CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Black Lion-Class WarShip CGBS Bear’s Den

Damian Pirate Point, Clan Ghost Bear Occupation Zone

Richard’s mouth tasted as dirty and dry as a used ashtray. Excruciating pain stabbed through his shoulders and elbows, his knees and wrists—really every part of his body that could bend. His nose was still broken, which made it hard to breathe. He imagined ants were crawling all over every square millimeter of his skin—except the crisped, black skin wrapped around his right hand, an ominous sign that his burns had been severe enough to cause nerve damage.

But none of that was as bad as the chamber itself.

After the asteroid had first hit, he remembered waking up in the truck and thinking he might have been buried alive.

Now he was sure of it.

The medical techs had placed him in a steel tube little bigger than a coffin. Intellectually, Richard understood the importance of hyperbaric oxygen therapy. But if the technicians had left him the slug thrower he had found in the DC locker, he would have shot off the chamber’s locking mechanism and killed every one of them to get out.

The funny thing was, he had never been claustrophobic before.

Just one more thing the asteroid had changed.

The medical techs had not told Richard much about the disaster, but he had gleaned enough to piece together what had happened.

In her haste to put down the rebellion on Damian, Galaxy Commander Tseng had ordered Bear’s Den to jump into a pirate point. Such jumps were often dangerous. Pirate points were gravitational null points, transient phenomenon brought about by the shifting position of a star’s planets. Some were pulled out of nowhere for brief stretches of time, only to disappear just as quickly. A JumpShip captain who did not have precise and updated data on the orbital mechanics of a star system risked destruction by jumping into a pirate point.

Bear’s Den had survived the jump to Damian with no trouble—only to blunder into a passing asteroid moments later. Rocky debris swept up by the asteroid’s gravity slammed into the WarShip first, rippling along the hull like shrapnel, punching through armor and tearing apart the vital systems underneath.

But that was nothing compared to the damage done by the great rock itself. The asteroid, an immense slab of nickel-iron, had clipped the Sharp Claw. It took only the merest brush of contact from the asteroid to rip the DropShip apart, tearing away a full quarter of the Overlord-C.

And obliterating the Third Bear Striker.

A great number of Richard’s brothers and sisters had been killed in an instant. Explosive decompression and blunt force trauma had smashed the life out of scores of warriors and technicians in the blink of an eye. As time bled on, fire and asphyxiation and finally hypothermia came for the rest.

The click of a microphone interrupted his grim reverie and Richard closed his eyes, expecting yet one more command from the medical technicians.

So he was surprised when he heard a familiar voice instead, deep and measured and powerful. “Greetings, Star Commander.”

Richard’s eyes flew open. Star Colonel Cote. Richard was lying on his back as he had been instructed, but now he rolled painfully onto his side so he could see the man peering at him through a flanged sight glass.

The top of Cote’s head was swaddled in bandages and he looked pale beneath his bronze skin.

But he was alive.

Richard reached out with a trembling hand and touched the mike button. “Greetings, Star Colonel.”

“They tell me you pulled eight warriors from the ’Mech Bay before you succumbed to decompression sickness. You saved ten warriors in all, Star Commander. Your bravery may even win you a few lines in the Remembrance.”

Richard blinked, confused. Ten warriors. “Uh, I am sorry, sir, but do you not mean eleven warriors?”

Cote stared down at him, his black eyes grave, his face hard. “No, Star Commander. It is I who is sorry. It was not eleven, but only ten.”

“Tomas,” Richard whispered. “Tomas did not survive.”

Cote was silent for a long moment. “Neg,” he said gently. “Tomas still lives.”

Richard stared up at his commander, at first not understanding.

And then it hit him.

“Corinne,” he whispered.

“The passage was blocked by debris,” said Cote. “We had to take the alternate route. She could not climb on her own, not with her broken foot. I carried Tomas up first, intending to go back for her, but before I could, the spilled ordnance detonated. The explosion punched through the cargo deck bulkhead and into the passageway where she was waiting.” He hesitated. “I am sorry.”

Not with her broken foot.

Richard suddenly remembered the feel of that foot in his hand, how he had jerked it down, snapping the bones in her ankle. She could not make it with her broken foot, the foot he had broken. And he had not been there to carry her. What had she told him before he had left?

To get to safety, we need you.

“I betrayed her,” Richard whispered.

“It was not about her,” snapped Cote.

The Star Colonel’s harsh tone jerked Richard out of his thoughts and he looked up at his commander. “Sir, I—”

“Your valor in the ’Mech Bay cost the life of a single warrior, but saved eight. There is no rational way to look upon that as anything other than a victory.”

“But Corinne was sibkin!” He locked eyes with Cote, fury coursing through his veins.

“You should have beaten her,” said the Star Colonel, his voice cold. “You were stronger than her. Quicker. Smarter. And after what you have just endured, no one can question your resourcefulness or your bravery. You were better than her in every way.” Cote held up a single finger. “Except one.”

Cote shook his head. “Star Captain Corinne had the heart of a warrior, tempered in the crucible of war. But you, Richard Bekker, you with all your fine skills and your impressive codex, you are nevertheless blinded by sentiment.” Cote’s lip curled. “By love.”

The word was like a hammer blow. Love. Love? Romantic love was a rare and forbidden concept among the Clans. Yet Richard could not think of Corinne’s loss without a horrible emptiness opening up inside him, a yawning blackness he did not think he could ever fill. Was this terrible grief what Spheroids called love? Was this the thing that pervaded their entire culture, that filled their songs and their stories?

This?

Cote leaned closer to the little port and Richard struggled to bear up under the weight of that baleful gaze.

“The Ghost Bears have come to the Inner Sphere to save its people from their own decadence. We fight among them, live among them, but we are not them. You must guard against their ways.”

And right then, Richard’s strength failed him. He looked away from that dark gaze.

Without even realizing it, he had strayed from Kerensky’s path.

He had shown Corinne mercy and it had cost him the Trial. He had gone to the ’Mech Bay because he could not live in a world in which he needed to destroy Corinne to advance. He had saved ten warriors—and yet he could only think of the one he had failed.

Either Richard was flawed, broken in some deep part of himself, of the Clan was wrong.

But the Clan could not be wrong.

After a moment, he looked back at the little sight glass, but Cote was gone.

Slowly, Richard lay back down, staring up at the steel surface of his tiny prison.

Corinne’s words suddenly came back to him. Perhaps, one day, war will claim my life. Then I will removed as an obstacle to your success just as today you were removed as an obstacle to mine. How could he know that her words would be proven true on the very day she uttered them?

A true Clanner would step up and grab the opportunity, claim the rank and position, just as Corinne did after the death of Aaron Hall.

But for the first time in his life, Richard was not certain he could do it.

Corinne!

He closed his eyes.

No warrior truly understands the instrument of his destruction until it is too late.

It was the very first thing they had learned in the sibko, he and Corinne, sitting next to each other as they were schooled in the ways of Clan Ghost Bear.

Richard had been so determined to avoid the fate the motto promised. And yet destruction had announced itself, actually announced itself, over the 1MC in a voice that was even accompanied by a jarring alarm for good measure. Their destruction had been as obvious as it possibly could be.

Yet neither he nor Corinne had heard it.