Even though, as a sexual partner, Aidan was allowed to speak freely with Joanna, he refused to say anything. He even suppressed sounds during the act. She did not seem to mind that.

Before leaving her quarters, standing in the doorway, looking back at the now strangely languid Joanna, he said, "I will not fail."

He may have been mistaken, but he thought he saw the hint of a smile prodding the corners of her mouth.

"You may not," she said. As he walked out the door, she added, "But I am afraid that you will."

If she had said that he definitely would fail, her words would not have bothered him. But she said, "I am afraid that you will," and he often stopped to wonder why she had used the word, afraid. Joanna showed no concern for anyone in the sibko, for anyone anywhere, for that matter. She could not possibly have concern for his success or failure.

Or could she?

7

Using a telescope that had been removed from some service battlefield weapon, Aidan had the freeborn in his sights. He could not kill him because the single weapon he had chosen for this exercise, a medium laser in the right arm, had been phased down and at best could only cause a mild stun, enough to make his opponent dizzy but not enough to render him or her unconscious. Perhaps choosing the single weapon had been a miscalculation, Aidan thought, especially since the others had made more conventional choices—machine guns and short range missiles.

The freebirth cadet he had centered on for his segment of the battle was a bland-looking boy, his hair cut so short that, except for the light gray stubble, he would have been taken for bald. Aidan had been told that his hairstyle was the current custom among freeborn cadets who defiantly wanted to distinguish themselves from trueborns as much as trueborns did not want any association with freeborns. Perhaps because of the grayness of the stubble, the boy's face seemed unnaturally red, giving him a demonic look in spite of his average features.

Anti-freebirth curses hissed through the staticky comm-link. All the members of his sibko were contributing their own creative denunciations in deliberately chosen language. Because of the immobility of his 'Mech, he could not see any of his sibkin in their own reconstructed 'Mech shells, but his hearing perked up whenever Marthe's voice came online. He had not been able to adjust to her newfound reticence, and in the year it had taken them to get to this point in training, the distance between them seemed to have grown. Sometimes they still met in his or her bunk, but even the coupling now seemed to separate them. It had become no better, and no worse, than sex with anyone else in the sibko.

Aidan still had the boy in his sights, not that the calibration of the view was particularly accurate. He was sitting in the torso of a partially reconstructed Wasp,an obsolete pile of junk, but still suitable for exercises early in the cycle, as Joanna had told them. It was more or less complete from the head through the torso, but had no legs, and so was not maneuverable. Testing the right-arm medium laser, he had found its effective range to be about a third normal and the power turned down so that he could only stun rather than kill any target. He would have bid to equip the machine with an LRM rack instead of the medium-range laser, if Joanna had not discouraged him two nights ago, when he had last been with her, from adding too much weaponry to his proposed battle plan. The lowest bids got the most strategic positions on the training field, the most protection from the surrounding landscape, the better chance to win the points that would mean the awarding of a victory from the training officers from other units who were there to judge each cadet's performance.

The 'Mech also rested on an insecure foundation, a specific difficulty factor that was a part of the exercise. It was claimed that if a real 'Mech became immobile and lost its stabilizing gyros in the field, its pilot would have difficulty keeping it upright, so the swaying of this 'Mech was deliberate. If Aidan made any kind of extensive move, he felt his machine rock slightly under him.

It was frustrating not to be able to employ BattleMech maneuverability, but—according to the instructors—the sibko was a long way from stepping into genuine 'Mechs. About all the combat activity he could manage was to move the 'Mech's arms or manipulate the laser weapon. He had sent one beam that he thought was well-aimed past the boy. It sailed over his head by a few meters. Another had done no more than create an uneven singe line across the ground in front of his antagonist.

The freeborns participating in this exercise were told that they were getting anti-'Mech training, while the trueborns' purpose was anti-infantry. But it was clear to Aidan that caste distinctions would never allow freeborns to have advantageous positions against trueborns, and so could not possibly be in BattleMechs against them. The freeborns, like Aidan's sibko, were allowed their own choices of weapons. This particular one had taken a couple of potshots in Aidan's direction with a conventional rifle, but had also missed completely. They had struck the lower part of the 'Mech torso but were not strong enough to do significant damage.

Inside the 'Mech, the cockpit was quite primitive, simplified for training purposes, as Joanna had told them. The nearly bare command console contained no monitors and not much in the way of recording devices, not even a minimal computer to go with the minimal 'Mech. All the recording of Aidan's performance was being done at command level, where the trainers were measuring and judging the performance of each individual sibko member.

The single cockpit device meant for his attention was a gauge that allegedly measured the heat level of the machine. Though most Clan 'Mechs were equipped with double heat sinks that virtually made overheating impossible, the training cadre wanted all cadets to be made conscious of the danger of rising heat in the event of a malfunction or of an overeager warrior putting his 'Mech in such jeopardy. The gauge was fake, controlled by those who were guiding the exercise. They could arbitrarily place any cadet in a dangerous situation and announce that the 'Mech had overheated. Then the cadet was declared "dead" in his seat (unless he or she had cleverly anticipated the event and scrambled out of the cockpit before the controller noticed), and his mock battle machine judged as defeated and taken out of the exercise.

Still, frustrating as the test conditions were, primitive as the partial 'Mech was, Aidan was exhilarated by the experience of finally being in a cockpit after all the verbal abuse from instructors and the endless classroom tests and the 'Mechless combat maneuvers the sibko had undergone. This exercise—at last—began the real training, the training that he and the sibko had been looking forward to so desperately. Instead of pretending to be a warrior while shooting imaginary weapons from his bed or in the midst of rare sibko recreation, now he had the chance to operate a genuine machine with real, if decrepit and barely loaded or charged, weapons.

It was time to dispose of the boy. Leaning toward the front viewing window, all the while longing for a holographic display of the whole battlefield, Aidan took a bead on the freeborn, then slowly pushed down the button on the arm of his command couch that would direct a laser beam at the target. He wanted to relish his first training kill.

He relished it for too long. Joanna had drummed into the minds of the sibko that timing was critical, and Aidan had forgotten the lesson.

The boy, standing between two tall trees whose bark shone wetly from a recent rain, fired a flare right at Aidan's 'Mech. Aidan had not even detected a flare gun among his enemy's weaponry. Its projectile exploded, apparently against the 'Mech's left arm, where the laser was mounted. There was a long moment of fierce blinding light. Aidan shut his eyes tightly and watched, on the inside of his eyelids, large, abstract, dark blobs that seemed to be engaged in their own personal combat. At the same time, he considered his second mistake, regarding the freeborn as subhuman. Sensing the light of the flare dying out, he opened his eyes. With that, the dark blobs turned into blinding light that, for a moment, prevented him from focusing. As clearer sight returned, he sensed a hard knock against the front of the cockpit. The 'Mech seemed to shake on its already shaky foundation.