"PERHAPS, STAR COMMANDER, YOU MISUNDERSTOOD THE QUESTION?"

Bast stood up. "You are a freeborn, after all. I forget that things must be spelled out. What I said, honored warrior, was that the Clan eugenics program produced superior warriors. Which, of course, means that it produces superior human beings. Therefore, wepraise the eugenics program here, quiaff?"

Aidan knew that he must respond, but he could not say it. Why did a simple afflodge in his throat?

Bast leaned toward Aidan, the stink of his breath rushing forward. "We praise the eugenics program here, quiaff? QUIAFF,you rotten freebirth!"

All restraint left Aidan in a rush. He grabbed Bast and roughly pulled him forward. Bast staggered backward. His eyes showed terrible pain. Aidan got Bast's neck between his forearm and squeezed it with a steady pressure. Then something in Bast's neck snapped and vision left his eyes forever. The man's body quickly slumped and Aidan threw him to the floor the way he would toss away litter.

BATTLETECH

LE5117

LEGEND OF THE  JADE PHOENIX

VOLUME 2

BLOODNAME

ROBERT THURSTON

ROC

Published by the Penguin Group

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First published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc.

First Printing, October, 1991 10987654321

Series Editor: Donna Ippolito Cover: Bruce Jensen Interior illustrations: Jeff Laubenftein Mechanical drawings: Steve Venters

Copyright e FASA, 1991 All rights reserved

Roc is a trademark of New American Library, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc. BATTLETECH, FASA, and the distinctive BATTLETECH and FASA logos are trademarks of the FASA Corporation, 1026 W. Van Buren, Chicago, Illinois, 60507.

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Prologue

Some years previously, when Diana was still a child, she had learned many things about her father.

"He is of the Clan and yet not of the Clan," said her mother, whose name was Peri.

"I do not understand Clan," Diana piped, her voice clear and precise even at the age of four years. Though she often heard other children or lower-caste adults use contractions in their speech, Diana never did, nor even slurred her words so that childish sounds might be mistaken for contractions.

"Clan is what we are, what we belong to, what we are loyal to. The Clan provides for us, for all castes within it. It is the Clan that makes sure all have useful work, work that contributes to the common goals. Someday we of the Clans will return to take our rightful place in the Inner Sphere, restoring the Star League that once ruled all the stars in that vast space."

"What is the Inner Sphere? What is the Star League?"

"In time, Diana, you will learn about both, but in the proper places."

"What is wrong with this place?"

They were in a corner of a large laboratory, the largest at the science station on Tokasha, where Peri had worked as a lab tech for more than five years. Even though their quarters provided for child care, Diana considered the lab her real nursery, the place where she loved to come and sometimes play, but mostly inhabit just to be with Peri. She was at the stage of not wishing to be parted from her mother.

Freeborns were like that, said a portly man named Watson, the project leader on Tokasha. In a sibko, on the other hand, the children could only depend on one another; their alliances were intersib. Because freeborns usually had at least one known parent to care for them, their tendency was to stay close out of fear that the parent might be taken away—by death or by the Clan. Children learned very early that the Clan did not respect freeborn parentage and did not hesitate to separate parents from children. Even at age four, Diana feared that more than she feared monsters or shadows in the night.

It was a legitimate fear, as events turned out. When Diana was nine, Peri was assigned to the Main Science Center on Circe, where her work would not permit taking the child with her. Now a full-fledged scientist, Peri sent fewer and fewer communications to her daughter. Her specialty was the study of how sibko members went from childhood to warrior training to the Trial of Decision, where they got their one chance to become members of the warrior caste. For each stage Peri compiled data on how many sibko members did not succeed in the Trial and into what other roles in Clan life they were channeled. She was particularly concerned with how many cadets made it to the Trial (damn few, as it alwaysturned out) and how many of those actually tested out to become warriors.

Diana's father had been a cadet who failed in the Trial, and one of Peri's goals was to establish for her own knowledge why that had happened. And, for that matter, Peri wanted to know why she herself had flushed out during one of the later stages of warrior training. (During this period, she often recalled the afternoon she had to leave the sibko barracks forever after flushing out, and the talk she had with the boy who would one day become Diana's father. As a result of that long-ago conversation Peri had conceived the ambition to do exactly the research that was now her work.) As her work began to absorb her more and more, the writing of reports superseded the writing of letters to her daughter. Her findings were, Peri was informed, an important contribution to a much larger project whose purpose was to discover methods to graduate more warriors from the sibko/cadet groups into the warrior caste.

Then Diana received her own assignment, and mother and daughter lost touch completely. But when Diana was four, they were still very close.

"There is nothing wrong with the laboratory," Peri said, smiling down at her daughter. "It is just the wrong place for you to learn about the Clan. There will be schoolrooms and training sessions and memory drills. You will know enough soon enough. Now is the time to be young."

"Tell me again the name of our Clan."

"We are the Jade Falcons."

"And what is a jade falcon?"

"A bird that may be mythical, although some claim to have sighted them and even trained them for the hunt. They fly high, it is said, and do not easily come down to ground level."

"Like my father."