A matter of semantics, perhaps.

Then again, semantics were what divided them from spheroids, kept them from falling back to barbarity and honorlessness. Yes, Petr brought great honor and glory to his Aimag, but only because he worked to bring honor to himself. As he had told Petr during their combat, such thinking would eventually bring a man down, bring down his Aimag and the Clan as a whole. Bringing honor to the Aimag for the sake of the Aimag… true honor lay in such currents.

Out of the corner of his eye, Sha saw Bek slice down to the bottom deck, landing on his hands, right by the bulkhead. He used the momentum to somersault into the bulkhead, where he drove off after a half-twist for realignment and vectored back in toward Jard—an aerospace fighter lining up for another blistering pass with charged particle cannons and loaded ballistic weapons. Sha nodded absentminded approval at their silence, despite the hard blows that continued to purple flesh and tear bleeding wounds.

Sha focused on a train of thought only he could drive. It went beyond trying to change Petr’s idea of outdated loyalties; it required trying to change the very way in which he lived.

Like this trial, Sha’s own trial continued. Yet this new phase would be much more difficult than the last: not simply defeating Petr—that victory could never be in doubt—but defeating his very character.

A genuine smile (as genuine as any for Sha) curved his lips in unaccustomed tautness. Could there be any greater challenge? To change the very essence of another person? Of another warrior?

Sha crouched and hunkered left—the cool metal of the platform a welcome sensation after the heat generated by the combatants—as Jard sailed through the space his head had occupied a moment before, piling into the bulkhead with terrific force. The metal actually vibrated with the force of the impact—the signal the trial was over.

Sha glanced at the body of Jard as it slowly floated away from him, limbs askew and blood bubbling up from the crushed nose.

Of course, defeat was always an option. Yes, if only death would make Petr see, then so it would be, regardless of the lost resource.

Beta Aimag Hospice, Near Halifax

Vanderfox, Adhafera

Prefecture VII, The Republic

18 July 3134

His skin did not feel like his own.

Petr swam up through a lake of malaise, his whole body and mind fighting against his indomitable will. Memories, like bubbles, rose to the surface around him. Each exploding in a miniature display of subconscious/conscious pyrotechnics—a sound-and-light kaleidoscope show only seen, only known, only heard by him.

Yet the bubbles did not proceed in any orderly fashion. Percolated by his rage, they swirled into an unknowable pattern, strobing memories from years past with those of recent design.

Petr tried vainly to roll over and crush the spheres

The scent of blood clotting in the nose of an eight-year-old, his first combat lessons begun. The shiv-trainer suspended in the air, a revolving god whose features never changed, never altered, whether handing out praise or a thrashing. The girl, with flashing eyes, short brown hair and heaving chest; triumphant smile; knuckle-scraped left fist, smeared with his blood; defeat, a bitter taste worse than any blow.

though the pain became a living entity when fed

A noble hall on a forgotten world. Strange, slightly noxious scents flooding the room—alien, local food. The viscount preparing it himself, only a loincloth covering his newly shaven body; his loss requiring that no hair be left to mark his manhood. The rump, with tail lashed around several vegetables—apples?—of a local dago, spit fried, served to Petr by the viscount’s own hand—victory sweet, supple, hard.

by such movements, yet he needed to

Brown hair grown longer, heaving chest now breasts; a sibkin, a friend. Eyes flashing ecstasy, sweat slicked bodies moving as Mech Warrior and ’Mech; becoming one on this battlefield; used and taken, given and gifted. Rhythm building, tongue, teeth and screams. Pain and loss forgotten in an endless flash of primordial need; spent, panting, bodies entwined, an embrace of love …of death.

stop the cycle, or fall once more into the abyss of his own

Laser fire punching holes in his armor. Muscles still learning, still straining to manhandle the thirty-ton ’Mech. A cheek two years from stubble slams into the neurohelmet; flotsam and jetsam of his subconscious explode around him, dragging him to defeat. Clenching joysticks, baring teeth, he pushes back, back against the odds. Success on his tongue, not the tang of his own blood sliding back, down, slicking each taste bud with his own mortality.

making.

Bubbles, bubbles, bubbles… his bubbles. His life. His memories. His defeats and victories. Petr realized it did not matter that they arose in such disconcerting numbers or such coalescing confusion. They were his.

Taking a deep breath, Petr relaxed. Felt the cool sheets under his skin, sunlight across his exposed left leg, the soft, warm breeze redolent with the scent of another monster storm waiting to be unleashed; scents of flora and fauna tickling his nose, still alien though he had been downside for weeks. He sucked in another deep breath until he felt his ribs creak with the pain… and pulled his memories within, where they burst like a decompressed chamber.

“And how are you this morning?”

Petr wanted to keep his eyes closed, but realized it would do no good; the witch would know he no longer slept. He cracked his eyelids, felt the not completely unpleasant light fill his vision.

“That is right. I know you are awake. You might as well open them farther.” It just did not seem right. Such a soft, comforting voice—not to mention her appealing looks of blue eyes, milk chocolate shoulder-length hair and freckled face—should not belong to the witch; he knew her name, but refused to remember it. The savashri simply would not leave him be. Leave him alone. Leave him to wallow in his own pity. Witch!

“What, no words this morning? No cursing or whining?”

“I do not whine,” Petr said. Promptly began coughing lightly, his throat still scorched from the fire and heat.

“Ah, so you can speak today.”

Petr turned his head away, frustrated. What would a medico know of his disgrace? Of the pain that bit infinitely deeper than any wound or broken bone?

She hummed while checking her monitors; he tried to ignore her, but found it impossible. After his small victory over himself, Petr once more became powerless. He knew full well she strove to raise his spirits, to heal his physical and emotional wounds. Yet she could not know (he would not tell!) that her constant haranguing, her constant pushing to move him out of bed, to flex his muscles and stretch his flesh—his mind—only drove him deeper into himself.

He had suffered the most humiliating defeat possible: he had survived. And now he lay there, nursed back to a gross semblance of life he no longer cared to hold on to. He closed his eyes, but he could almost predict where her footfalls would echo next in the small room, where her ministrations would take her, in a path as surely determined as a hypersonic Gauss round slung from a ’Mech.

“You have a visitor today.”

“You can tell Jesup I do not wish to see him.”

“Has Jesup ever asked permission to see you?” The tone of disapproval in her voice lightened Petr’s mood a crack.

“I suppose not. Then who?”

“ovKhan Sha Clarke.”

For a moment Petr could not breathe. Her words were a firebomb that detonated within the small confines of the room, sucking all oxygen to itself, making it impossible to breathe, to talk. He could barely discern the soft beep of the monitoring equipment through the blood pounding in his head; the headache almost surged back. He restrained a gasp—refused to allow her to see such weakness—though he brought his bandaged right arm up to the swaddled portion of his head.