The Red Corsair looked haggard, the chelating agents having given her flesh a grayish cast. Nelson knew from practical experience that the drugs made the patient nauseous, which was a horrible way to endure the rigors of blasting away from a planet. Moreover, leaving a world under greater than one gravity's acceleration was tough even when a passenger was in the best of health.

Her eyes remained bright even though they had a tendency to linger in one place for too long. "I trust you do not expect gratitude."

"What I expect is immaterial." Nelson held his head high and clasped his hands at the small of his back. "A brush with death has not changed you."

"A warrior would have left me to die." She glanced through the viewport and the world receding in it. "You could have been long gone and we would never have found you."

"I did not know, at the time, that the Wolf Clan had a unit on your trail or that they had arrived at the nadir jump point." Nelson kept his voice even and somewhat distracted. "Had I run, your people would have hunted me down on Zhongshan until they found me."

"Had you known you could have escaped, would you have taken that chance?"

"That is a hypothetical question. What's the point in worrying about it now? What is done is done."

She slammed her right fist into the bed. "No! It is not done." Her eyes burned with an angry light and tracked him carefully. "It's not a hypothetical question, Nelson, and I know the answer to it. The answer is no. You would never have left me there."

Is she right?He shook his head, as much in answer to his internal question as to contradict her statement. "Never is too absolute. I could have left you there."

"No." She remained adamant. "It is your weakness, you people of the Inner Sphere. You cling to the warped view that compassion toward the enemy makes you morally superior. If you cannot win by force ofarms, you can claim a moral victory by doing something kind and sweet and honest for those who subjugate you. And you can atone for the savagery of your attack by having mercy on its survivors."

The speech left her breathless, but Nelson said nothing to fill the void. The words rang true to him. Compassion to the vanquished and the weak was lauded as a traditional value. Even the fierce martial society of the Draconis Combine held that the wise man could balance ninjoand giri,compassion and duty. The Federated Commonwealth clung to the same ideals in the twin facets of medieval chivalry embodied by King Arthur, Frederick the Great, and other heroes from millennia before.

It struck him that while the militaristic traditions of the Inner Sphere sought to balance these two concepts, the Clans had stripped away compassion in their drive to create the perfect soldiers. Ultimately, Nelson acknowledged, a warrior who could kill quickly and without remorse would be superior. He would also become a nihilistic machine that killed and killed until he was stopped or until he had reduced everything to anarchy and death.

He realized that this singleness of purpose was what had attracted him to the Red Corsair and also what made her repulsive. By abandoning compassion perhaps she showed him what he might have become had destiny not maimed him, had he never been forced to hold back. She was at the pinnacle of what he had once hoped to achieve when dreaming of glory as a warrior. He thought he had grown beyond those dreams, maturing along with his understanding of compassion, but someone inside of him— the hunter, the stalker—hungered for release.

Yet Nelson feared that release. He hated the lack of control and was afraid that he would fail and die. He also feared what he would do in the throes of a killing frenzy. War was brutal enough without any brakes on the savagery. Because he feared the hunter within himself, it repelled him to see his secret desires reflected in the Red Corsair's eyes.

Her voice returned in a harsh croak. "Bryan reported to me that he successfully countermanded my order to have the orphanage destroyed. He commended you on your diligence in passing my final order on to him."

Nelson managed to keep the smile off his face.

The Red Corsair pushed herself higher up in the bed. "I have not told him that you duped him. If I did, he would demand your death in a Circle of Equals. I will not allow that."

"Afraid Bryan would die?"

She laughed hoarsely. "Success makes you cocky, Nelson. No, Bryan would rip your heart out and let it drip blood into your eyes as you died." She closed her eyes and smiled in pleasure at the prospect. "But you have given me a tool to use against Bryan, and you are the sop I can throw him if I need to deflect him."

"That explains why he will not get to fight me." Nelson watched her closely. "Now why will I not get to fight him?"

"Because you would like to die to escape me, quiaff?"

She paused and caught her breath. "You saved me so I would be in your debt, then you disobeyed me so I would have you destroyed. I can read you too well, Nelson."

"You assign me motives you would like to see in yourself." Nelson shook his head. "I saved you for the same reason I countermanded your order. When a warrior takes life, it is to prevent an even greater number from losing theirs. You may live for war, but I live to guard against the necessity of war."

"Did you think to educate me by saving me?"

"No, for I did not think at all. You were wounded and could have died. I acted to deny death another victory." He looked down. "I acted because I did not want to see you die."

Her smiled broadened in a most disquieting manner. "You will think better of such impulses in the future, I believe."

Though she tried to put her words coldly, Nelson heard a hesitation that he could not put down to fatigue. He looked up and caught her watching him. In an instant he knew what she was thinking and it gave him a glimmering of a future he did not like at all.

She is as much intrigued with my ability to be compassionate as I am with her capacity to be utterly ruthless. We are matter and anti-matter locked in a spiral course down a gravity well. Things will move faster and faster until we come together and mutually annihilate each other.

"You don't own me." Nelson hardened his eyes. "You never will."

"I've owned you from the first moment we saw each other." Her eyes focused distantly. "We are soul-mirrors, Nelson Geist. In one another we will each live out our destinies and greet our fates."

16

DropShip Barbarossa , Zenith Recharging Station Garrison

Federated Commonwealth

17 May 3055

 

Victor watched the screen as the Clan Masakaricame in at his Prometheus.He winced—which he told himself was better than flinching—as the image shook and his 'Mech went down. Ranna is not even Bloodnamed yet. The Wolf Clan is nastier than all hell.

Galen paused at the hatchway and rapped on the bulkhead. "You will want to see this, sir." He held up a holodisk and its mirrored surface split the light into rainbow fragments. ComStar got some homemade h-vid off Zhongshan. Besides, you'll go blind if you watch those battle ROMs anymore."

"Wouldn't do any good. I'd still see Ranna coming after me in my dreams." Victor punched the Eject button and the holovid disk made from the battle ROMs on Arc-Royal came out. He slipped it back into a protective sleeve while Galen put the next one into the viewer.