As for the Summoner,the BattleMech had been ripped apart. Its left arm lay elsewhere on the field, and its entire left side was a tangle of metal, wires, and other components. Aidan's chief tech, a grizzled old man named Lenk, reported severe damage to the fusion engine and that several other systems were inoperative. Lenk told him that any repairs would be makeshift, and so the 'Mech could not possibly operate at peak efficiency.

Aidan agreed, ordering Lenk to tag the spare parts that might still be useful to other 'Mechs, then assigned the rest of the Summonerfor salvage. A good Clan officer always searched for the means to turn his defeats into virtues. A downed 'Mech, no matter how damaged, was never entirely scrapped. Someone somewhere would have a use for its remains. Nicholas Kerensky, he who had created the Clans, had instilled in his followers the absolute necessity for the severest economy measures. Nothing must be discarded until it had been squeezed dry of any possible new use. And, Aidan had noticed, there always seemed to be at least one more.

Warriors, too, wore out, for they were soon too old to fight. They often moved to support positions, training units, but failing that, these old warriors could still perform one more service for their Clan. In many battle situations the commander's only hope was to buy time by sending expendable troops into the fray. These warriors willingly sacrificed their lives. Aging warriors were often organized into such solahmaunits, then sent into the field for one last battle. Aidan thought of Ter Roshak, the training commander who had so changed the course of his life. Only weeks before, Roshak had given his life as a member of a solahmainfantry unit.

A sad fate, thought Aidan, for a valorous warrior. Ter Roshak had survived heroically only to die as cannon fodder, an ignominious end. But perhaps survival had been the man's fatal mistake. Aidan would sooner die in battle, preferably in his BattleMech and while destroying both his enemy and his enemy's 'Mech, than live to see his worth as a warrior used up.

Having served for twenty years, he, too, was edging toward being an old warrior. Aidan was almost forty, an age when a warrior was supposed to be considering his options as an aging member of his Clan. Fortunately for him, however, there was a war on, a war the Clans had been living, dying, and preparing to fight for centuries, ever since the Exodus of their ancestors from the Inner Sphere after the fall of the once-glorious Star League. A Star Colonel now, Aidan could conceivably rise to high command levels, become part of the guiding forces of the long-awaited invasion of the Inner Sphere. That would certainly add a few years to his usefulness as a warrior.

But he knew such ideas were mere delusion. Though he had legitimately earned all his promotions to this point, including his Bloodname, he carried a taint as a warrior that would let him go only so far as a warrior. His codex showed too many black marks. There was, for one, the dark cloud over the means by which he had earned warrior status. After Aidan had failed his first Trial of Position, Ter Roshak had schemed, even murdered, to give him an unprecedented, and illegal, second chance at the trial to become a Clan warrior, one of the highest honors to which any eligible young trueborn could aspire. The second taint involved Aidan's posing as a freeborn, the false identity he'd assumed for his second trial. The freeborn stigma still clung to him even after he had confessed his true identity. The third black mark was that he had competed for a Bloodname despite his past record. Only a day before the Trial of Bloodright competitions began, he had been forced to fight a Trial of Refusal to protest his Clan's denial of his right to compete for a Bloodname. Only by winning that contest could he overrule the Clan's decision. He had won the Trial of Refusal through a combination of intelligence and skill, yet he had never escaped the taint of the accusations against him. Last, but hardly least, Aidan had won the Bloodname through a last-ditch maneuver that no one could have imagined would succeed. Until the last instant, Aidan's opponent seemed to be on the verge of crushing Aidan totally.

And yet, it was Aidan who had won the contest and his opponent who died. He recalled the moments immediately after winning the Bloodname. He had passed out and been rescued from Rhea, the moon over the planet Ironhold, where the final Bloodname combat had taken place. Upon recovering, he had expected that winning the Bloodname contest would also win the respect of his fellow warriors. Instead, they regarded him with more suspicion than ever. Even the official ceremonies seemed to smack of perfunctoriness rather than the usual solemn Clan ritual. Perhaps, Aidan thought, his life would never again be free of the stain of scandal no matter what Trials or battles he won or lost.

Even with a Bloodname, his warrior assignments had been not much better than his assignments as a "free-born" warrior. Over the years, Aidan sometimes thought he must have served in every backwater military facility in the whole globular cluster that was the Clan empire.

"You're thinking bad thoughts again," Horse said, coming up alongside him. Aidan had qualified with Horse during his second warrior trial, and the two had served together ever since, with only three short interruptions. This time Aidan had specifically requested that Horse be assigned to his new command. Many of his trueborn officers grumbled secretly about that because Horse was a freeborn. Trueborns did not like serving with freeborns, especially within the same Star.

"I am famous for being unreadable, Horse. How can you know my thoughts?"

Horse stroked his new full beard, which he had recently grown. Freeborns often chose clothing or grooming styles in direct opposition to what the trues favored. Trueborn warriors were generally clean-shaven, and if they chose to be bearded, theirs tended toward thinner, less full growths. Horse's flowed outward like hairy flaps on either side of his jaw.

"I've known you for a long time. You're like an open book to me, one that I've read many times."

Aidan was so used to hearing Horse speak that by now he barely minded the man's excessive use of contractions—excessive even for a freeborn, who often used them out of defiance.

"How many books have you read many times?"

"More than you, especially since you made Star Colonel."

Horse was right. Lately Aidan had little time for his secret library, those paper books he had discovered so long ago in a Brian Cache. He had carried them hidden away and undiscovered from one assignment to the next. Now that he was a Star Colonel, he could read them openly, but no longer had the luxury of time.

"Well, what are you going to do now?" Horse said, pointing to Aidan's downed BattleMech. "We have no more Summoners."

Aidan had fought almost exclusively in Summoner'Mechs during his military career. He liked their tonnage, their various configurations, their jump capacity. Some warriors called him a "jumping fool" for the daring leaps he took with his 'Mech in battle. Yet there were few warriors who could attack while descending from a high jump as well as Aidan Pryde.

"I will take out MechWarrior Carmen's Timber Wolf."

"The Timber Wolf!"Horse's eyebrows went up in surprise. "That's a killer 'Mech."

"You should not call it that."

"Should I call it Deathtrap then? That's the name for it among the Elementals."

"Our Elementals have a morbid sense of humor, always have. But it is wrong to ascribe traits to a BattleMech. The fact that a few warriors have died piloting this particular—"