was to discover methods to graduate more warriors from the sibko/cadet groups into the warrior caste.

Then Diana received her own assignment, and mother and daughter lost touch completely. But when Diana was four, they were still very close.

' 'There is nothing wrong with the laboratory,'' Peri said, smiling down at her daughter. "It is just the wrong place for you to learn about the Clan. There will be schoolrooms and training sessions and memory drills. You will know enough soon enough. Now is the time to be young."

"Tell me again the name of our Clan."

"We are the Jade Falcons."

"And what is a jade falcon?"

"A bird that may be mythical, although some claim to have sighted them and even trained them for the hunt. They fly high, it is said, and do not easily come down to ground level."

"Like my father."

Peri laughed. "Like your father. He wanted to be a great warrior, your father, but he tried a trick during what is called a Trial, a test by which warriors are chosen, and he lost his chance. Not long after, other warriors came here, to Tokasha, and took him away. I do not know what has happened to him since."

"And my father's name?"

Peri hesitated for a moment, but the child Diana could not have guessed that it was because her mother was uncertain about whether the child should know his name. In that brief instant, she must have decided it would do no harm, given the size of the Clan sector and all the possible planets where Aidan might eventually have gone.

"Aidan. His name is Aidan."

"I wish he would return to us."

"No, that would not be Clanlike. Whatever task he is fulfilling right now, he is a warrior at heart. He isfrom a sibko, which means that he did not have a mother and father, but was formed from what are called genes—and do not ask me to explain them. Warriors, even those reassigned to another caste, do not oversee their children, especially freeborn children."

Peri had never told Diana that she had once belonged to the same sibko as Aidan, a fact that should have prevented her from ever giving birth to a child in the conventional manner. Being a scientist, however, Peri had been able to alter her own body chemistry so that she might know the freeborn privilege (she thought of it as a privilege, even if most trueborns would not) of childbirth. She had never fully understood why this had become so necessary. Having failed as a warrior, she had known almost immediately that if she would not be seeing life through the viewscreen of a BattleMech cockpit, then she would never be able to go it alone. Diana had been the solution to her loneliness.

Later, after Peri had more or less abandoned Diana, similar thinking had guided her. Seeing Diana's potential, Peri had reasoned that it was best to cut the cord of parentage and leave Diana to find her own way. Otherwise Peri's own need might someday make her do something that would hold the child back. It was not an easy decision, but she had made it with the coolness of one bred and trained to become a trueborn warrior.

"Mother?" Diana asked after a long pause during which her brow was furrowed in what Peri knew was complicated thought. Diana was a specialist at complicated thought, very complicated for her age.

"Yes?"

' 'I do not think I want to be a scientist when I grow up." For the past year Diana had told Peri every day that she intended to be a scientist.

"Oh? And you would like to choose your caste? That is not like a freeborn, you know."

"No, it is not. But I know what I want to be. I want to be a warrior.''

Peri's heart seemed to stop beating. These were not words she wanted to hear. It had nothing to do with wanting less than the best for her daughter, and more to do with the kind of treatment suffered by the few freeborns who qualified for warrior training. Sometimes they had to become cannon fodder for sibko cadets, while the few who made it to the Trial of Decision would face even worse odds than trueborn cadets. Peri did not like the idea of Diana going into that kind of life. Warriors were the most honored members of the Clan, and even menials from the lowest castes dreamed of becoming warriors, but some maternal instinct made Peri want an easy life for her daughter. In the warrior caste, life was never easy, whether you were free- or trueborn.

"You have plenty of time to plan your life, Diana. Be four years old for now.''

"I am four years old, mother."

"I know that. I mean—well, it does not matter what I mean. I see your father in your eyes. You will seek whatever you decide to seek. I cannot stop you."

Diana liked the last thing Peri said, and she would not let go of it for days. "You cannot stop me, mother. You cannot stop me."

Peri knew then how true that was, and she knew it later, when she had stopped communicating with Diana so that the girl could go on to warrior training without any complications. Yet Peri could not sever the bond completely. Though Diana would never know it, Peri maintained close observation of her daughter's career as she persevered through cadet training and became the warrior she had vowed to become at the age of four.

1

He was the picture of frustration, and his name was Kael Pershaw. For two years, for too long, he had been base commander of Glory Station, the Clan Jade Falcon encampment on the planet Glory. To his mind, the assignment might just as well have been to an asteroid in the farthest reaches of the universe. Though Glory was within each of the five original Clan worlds, it was still at the outer edge of the globular cluster, all those worlds that had become part of the Clan Empire. The Jade Falcons had only recently won half of Glory, the other half still awaiting challenge.

Even the planet's name seemed absurd to Pershaw. In this dreary place, the only glorious thing about Glory was its air. It was breathable, without need for adaptive mechanisms or uncomfortable implants to filter dangerous gases into air fit for humans. Pershaw had already done enough unpleasant time on the less atmospherically pleasant places during the peripatetic phases of his military career.

How Glory had earned its name was a mystery. Its mountains did not rise high, its lakes rarely shimmered, and its vegetation was often runty and sparse. The one distinctive geographical feature was a major jungle area near Glory Station, but even it was repellent and dangerous. Pershaw rarely left the main encampment, preferring to send others, preferably members of the freeborn Trinaries, out to such dangerous areas. It was not cowardice, but rather the certainty that his talents did not require him to risk his life except in major arenas. Was that not what it meant to be commander of a base?

Perhaps even more absurd were the forces Kael Per-shaw could muster if another Clan demanded a Trial of Possession. Though his Cluster consisted of the usual four Trinaries, with three Stars each, only Striker Trinary was of any worth. Its complement of 15 true-born warriors and 75 of the genetically bred infantry known as Elementals was too small a force to undertake any Trial of Possession. The other three Trinaries had BattleMechs only, and were barely fit for garrison duty. Piloting those 'Mechs were older trueborn warriors (who had settled for demotion rather than volunteering to get themselves killed in honorable fashion) and freebirths. Pershaw did not know which was worse. To top it off, the 'Mechs were so outdated that these Trinaries would be more hindrance than help in battle.

"Could you stop working for at least a few minutes?" came a voice behind him. It was Lanja, the warrior who served as his coregn, or aide. He had chosen her from the ranks, where Lanja was, in fact, a skilled warrior in line to be a Trinary commander. Besides being Pershaw's personal aide, Star Commander Lanja commanded Striker Trinary's Elementals. In selecting her as aide, Pershaw had chosen well. In the field, she commanded her armor-suited infantry in perfect consort with Pershaw's BattleMechs. In garrison, her administrative skills were equally complementary. Lanja was shrewd, efficient, and—as he had discovered—sexually skillful. A sexual liaison was not so unusual between two people in such a close working relationship, but it was not always so delightful. He would regret her forced departure at the end of the current contract. Pershaw could not form a new contract with her until another coregn had served a minimum period of time.

Though Lanja towered at least two heads over her commander, she was shorter than most of the Elementals she commanded. Pershaw sometimes teased her about having freeborn genes.

"I will always stop working for you," he said now, standing up to gather her in his arms. Even through her stiffly starched warrior uniform, Pershaw thought he could feel the soft curves of Lanja's body underneath.

He knew that he and Lanja were unusually passionate for Clan lovers. Had he not chanced upon a disk of some old Terran romances in a Brian Cache, Pershaw might never have known that human love could be intense and romantic. As a Clansman, he could barely grasp the idea of romance, but his liaison with Lanja was probably deeper than any he had ever known before—in casual sibko alliances, in previous relationships with warrior women, and in other coregns. In its way, their relation was as fathomless as any in those fanciful tales of love.

But Kael Pershaw was a warrior above all, and he did not relish the idea of someone stumbling into his office to find him and Lanja locked in an embrace. Perhaps that was why he let her out of his arms sooner than he wanted to.

Lanja brushed back some of her dark hair, which looked even blacker against her emerald green Jade Falcon headband. "Something is bothering you," she said, and her brow furrowed with worry. "The usual things?"

"In a way. The stagnation, I suppose you would call it."

"Stagnation is a good word, especially with Blood Swamp so near the camp." Perhaps it was the mere thought of the swamp that made her brush away an imaginary insect. Blood Swamp was not its real name, which was long-forgotten. From the first days of Glory Station, warriors stationed there had been struck by the reddish glint, almost like long, bloody streaks, cast by the reflection of Glory's moon shining over the swamp.

"You will be transferred someday," Lanja said. "I am sure of it."

"I know. Relocation and redeployment are Clan ideals, but I am not due for a while. I wish to go now.

I want to be in a place where there is reason to be a warrior. I am tired of prodding troops with fake conflicts, just to keep their skills honed. They need real combat, and so do I."

"I had a dream that you were in combat. No, do not say it. My dreams. You do not believe in them. Even when you have seen them come true. Let us re-tire to the bedchamber. No, I do not mean to tempt you that way. It is just that your eyes look so very tired, like pools surrounded by dark earth."

"And are they stagnant, too?"

The remark made Lanja smile. "No, that they are not."

"Soon," Pershaw whispered. "We will go there soon. Just let me finish writing up some reports."

"They cannot wait?"

"It is only that I wanted to get this one about the brawl out of the way."