Horse just laughed. Aidan had been trying to clean up his language for some time, but Horse persisted in using freeborn slang and throwing in contractions wherever he could. The look on Horse's face when Aidan criticized his speech usually showed contempt for Aidan's warrior linguistic beliefs.

Well, so be it, Aidan thought. It was impossible to teach a freeborn to speak with honor, so it was no wonder the trueborn society that controlled the Clan empire looked down on them. Perhaps birth did dictate roles, as many Clan scientists believed. Horse would always be a freeborn, just as warriors were set in their caste. But what could be said of someone like Aidan, born of the highest caste while pretending to be of a lower one? Nothing dictated his role, except a rather cruel fate. And, as a Clansman, he should not believe in fate. A warrior created his or her own destiny. That was his goal now. To create his destiny.

5

When the Wolf Clan aerofighters went after the DropShip, Joanna was manning a medium pulse laser in a gunnery blister on the ship's port side. While reclining on the control station couch, she could fire more than two hundred rapid bursts of coherent light with a simple squeeze of the joystick's trigger.

She awaited the appearance of an aerofighter against which to turn this weapon, one she had fired often enough in target practice but never in actual air combat. This would, in fact, be the first time she had participated in combat not set firmly on the ground. A real challenge, but then again, how hard could it be? Probably no different than directing autocannon fire from within a 'Mech cockpit, she thought, although the physical handling of the weapon itself would be a new sensation.

Joanna had volunteered to be a gunner when the young DropShip captain announced that a trio of his regular military complement were down with a virulent flu picked up at their last delivery. He thanked her profusely in his pleasantly boyish way, but truth to tell, Joanna believed the captain had done her a favor. The worst possibility, from her point of view, would have been to endure the battle from inside the ship, listening to the rumble of its weapons and feeling the hits from the other side. If she could not get planetside in time to participate in this battle, at least she could do some damage here.

Behind her, she heard a polite cough.

"Nomad, what are you doing here?"

"You forgot lunch. I brought you something to eat."

Joanna laughed. Her laughter, as always, was so raucous as to sound insulting to anyone not used to it. Nomad was definitely that, having been the butt of it so often that his day seemed off-center if Joanna did not laugh at him once. He would never have told her, but he believed his sarcasm and her scorn kept them both performing at peak efficiency. He could not prove it, of course, but he, unlike most techs or warriors, was a bit of a mystic. So long as no one caught him at it, the mysticism served him well.

"I am not very hungry."

"But you willeat."

"You are such a tyrant, Nomad. I can no longer stand you. Will you please tender me a request for transfer?"

"No. The galley here is not well-stocked, but I managed to get you some tinned meat and a salad. Salad is pretty tasty, made with some leaves from—"

"I hate knowing the origins of food. Just give it to me and go."

It was obvious Nomad had no intention of leaving. He stayed behind her, looking over her shoulder, making sure she ate. Joanna had been known to hide food rather than consume it, and he made it his job to see that did not happen.

Noticing that the meat had an orange tinge and the salad greens looked dirty, Joanna closed her eyes with each forkful she raised to her mouth. At no point in her career had she ever found any type of military ration to be more than minimally palatable.

She was grateful to put the meal aside when the gunnery officer announced that aerofighters had been detected. In a moment she saw them herself. Five of them were heading for her side of the DropShip, while others were attacking the other side and the rear.

Leveling her weapon, she squeezed the trigger. Streams of coherent light stretched out from her blister toward the closest aerofighter, but her aim was off and the beams dissipated at a point past the attackers. Behind her, Nomad's disappointed sigh was audible. She wanted to scream at him to get out, but there was no time. The nearest aircraft was zeroing in on her, making a beeline for her blister.

She went berserk, firing burst after burst, so many that she could not maintain a fix on the enemy. At her feet, monitors displayed specific positions and other data, but she was not used to DropShip equipment and preferred to rely on her own gifts for using weaponry.

The missile salvo that the aerofighter launched might have destroyed the gunnery blister and Joanna and Nomad along with it, but the DropShip pilot employed an evasive maneuver dictated by a computer examination of the aerofighter attack. As the ship tilted just enough, the missile struck below the blister. The hit rocked the ship, however, knocking Joanna back against the blister's rear wall.

"I knew I should have strapped myself in, Nomad. Nomad?"

Looking back, she saw that Nomad was peacefully unconscious against the hatchway. Damn! If she needed to make a quick exit, she would have to drag him out of the way.

She had no more time to worry about Nomad as an obstacle. The attack continued, and another aerofighter came within Joanna's sights. This time she steadied herself and squeezed off a short burst, then another. The shots hit the cockpit of the craft. She thought she saw its pilot rock backward, his gloved hands over his face before the craft veered out of control, its momentum sending it directly at the DropShip. Joanna kept firing, cursing with each pull of the trigger, knocking large chunks off the ship's armor.

For a moment it looked like the fighter might disintegrate before hitting the DropShip, but then Joanna saw the pilot, his hands now away from his bloody face, clutch the controls of his ship again. He was aiming the craft's nose directly at the DropShip—and straight for Joanna.

She kept shooting, and the fighter kept coming. When the laser suddenly overheated, she reached instinctively, flinging herself backward, against Nomad and the hatchway. The fighter seem to enlarge in front of the blister, but at the last minute, it disappeared.

Joanna had no chance to relax or be relieved, for the next moment the DropShip was rocked by the impact of the fighter's collision. When her head banged against a side wall, everything went black for a moment.

Joanna did not know how long she was out, but when she recovered, the DropShip was shaking with the impact of missile and laser fire. On the commline, the gunnery officer was screaming orders that went unheeded.

"Nomad! Nomad!"

He murmured a response and seemed to be struggling to open his eyes. "Wake up! I need you."

The words sounded strange in her mouth. Joanna had never said she needed anybody for anything.

She slapped his face, and Nomad's eyes sprang open. He shook his head.

"What happened?"

"You were knocked out, that is what happened. The ship is losing this dogfight, I can feel it. Listen to the gunnery officer. He is frantic. We have to get out of here, get to our people, our 'Mechs. We—"

More direct hits nearby. Any minute one good shot might make the blister fly off, leaving her and Nomad to be sucked out into the void as instant corpses.

"What . . . what should we do now?" Nomad said.

"First, get your behind off the floor so we can open the hatch. There is no point staying here. The gun is ruined and we have already almost been turned into debris once. We are going to the 'Mech bay. My orders to the command were to station themselves there, ready for an atmospheric drop if necessary."