At the battle site, he blinked, and it was all over.

The lead Jagatai was shredded wreckage spread over several acres of burning earth. The flames burned white for a few seconds, hot enough to consume metal, and then settled back into normal, yellow-orange flames. Raul felt the wave of heat slam into him as his own reactor spiked dangerously high. Shutdown alarms wailed for attention and he slapped the override, preferring to cook himself before being stuck on a battlefield in a dead ’Mech. He did reach back and punch his emergency escape release, as if vacating the cockpit through the manual hatch. The small door blew outward on explosive charges. Forty Celsius air fouled with smoke rushed into the cramped cockpit. Raul had never tasted anything so refreshing.

Tassa Kay stalked her Ryoken up to his Legionnaire. Her ferroglass canopy had three starred bullet holes in it. Fortunately, they were well wide of her actual command couch. “Now that,” she said calmly, “I did learn on Dieron.”

Raul coughed against the acrid taste of smoke, found his voice. “Now she starts with the stories.”

He checked his HUD and all sensors. Nothing. The second Jagatai had broken off its attack run and bugged out. The remaining ground forces had disappeared as if someone had thrown the master switch on an elaborate simulation. Except that there was nothing simulated about this day’s work, and he would never be able to erase it from memory. Not a computer’s. Not his own.

7

Circle of Equals

Highlake Basin

Achernar

19 February 3133

Star Colonel Torrent had dimmed his shipboard office lights, relaxing his eyes after a morning spent sweating under Achernar’s harsh sun. The air remained sluggish and warm, however, with a hint of old mud. The Lupus’s interior climate controls were set to minimum, scrubbing the air it pulled from outside the DropShip but adding only the slightest drop in temperature as Torrent forced his warriors to acclimate.

Sitting forward in his chair, arms resting on legs and hands clasped in between his knees, Torrent watched with intense concentration as the battlerom played out in three dimensions and vivid color on his holovid desk screen. Pulled from the OmniFighter belonging to Laren Mehta’s wingman, the Star Captain’s Jagatai hovered at the lower edge of the tableau during its furious, and final, nape-of-the-earth run.

The ground was little more than a beige blur except for where his technicians had cleaned up the image, showing the slow-motion approach of the two BattleMechs. One took to the air on jumpjets while the other sidestepped, both cutting weapons fire across Mehta’s flight path. Torrent stared unblinking as tracers and bright metal shards skipped off the Jagatai’s nose, soon to be engulfed by the converging beams of twin particle cannon. He could almost smell the crackling ozone of PPC discharge as Laren Mehta banked and his craft curled out of the picture.

To slam into the ground a split-second later.

Torrent reached forward, hit the video-still and capture controls. The Ryoken hung in the air as if trapped in amber. He reopened his audio report to Steel Wolf Commander and Prefect Kal Radick. “I officially classify Laren Mehta’s death as heroism under fire,” Torrent said, his deep voice adding commentary to the video. “Two BattleMechs pushed our lines back. Star Captain Mehta attacked, and earned a warrior’s end. His codex will reflect this.” And new Steel Wolf sibkos would be born of his DNA. If Torrent owed anything to Laren Mehta, that was enough.

“I promoted Star Captain Nikola Demos as my second in command,” he informed Radick. “She is senior to any officer on the Stealthy Paw. Also, Mehta’s death created a disciplinary crisis between two pilots, both of whom are positioning themselves to replace the Star Captain. I expect that to be settled within the next few days.” Another commander might have settled the issue by now, but Torrent would wait and see which one had the greater warrior’s heart.

And of greater concern to the star colonel this moment were the two machines caught in frozen display. “The Legionnaire clearly displays the insignia of Achernar’s Republic Guard. The Ryoken bears no crest. It is more advanced than anything we estimated facing.” He frowned, noting how the Ryoken pilot worked almost seamlessly alongside the militia warriors. “I do not believe this MechWarrior is Swordsworn.”

A theory Torrent had tested, nonetheless. His two probing attacks toward Hahnsak on the following days had turned up no sign of the Ryoken, nor anything more advanced than Erik Sandoval’s Hatchetman and some converted MiningMechs. Torrent queued up battlerom footage from those probes, set it to spooling into the recorded report.

“My force can roll over the Swordsworn at any time.” Torrent looked forward to that, given Duke Aaron Sandoval’s position as Kal Radick’s primary competition for control of Prefecture IV. “I am holding off on any major offensive, awaiting the arrival of Knight-Errant Kyle Powers. In the meantime, I will keep a wedge driven between Swordsworn and Republic, and stay open to contact from our lost wolves. Star Colonel Torrent, reporting.”

He let the final battle footage play out, then cut off the video spool and batched the report into the files set for transmission. In two days a Steel Wolf JumpShip would pass through Achernar’s system, staying just long enough for Torrent to upload reports. Even without the local HPG station, Kal Radick was slowly building his intelligence infrastructure.

Torrent switched off his desk’s recording equipment and reopened his connection to the DropShip’s communications board. Only a military emergency could interrupt him during a private session. Three low-priority messages queued up on his system, but were shoved aside as an open line from the Lupus’s bridge pushed through.

“Star Colonel.” The on-duty bridge officer blinked into existence on Torrent’s holographic screen. “Sir, you’ve an urgent request for your presence at the Stealthy Paw.”

“From whom?” Torrent asked, irritated over having to ask for such basic information. Ship officers: lazy minds, most of them, as evidenced in the officer’s use of contractions.

“The request came with Ship’s Captain’s authority. Rachel Grimheald. I’m not certain with whom it originated. I can find out, Star Colonel.”

Torrent rocked to his feet and leaned over the desk as if ready to pounce through the monitor. “Never mind. I already know. Spend your time learning how to deliver a proper report.”

He switched off the call with a violent stab at the disconnect. Grabbing up his field jacket and the service cap perched on the edge of his desk, Torrent carried them into the DropShip’s corridor and down to the lower cargo bay in search of transportation. The trip from his Lupus to the DropShip Stealthy Paw was less than four minutes by hovercraft. Torrent did not wait for a driver, coding in his personal override and firing up the lift fans on a Fox armored car, coasting it across the cargo bay, down the extended ramp, and then opening full throttle for the short dash across Highlake Basin’s mud flats.

Achernar’s sun was just hitting its late afternoon stride, the bright, blue-white star washing out the sky to a pale, pale blue. Nearby, the Tanager Mountains looked more forbidding by the harsh light of day than during the soft twilight by which the DropShips had landed three days ago. Torrent wasn’t used to the bright days yet, especially when being called out of his office. He reached into a utility pack on his belt, pulled out dark-tinted goggles and pulled them over his shaven pate one-handed. Settling the dark glass over his eyes, he returned his attention to driving.