And then Evan left behind his friends, his Master, and his final ties to anything Capellan or Republic.

Making himself unavailable, Evan spent the rest of the day checking inventories and forward postings. He had shut himself out of the strategic council, but a nagging sense of duty pulled at him. He verified that the Rifleman could not be repaired any sooner, and hurried the military conversion of a second ConstructionMech into a modified design that might help make up for the Conservatory’s light armor assets. That gave them three modified IndustrialMechs. Slow and ponderous, but a threat nonetheless.

Jenna finally caught up with him outside his dormitory. More to the point, she was waiting. Possibly for hours, knowing it was the one place he would return to sooner or later. It had been later, long after dark, and the overhead streetlights were throwing a yellow glare across the quad.

“Want to tell me about it?” she asked, falling into step with him as he headed for the doors.

“No.”

“All right.” But she continued to follow.

She waited until they were inside, climbing the stairs, then changed her mind. “You know what, it’s not all right, Evan.” She shook her head, and her braids danced across his shoulders. “Maybe you were first to support the Capellan cause on Liao. Maybe you deserve more consideration because of the Ijori Dè Guāng and whatever history you have with Shiao-zhang Mai.” She grabbed him at the first landing and pushed him back against the wall, forcing him to look at her. “But you do not walk away from your friends, Evan.”

The stairwell wall felt cold where it pressed into the back of Evan’s head. He stared up over Jenna’s head, at the naked bulb that burned behind a safety grill in the ceiling. “I’ve spent more time worrying about the four of you than any other threat to me on this world,” he said. Today was apparently the day to speak his mind.

It took her aback. “Why? What did we ever demand from you?”

“Not a thing. But it’s the first rule of insurrection: trust no one. Mai taught me that. I let myself get close to you. And Hahn, David and Mark,” he quickly added.

“Then why didn’t you bring us in? David practically begged you, every day.”

There was any number of reasons for that. Uncertainty. Unsuitability. Evan jumped right for the throat, though. “Because you four were the first thing in my life that felt normal. Something that everyone else took for granted, and I never could. I didn’t want to lose that. For any reason. So I tried to walk a line in between my world and yours. And every time one of you pressed a bit too hard about my… activities… for days afterward I waited for the roof to fall in.”

Jenna blew out an exasperated sigh. “I once asked Mark what he would do, you know, if we ever saw evidence of your involvement with the Ijori Dè Guāng. He said that he’d be very disappointed in you.”

She laughed a nervous little laugh. “Not that he’d turn you in. He knew you well enough that he understood your politics, even if he disagreed with them. I think he would have argued with you forever, trying to change your mind. But you never let us close enough. Not Mark or Hahn or David.” She reached up to grab his chin, tilted his head down so that he had to look at her. “Not me.”

He sensed the question. “You were with Mark,” he said.

“Well, I couldn’t wait around for you forever, could I?” Jen sucked in her breath as if she’d said something wrong. Then she smiled, thin and hard. “I was beginning to wonder if you liked women at all. I mean, Hahn is a very handsome man. And available.”

Evan opened his mouth to protest, but no words came out. Jen had thrown him right out of the conversation with the ease of a judo wrestler laying hands on someone who’d only thought to spar. Part of it was good-natured teasing—she was, after all, still his friend. But a strong undercurrent of tension ran beneath. Had he really thrown away so many chances, frustrating Jen Lynn Tang as he never allowed her nearer than arm’s length?

“If I had known…”

“You would have run even faster, damn you.” She curled the front of his jacket into her fists and shoved him back harder against the wall. “And now you’re finding another way to run out on us. Evan, you have to start trusting someone sooner or later. Enough to make the hard calls.” Then she pulled him into her, rising up on her toes to plant a hard kiss on his mouth.

He drew her scent in like a drowning man fighting for air. Her warmth taunted him, and he grabbed on to her with desperation born from need. One thing. One thing left to hang on to. And Jenna was here. She was here, and warm, and fighting alongside him, not against him.

Evan wasn’t certain who finally broke away first. They stared into each other’s gaze. She tucked herself into his arm even as he pulled her to his side, and together they finished climbing the stairs to his floor, his room, and their first and last night together.

Yiling (Chang-an)

Qinghai Province, Liao

4 August 3134

The Liao Conservatory came under full assault just after dawn, the alert waking Evan Kurst and Jenna to a gray, overcast day, pulling them away from each other’s warmth. Evan suited up, waiting for Mai Uhn Wa to deny him a place. But whatever their differences, Mai gave him the Ti Ts’ang and situated him on point. No doubt Mai wanted someone he trusted holding the center. Someone he could control.

Evan allowed him the first. Not the second.

Leaving behind a shortened company under Jen Lynn Tang’s command, the Conservatory fielded one lance of actual BattleMechs and two converted industrial machines. Three companies of armor and infantry spread out in a ragged line around them. Legate Ruskoff anchored the center of The Republic line with his own Zeus, an assault ’Mech variant that boasted a PPC, Gauss rifle and plenty of armor.

Evan angled his Ti Ts’ang in a short, violent slash across the Zeus’s path, pulling an SM1 Destroyer and a pair of Maxim APCs in his wake. His targeting reticle burned solid gold, and a series of scarlet lances slashed molten wounds across the Zeus from the shoulder to hip. An argent stream of particle cannon fire chased after Evan, caught him, blasted armor into molten shards and smoking coals. Ruskoff saved his Gauss ammunition against a possible charge by the ’Mech killing tank or Evan’s strong axe.

But the Destroyer was a ruse. The Capellan forces swung back almost at once.

Missiles from a JES Carrier chewed up ground behind the Ti Ts’ang’s feet. A Republic Cavalier squad popped out of a tangle of deadwood and thorny brush, jetting up on boosters, but then faded as a pair of Balac Strike VTOLs swooped down like crows on carrion. Evan forced his way into a small stand of bare-branched alder and hunkered down as two Sparrowhawks screamed overhead, laying down strafing fire.

“What are we doing out here?” Han Soom Gui asked on a private channel to Evan. He served as gunner on the Destroyer.

“Wait for it,” Evan said, not answering directly. Hahn was a soldier under his command, and the risks were very, very real. He could not afford to think of Hahn as a friend. New alarms wailed as sensors locked onto his machine, and threat icons swarmed forward on his HUD. “Here they come.”