Corbin charged, his left hand outstretched and twitching with murderous intent. It grabbed Kai's right shoulder and started to crush it even as Kai fell back before the assault. Grabbing the slick material of Corbin's bodysuit, Kai rolled onto his back and posted his left leg up into the Elemental's belly. At the top of the arc, Kai pushed off, and with a heave sent his enemy flying through the air.

Corbin slammed into the ground on top of the cold firepit in the center of the camp. A cloud of gray ashes rose up to smother the man lying halfway in and out of the circle of stones. Rolling over onto his hands and knees, Kai crawled toward the moaning Elemental, vaguely aware that the Clansman's head was at a peculiar angle to his shoulders.

Kneeling beside Corbin's head, Kai raised a fireblackened rock in both hands. "Bury me in an unmarked grave, will you?" Kai stared down at the blood mingling with ashes. "Not in this lifetime, you don't."

"No, Kai, stop!"

He looked up and met Deirdre's terrified stare. "He has to die," he said.

"Kai," she whispered, "he's already dead." She reached out toward him. "Please, Kai, you aren't like your father!"

He looked from the mangled Corbin to Deirdre and back again, still somewhat dazed from the adrenaline rage that had saved his life. "My father? What are you talking about?"

She covered her face in her hands and slumped forward. Kai tossed the stone aside and struggled to his feet. He dropped to his knees again and took her in his arms. "What is it about my father? Tell me."

"Your father is a murderer." She buried her head against his chest, but he sensed she would have pulled back if not for her trapped leg. "He murdered my father in the fights on Solaris."

Kai shook his head. "He never fought anyone named Lear."

"I know. My father was Peter Armstrong, the first man he killed in the games on Solaris. Your father ambushed and killed him. My father never had a chance." Her voice grew small. "For a year or two, when I was just a little girl, my father was a martyr. The evil Justin Xiang had killed my father, as loyal a son of House Davion as ever there was in the Inner Sphere. Wolfson and Capet were also heroes. When my mother remarried, I didn't want to change my name even though my stepfather was a good man—a surgeon ... Roy Lear. At school, I had many friends and everyone liked me.

"Then your father turned out to be some agent who helped win the war. People started to refer to my father as a no-good renegade. The same kids who used to want to hear stories about my father now teased me. They said he was as bad as the Usurper, Stefan Amaris, and that they were glad Justin Allard had killed him. Some of their parents even said I was tainted by bad blood and they wouldn't let their children play with me."

Kai pulled back, spotted his knife, and picked it up again.

Slowly he began to dig at the ground surrounding her leg. "That's why you became a doctor?"

Deirdre looked down at the ground but focused on nothing. "No. I became a doctor because I had so often fantasized about being able to save my father had I been there. I joined the Armed Forces of the Federated Commonwealth as a way of proving I was not from a traitor family. I wanted to give something back to the Federated Commonwealth to atone for whatever my father had done. Whatever his crimes had been, I didn't think they deserved death."

"My father's not a murderer." Kai scooped some of the dirt from the hole around her leg and pulled free a slender wooden stake that had been pointing downward. "He didn't want your father to die."

"How can you say that? He ambushed him and killed him. It's on a holovid available almost anywhere."

"I know." Kai pulled a second stake free from the hole. "When I was a child, in school, I got into one of those 'my father is tougher than your father' arguments that ended up with another child running home in tears. I told him my father could kill his father."

Deirdre shuddered. "Other children used to tease me about Justin Allard coming after me, too."

Kai sat back on his haunches, a lump rising in his throat even as he began to speak. "My father took me home that day and showed me the holovid of the fight with your father. He turned the sound off and told me what he had been thinking instead of letting me hear the announcer describe the fight in glowing, dramatic terms. His job was to play the stereotype of a treacherous Liao fighter, both to justify his split with the Federated Suns and to attract the attention of Maximilian Liao. With the first barrage he loosed against your father, he knew he'd damaged your father's 'Mech too much to continue the fight. He wanted your father to punch out and kept hoping he would."

"He didn't. He died in that Griffin ."

"I know. My father said he'd underestimated the strength of the training Philip Capet had given his proteges. My father then told me that killing men was nothing to be proud of. He said killing was a last resort, when nothing else would work." Kai glanced back at Corbin. "Case in point."

Deirdre reached out and brought Kai's chin up. "Exception to the rule. You did have a choice: you could have surrendered to him. You didn't, but chose to fight to save me." Her blue eyes met his. "After the way I've treated you, why would you do that?"

Kai pulled his chin from her hand and dug at the ground some more. "You saved my life. I owed you."

"No, Kai, not good enough." She picked up one of the birch stakes and started helping him free her leg. "I've been so hateful to you over the time I've known you, but I was very attracted to you that morning on Skondia. I was thinking the New Year would be very good to me, indeed."

Kai laughed lightly, then stopped as a twinge of pain shot from his ribs. "Yeah, I was thinking that, too."

Deirdre swallowed hard. "Then when General Redburn introduced us, I felt I'd betrayed myself and my father. After that, I lashed out at you, trying to drive you away and make you hurt the way I felt your father had hurt me. I kept trying to find a way to focus my hatred on you, but the harder I tried, the less I found in you to hate."

As she spoke, Kai felt the distance between them melt away. In the two years he'd known Deirdre Lear, he had always puzzled about the apparent duality of her feelings toward him. Now that he understood, her actions made sense. The part of him that had been afraid she hated him for being himself wanted to shout with joy. He wanted to sweep her into his arms and never let her go.

But a cold dread twitched to life in his belly and seemed to rise up to claw at his throat. Now you know her secret, Kai Allard, but that does not change the fact that you are a killer born of a killer. You are her antithesis and she will at ways revile you for that fact.

Kai's faced closed. "You just didn't look hard enough Doctor. There's plenty there to hate, like my penchant for making mistakes, getting other folks killed, or forcing people to do things they don't want to do, like shooting someone. Why was I willing to sacrifice myself for you? Because the world would be better off with you in it than with me."

He ripped the last stake from the hole. "You're free."

She slowly pulled her leg from the hole. "You're wrong, Kai."

"Wrong?" He frowned. "Your leg is no longer trapped."

"Not about that." She shook her head, then refused to meet his gaze. "The world wouldn't be, better off without you because I, for one, would be much worse off without you here."