CHAPTER ONE

Overlord-C-Class DropShip CGBS Sharp Claw

Docked to Black Lion-Class WarShip CGBS Bear’s Den

Holmsbu Zenith Jump Point, Free Rasalhauge Republic

17 May 3050

As a warrior, Star Commander Richard Bekker constantly swam through an ocean of danger, skillfully slipping through the deadly sea like a shark gliding through dark waters. Breathing it like it were air.

He had been reared in the Howling Tundra sibko, and the crèche’s motto was never far from his mind. A Trueborn warrior saw so much danger that he often missed the specific danger that would be his doom. That was the essence of the sibko’s warning.

Richard was determined never to make that error.

Nevertheless, when he looked down on the cargo deck from his zero-gee perch on the narrow catwalk crowded up against the DropShip’s interior bulkhead, he did not see his destruction. All he saw was a tactical problem to be solved. It was not that Richard was ignorant of the terrible risk—he was not a block-headed fool. But he lived every day with death, and worse, the possibility of defeat.

This was no different.

The DropShip’s techs were busy elsewhere, preparing for the jump to hyperspace. Richard had the cargo deck all to himself, the cavernous space silent save for the rush of ventilation and the thrum of machinery rattling the deck plating.

The dim glow that filled the cargo hold was dirty and jaundiced, filtered through light fixtures painted with dust and welding smoke. The air tasted bitter and metallic on Richard’s tongue. It felt greasy between his fingers.

He leaned forward, his hands resting on the waist-high handrail, anchored by a boot tucked into a steel loop welded to the catwalk. The walk ringed the space’s interior, providing maintenance access to the hold’s high bulkheads. In the corner opposite Richard, it broadened into a mezzanine where parts and equipment were stored.

From his vantage, the mezzanine sat just to the right of a roll-up garage door used to offload cargo. Opposite that door, anchored to the interior bulkhead on Richard’s left, was a quartet of towering racks that held a hundred kinds of ammunition.

Anchored to the deck between the reloads and the garage door was a vast sea of material: tarp-covered crates and shrink-wrapped pallets, steel drums and plastic totes, jeeps and trucks and forklifts. Everything an army on the move might need. There was even a huge Fire Moth arm pushed up against one of the bulkheads.

Not a cubic millimeter of space was wasted—except where technicians, sweating and cursing, had cleared out the cargo beneath the mezzanine. In the center of that empty space someone had taken a white piece of chalk and had drawn a circle ten meters in diameter on the ship’s rust-colored deck. It did not look like much.

But it was a battlefield.

Richard had told himself that he had come here to learn the cargo hold’s secrets, to harvest every last tactical advantage. In truth, he was here to imprint this place, this moment on his memory. Because his victory today was all but assured.

A judgment he believed right up until the moment he heard the voice behind him. “I knew you would be here. I knew it.” It was a woman’s voice, high and smooth and pleasing to hear. Corinne.

Richard was a seasoned battlefield commander, a man who prepared for sudden disaster at every turn and so he was rarely surprised, let alone startled. But Corinne’s inexplicable appearance had startled him. His hands tightened on the railing, his knuckles going white.

It was a little thing, and nine out of ten people would not even have noticed it.

Unfortunately, Corinne was the tenth person.

“I am sorry to disturb you,” she said, letting him know that she had seen that tiny moment of surprise.

Of vulnerability.

How had she crept up on him?

She must have pulled herself along the deck, hidden by the cargo. She would have worked her way to the catwalk and leaped, soaring silently upwards in null gravity, hitting the underside of the walkway exactly right so she could wrap her hand around one of the railing’s stanchions and arrest her motion without bringing forth the slightest morsel of sound, not a grunt as her body hit, not a creak as the walkway shifted with her weight, not even a relieved exhalation when she was finished. Then, she had worked her way over the railing.

All without drawing his attention.

She is truly accomplished in zero gee.

For the first time since he had learned of Aaron Hall’s death, he felt a flutter of unease stir in his gut.

He turned towards her and a slow, easy grin curled across his face. “I have never before found your company disturbing, quiaff?”

She laughed softly, her dark blue eyes twinkling despite the dim light. Corinne had always enjoyed the game, the battle within a battle. It was one of the things he liked best about her.

Her hair was golden blond and it had been long, shoulder length, but he saw that she had cut it short, disposing of the ponytail that might give an opponent a handle to wrench her head around in a hand-to-hand fight. Corinne would not willingly give an enemy even a single advantage.

Richard admired her for it.

Like him she was tall and strong, but neither warrior was a block of muscle. The blue uniform coveralls Corinne wore hinted at a body that was lean and quick.

He remembered that body under his hands, the taste of her mouth on his. He had coupled with her many times. In the Clan’s engineered culture, sex was not tied to reproduction, so it was not burdened with any of the bizarre taboos that plagued the citizens of the Inner Sphere. Sex was a gift freely given between warriors.

Richard had heard other men say Corinne was the same in bed as she was on the battlefield: imaginative and ruthless.

But Richard had never found her so. With him she was passionate, yes, but he never felt like she was trying to defeat him. With him, she was almost…tender. It was a Spheroid word whose meaning Richard did not fully understand. Tender meant gentle…but somehow it did not also mean weak.

There was something more between he and Corinne, some…familiarity, no doubt borne of their shared experience in the Howling Tundra sibko.

For a moment she stared at him with eyes the color of pelagic waters. Then she stepped next to him and turned to face the chalk-drawn circle, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with him as she looked out over the cargo deck. “I am afraid you may not find this meeting as pleasant as some of our other encounters.”

He laughed. “Corinne, you should know by now that I enjoy a good fight just as much as a good rut.”

“What I know,” she said gravely, still looking out at the cargo hold, “is that you do not like to lose.”

Of course, he was not going to lose. Corinne’s silent appearance on the catwalk had worried him, but he was still confident of victory. He knew what was coming and he was prepared.

Sometimes, in the Clans’ zeal to breed warriors who were both strong and fierce they failed to breed warriors who were smart. Like the other Clans, Clan Ghost Bear was burdened with some number of soldiers who were little more than brave morons.

Richard was not one of them.

He had seen this moment, this exact moment, the instant he had heard of Star Captain Aaron Hall’s fate. Beta Galaxy had received emergency tasking to jump back to Damian, a world rising up against its rightful conquerors. Hall had been racing back to the Sharp Claw in a jeep when he had lost control of the vehicle, skidding across a rain-slicked road and slamming into an oncoming truck. The Star Captain had been killed instantly.

Even now, Richard shuddered to think of his commander’s fate. It was a terrible way for a warrior to die, empty of meaning.

But that random death had brought him to this place.

Aaron Hall’s death had made Richard the acting commander of the 48th Striker Trinary. Of course, Corinne had immediately challenged his ascension to the rank of Star Captain. Because Clan Ghost Bear was at war, Star Colonel François Cote had forbade the use of augmented combat to settle the dispute. Having denied Corinne her prerogative as hunter to choose the type of combat, he had granted her the choice of venue. And she had chosen to fight Richard here on the cargo deck, a half-hour before the captain of the Bear’s Den called his crew to jump stations.

Corinne had, no doubt, selected the time because the WarShip and the DropShips riding her would be in free fall. She clearly hoped to use zero gee to counter Richard’s advantage in strength and speed.

All this, Richard had foreseen the very moment he had learned of Aaron Hall’s death.

“You will not beat me,” he murmured.

“No warrior truly understands the instrument of his destruction until it is too late,” she said.

He chuckled. “Of course. I very much doubt Star Captain Aaron Hall foresaw that his destruction would come in the form of a wayward jeep.”

“I was not speaking of Aaron Hall. I was speaking of you.”

Him? How could she mean him? He turned to peer at her.

“You do not believe me,” she said. “You think that you will defeat me and even, if by some strange fluke, you lose, it will not be your destruction, quiaff?”

“Aff,” said Richard, unable to keep a trace of amusement out of his voice.

Corinne nodded like she had expected that answer. “I will destroy you, Richard. It gives me no pleasure, but I will do it.”

Richard frowned. “I am stronger than you, faster than you. The better MechWarrior. I have never once lost a fight to you, not once in all the years we sparred together in the sibko. You know this.”

“Perhaps. But I will beat you today.”

“Because you maneuvered this Trial so it would take place in zero gee?”

She shrugged.

“Even if you did beat me, it would not destroy me.”

She looked up at him, that lovely face tilted toward his, those blazing eyes locked on his. “You defeated two opponents in your Trial of Position to win the rank of Star Commander.”

“As did you.”

Corinne inclined her head in thanks for his recognition. “Aff. But you went on to win the Bekker Bloodname. And you have distinguished yourself in combat in a way I have not. You are a ristar.”

“And if you were to beat me…”

“When I beat you, I will take the rank of Star Captain. I will be the ristar.” She paused. “There can only be one.”

Richard shook his head. “That is not so.”

Something bitter twisted Corinne’s pretty features. “You say that because you have been blessed with great fortune, Richard Bekker. You have never been second. Never. Take it from someone who has lived in your shadow all her life. There is only one first.”

“War is a fickle mistress, Corinne. Victory is never assured. If you were to win today, I might still win tomorrow.”

“Neg,” said Corinne sharply. “Once the Trinary is mine, I will always select the most dangerous missions for myself, so battle brings me the greatest honor. In any batchall, I will bid away your Star first. As long as I live, all opportunity for greatness will be lost to you. You are far too dangerous for me to show you even the slightest scrap of mercy, Richard. Once I get you down on the mat, I will never let you up.”

A chill wriggled down Richard’s spine. What he heard from Corinne was not her trying to gain some psychological advantage. What he heard from her was truth. She was trying to tell him the truth.

What he heard from her was the voice of his destruction.

“Why are you telling me all this?” he asked softly.

“We are sibkin,” she said using the Clan word that described two warriors raised in the same crèche, a word that simultaneously meant friend and enemy, sibling and lover.

Rival.

“I will destroy you,” she whispered. “It is the Clan way.” She shook her head. “But I take no pleasure in it.”

For a long moment he gazed into her grave eyes. “It seems you have made up your mind. I hope you will not be offended if I decide to fight back.”

Corinne laughed, a sound of unalloyed joy. “I would not have it any other way.”

Richard turned away from her and looked out over the arena, but he did not really see it. He was no longer thinking about the Trial. He did not believe that Corinne could beat him, but still, the chance was there and he had missed it. Just as the saying predicted.

He could not count on his destruction to always speak to him as clearly as Corinne had spoken to him today. The next time fate chose to warn him of his doom, he would be listening with better ears.

An alarm sounded, long and low, a jarring buzz that reached right through his chest, even as it echoed through the great space.

“All hands, thirty minutes to jump,” said a naval technician over the 1MC announcing circuit. “Thirty minutes to jump.”

He would not make the same mistake again.