* * *

One night, when Alexey was off somewhere on duty, Nomad reported to Joanna what he had found. "Not much," she said.

"My apologies, Falconer, but can you say that your association with Alexey has turned up more?"

"You really despise him, do you not? Quiaff?Answer."

"No, I wouldn't say I despise Alexey. For a fellow whose mustache threatens to make his upper lip sag to his jawline and whose brow cannot be found, he is a wonderful specimen of a warrior."

Joanna bristled, but dropped the subject. Yet, Alexey proved a revelation even to Nomad. The Wolf Clan warrior nearly found Aidan for them. One day, he led them to the edge of a forest, where they awaited a rendezvous.

"What is this place?" Nomad asked.

"You do not care, so do not ask," said Alexey, who tended toward brusque speech and behavior. "This is just the place where they will hand over to us the young man you seek."

"Will it offend you, Alexey, if I ask just who it is that is supposed to give us Aidan?"

"I am not offended. This is bandit territory. The young man you seek has been with a tribe of them for the last month. He went through their punishing rites and, I am told, performed impressively."

"You mean he was accepted into a bandit tribe?"

"Yes."

"And the tribe will turn him over to us?"

"Yes."

"Do they have no loyalty, these bandits?"

"Not when you can pay them generously for what you want."

Nomad turned to Joanna, who was uncharacteristically silent. She had been staring at Alexey, a strange look in her eyes. Nomad thought the look might be her version of regret. Having located Aidan, they would leave Grant's Station. If ever there was an ideal mate for Joanna, Nomad thought, he would look, sound, and behave much like this Alexey.

Alexey straightened into alertness, hearing some forest sound that Nomad must have missed. When Nomad did catch the sound, he identified it immediately as horses racing toward them. Alexey's hand rested lightly on a laser pistol holstered at his side. Joanna, too, crouched in readiness. Nomad, never a fighter, looked for a place to dive to if danger arose.

Five people on horseback emerged abruptly from the edge of the forest. One of them, just before he might have trampled Alexey, reined in and spoke to him. It seemed to Nomad that sweat from the horses and their riders splashed the air all around him, while aromas he could not identify clogged his nasal passages.

Alexey suddenly grabbed the reins of the bandit speaking to him, his expression indicating he would have liked to topple both horse and rider.

"What do you mean, escaped?" he shouted. The bandit, thick in body but unusually short for a Clansman, replied: "It was not even an escape, warrior. When we went to fetch him, he was gone. As soon as you and I had concluded our deal, I had a sensor device planted in his clothing, and we thought we had tracked him to a spot not far from here. But all we found were the clothes. He had no other garments. He is running naked somewhere, but we do not know where."

"I think I know," Alexey said. Methodically, he went among the bandits, pulled three of them from their horses, throwing them roughly to the ground. Then he ordered Joanna and Nomad onto two of the horses, while he swung his bulky body onto a third magnificent steed.

Once settled onto the smooth unsaddled back of the horse, Alexey lost no time urging the animal forward, Joanna and the remaining bandits close on his heels. Nomad was not so quick to respond. Timidly, he suggested to the oversized beast he rode that it might be suitable if it followed the others. The horse, apparently used to keeping with the pack, took up a position at the rear. The two of them bounced along after the others for what seemed to Nomad an uncomfortably long distance, during which he periodically had to resist the urge to deposit some of his last meal along the roadside.

Alexey led them to a small outpost at one end of the forest, a garrison composed of warriors whose main task was to keep the bandits in check. As the group came through the outpost gates, they heard a sudden roar as a small hovershuttle quickly rose above the outpost, and with a rush of power, flew away. Alexey cursed, knowing the story that the freebirth captain of the garrison would tell even before he heard it.

The captain reported that, indeed, a naked bandit had climbed the walls, disarmed a sentry, forced her to give him her uniform, knocked her out, descended from the guard post, ambushed the warriors guarding the shuttle, and then ambushed the craft—taking the shuttle pilot with him. Alexey said that of course that was the outpost's only shuttle. The captain replied that it was, and Alexey rendered him unconscious with a single, hard, abrupt left jab.

These warriors have rather limited responses to crises, Nomad thought, but was careful to keep it to himself. Joanna would not be shy about raining some of her best blows on him.

Though they sent a message to the spaceport that Aidan be taken prisoner if he showed up there, the message was garbled by a sleepy comm specialist. Aidan, posing as a personnel evaluator on a tour of military encampments, had hooked a ride on a ship just before it lifted off.

"Damn!"

"What is it, Falconer?"

"Nomad, I am beginning to admire our quarry. And now our search is going to get even tougher."

Nomad cocked his head inquiringly.

"Because now he knows we are looking for him."

"I'm not sure that's a problem."

Joanna shuddered at Nomad's continuing use of contractions, but she had stopped cautioning against such vulgarity. "Yes?"

"Aidan still has the instincts of a warrior, Falconer. He will try to flee, but he'll always be willing to meet us on the field of battle. He'll get showy. Just you watch."

"I do not know why I talk to you, Nomad. You are clearly mad."

"True, but that doesn't impair my judgment."

"Go to bed."

"Will you join me? I am not Alexey, but—"

"You are notAlexey. And I do not, as you know, believe in intercaste relationships. So, good night."

Joanna decided there might be some validity to Nomad's logic when they easily traced Aidan to the planet Barcella, where he joined another bandit group. They expected to corner their quarry there, and would have-except the report they received upon arrival on Barcella was that Aidan, disguised as the commander of the local battalion, had been found out and executed.

27

When I first read Falconer Joanna's dispatch from Barcella, it astonished me, wrote Falconer Commander Ter Roshak. I could not believe that the chief participant of my master plan would ruin it by getting himself killed in some foolish local politics. Despite my Clan blood and upbringing, which teaches us to accept necessity, I still could not allow that I had put my faith in the wrong person, that in fact, no destiny marked Aidan, no special aura because he was the reincarnation of his genetic father.

At the very least, I was disappointed. Not merely because I would not be able to put my plan into practice, but because I was being deprived of the opportunity to see if it would work or not. I have always felt cheated by lost opportunities. The battle for which I was outbid, the campaign from which I was excluded, the return to the Inner Sphere which I will miss if it does not occur soon-all these make me feel as though I have trained to run a race that, at the last minute, has been switched to another universe.