“Door number one,” David called out as he drifted the hoverbike into a coasting glide. The engine cooled down into a whispering purr, generating just enough lift to keep the skirting from digging into the paved road. “Techs, ’Mechs, and ladies’ lingerie.”

“What you infantry wear under your battle armor is your own business,” Evan shot back, stepping down from the skirt and flexing some life back into his arms.

David goosed a one-eighty and the hoverbike grounded almost perfectly between the yellow stripes of a parking space, nose pointed back out. He powered down the engine, then pulled out the activation chip, but left it dangling on one of the control sticks. “Do your aerobics later. Get in there and meet your ride.”

Evan was delaying. He nodded, and led his friend around the corner, into the cavernous bay.

It was like stepping into a fabled chamber, where suddenly you were Jack serving the Giants’ table. The smell of oil, grease, and hot metal assaulted Evan. Technicians wheeled around handcarts and drove bright yellow forklifts and, in the darker recesses of the hangar, someone stomped around in a LoaderMech with a massive crate clenched in viselike hands.

IndustrialMechs were racked into bays on either side of the massive doors. A ForestryMech, and a modified Construction machine with one arm replaced by an autocannon and the second arm being worked on. Evan quickly dismissed them for the machine facing him from across the expanse of stained ferrocrete. A Ti Ts’ang, brought in by an officer defecting from the Triarii. Named for the King of the Earth’s Womb in Han mythology the ten-meter-tall ’Mech sported an obviously Capellan-influenced design. The head was fashioned after a helmet of ancient Chinese armor. Angled shoulder-plates resembled a mantle similar to those worn by Capellan nobles. It also carried a double-bladed ax in the right hand, although no Mongol barbarian had ever carried such a weapon with its laser-sharpened titanium blade.

Evan was one of the three MechWarriors now authorized to pilot the sixty-ton avatar.

“Go on,” David said, rocking Evan forward with a shove. “I’ll meet you outside.”

“You aren’t heading back?”

David laughed and nodded toward a small team of technicians making final adjustments to a set of Fa Shih battle armor, a gift from the Second McCarron’s. “Are you kidding? I’ve waited days to get checked out on that gear.”

“Ready in ten,” Evan told him.

“I’ll be gone in five.” David sketched a casual salute, then jogged over to the waiting techs. It was still a game to the larger man, but finally he’d found the chance he’d always wanted.

A ’Mech-rated technician waited for Evan at the foot of the Ti Ts’ang. She wore a red-stained jumpsuit that looked as if its arms had been soaked in blood. Packing grease, actually, the kind that protected fresh myomer.

“Problem with the myomer?” He read the name tag embroidered onto her work clothes: Brett Spore, Tech Sergeant.

“Right leg was twitchy,” she said, her voice a bit high-strung, but confident. “I added some new thigh roping.” Myomer acted like muscles, expanding and contracting when electrical current passed through it. It made the upright machines possible. “Also replaced two heat sinks and tightened up the right arm actuator, so expect your swing to be a little stiff.”

Evan let his gaze wander up the massive machine, from the bell-bottom flare of its jump jets to the dark visor of ferroglass. “I’m not taking her into battle today,” he promised. “Just a short patrol.”

“You don’t know that, sir. Just try to bring her back in one piece.” Tech Sergeant Spore walked over to a gantry and powered up its cradle.

She was right, he didn’t know. No one did. He nodded his thanks, climbed into the cradle and gripped the steel rail with both hands as she lifted him to the level of the BattleMech’s head. Dogging the hatch shut behind him, Evan quickly stripped down to a pair of tight-fitting shorts and field boots. He stored his clothes in a locker built into the back of his command chair, trading them for a cooling vest. He buckled on the vest and slid around, into the chair.

A series of toggles warmed up the fusion engine and all control musculature. A coolant line fed out of the base of his chair, and Evan inserted it into the snap-lock fitted at the lower edge of his vest. From an overhead shelf, he pulled down a neurohelmet, made certain it was his, and then snugged it on for a good fit.

A cable spooled down near his feet. Evan picked it up, checked for tangles, and threaded it into the restraining loops on the front of his vest. The cable’s plug locked into a helmet socket just beneath his chin. It was the last link of the neuro-feedback system that fed his own equilibrium into the massive gyroscope. He flipped one final set of toggles, and the fusion engine thrummed to life with a deep, muted roar that vibrated up through the deckplates.

“Startup sequence complete,” the computer’s synthesized voice whispered through the gear built into his neurohelmet. The voice was asexual, though Evan thought he detected just a hint of feminine current running beneath the surface. A cadence like Jenna’s lilting tone. “Proceed with primary security protocol.”

“Kurst, Evan. Cadet. Identification: LCMA-77-EK.” He waited while the computer checked its security logs, compared his identification and voiceprint and mental signature to the record physically stored on a circuit board.

“Identification confirmed. Proceed with secondary protocol.”

Because voiceprints and even brain wave signatures could be faked with the right equipment, BattleMechs were coded with a verbal key that only the MechWarrior knew. Some cadets strung together a list of nonsense syllables—fa-la-do-do-ray-ti-la and so on—since stealing another’s simulator code (and then using it to crash sim-grade averages) was just one more game played among the student body. Evan had memorized a passage from Lao Tse’s Tao Teh Ching.

“Authorization confirmed. Full access granted.”

Throttling into his first heavy steps, rocking with the wide-legged gait of the Ti Ts’ang, Evan strode for the open bay doors even as he whispered the translation of the key back to himself. “My words are easy to understand. And my actions are easy to perform. Yet no other can understand or perform them.”

Verse seventy, on Individuality.

“Now let’s see what there is to see,” he said in a stronger voice as he broke out into the Liao sunlight. A blue speck brightened on his head’s-up display, and the BattleMech bumped forward as if it had been tapped on its right shoulder by a heavy hand.

“Mind if I tag along?”

David. Evan glanced out of the ferroglass shield at his right side, saw the Fa Shih battlesuit perched on his right shoulder-guard with magnetic locks sealing it to the ’Mech. “I guess I don’t have much choice,” he said, voice-activated mic picking up his words and broadcasting them on a secure band. He steered straight south, intending to take a run along the lower picket line. “Not unless I want to scrape you off with my hatchet.”

At least the infantryman glanced up at the four-ton hatchet. “That would not be cool. Especially since I was kind enough to give you a lift earlier. You’re just returning the favor.”

“So I am,” Evan said, remembering the breakneck pace at which David had pushed the hoverbike. He throttled into a run, pushing the Ti Ts’ang forward at better than ninety kilometers per hour. Metal-shod feet pounded the ground with earthshaking force.

Outside, David hunched down to strengthen his magnetic grip. “Can’t you smooth it out a bit?” he asked, voice vibrating.