As Tom gave him the rundown on the unit's record to date, Aidan was impressed with the pleasantness and politeness of the fellow. He had always expected all free-borns to be as sullen and crude as the ones he had seen in various exercises. Well, Tom was either playing a good role or was different from other freeborns. Most of them were probably like Horse, who remained in position across the room.

Hauling a bunk from the storeroom, Tom and Aidan pushed it next to the other beds. Nigel and Spiro brought out bedding and equipment. Horse did nothing and, in fact, had barely moved since Aidan entered the room.

As soon as Aidan had stowed his gear and finally sat down on the edge of his new bunk, he felt a touch on his shoulder. Looking up, he saw Horse standing over him. Though Horse's face was unextraordinary in its features, his fiercely red complexion the only odd thing about his looks, Aidan sensed something familiar about him. As if to verify his suspicions, Horse said: "I've seen you before. I don't know where, though. Do you?"

"No, I don't remember you, Horse."

But, in fact, Aidan did remember the sullen young man. Though Horse was thicker in body now, more muscular, with more meanness in his face, with longer hair that apparently obeyed current freeborn style, he was the same boy who had been Aidan's opponent on the long-ago day of the first 'Mech exercise. It had been Horse who had planted the mock satchel charge, had sent the 'Mech rocking on its foundation, had attacked Aidan with a homemade knife, and had—before Aidan had wielded a weapon that literally fell into his hands—damn near defeated him. With a catch in his throat, Aidan now remembered the fury in Horse's voice when he had called Aidan "trashborn."

34

Aidan wondered why Ter Roshak had not investigated the past history of this freeborn unit and discovered that it had participated in the same exercise as had Aidan's sibko. Well, the little cosmetic changes that Joanna had insisted on might be helpful, after all. His hair was longer, in the current freeborn style, and combed differently. She had lightened it, too, with some disgusting potion that had remained on his head for several hours, nearly choking him with its aroma. She had also ordered him to grow a thin beard along his jawline, a style adopted by many freeborns. (Spiro, in fact, had an almost identical beard.)

"You look familiar but different," Horse said.

"That covers a lot of ground," Aidan said. "Maybe I look like somebody you knew back home?"

"It was a small village. I knew everyone. You don't look like any of them. No, if it is somebody else, it's somebody I've seen since coming here."

Even though Aidan knew he was not moving a muscle, it felt as though he were squirming under Horse's gaze. Fortunately, Nigel sat down beside him and said, "You probably haunt his nightmares, Georgie. Don't be surprised when you hear him wake up screaming some nights."

"I know one thing you're thinking," Tom said, rejoining the group.

Aidan was startled and wondered if Tom had somehow read his mind, which now was filled with doubt that he could pull off this lunatic masquerade.

"What?"

"You're thinking that you have really drawn a hardluck duty here. An all-male unit. Well, don't think we regret it any less than you do. Nights are long here since Dominique and Cassandra flushed out at the same time. I hear that some falconers use cadets for their satisfactions. Was that true in your unit, Jorge?"

Aidan's mind frantically assembled the information he had been given by Ter Roshak. What was that falconer's name? Then it came to him. "No, our falconer was usually too drunk to think much about coupling."

"Well, it will probably make better warriors out of us in the long run. I hear another unit the other side of the camp has the same problem, except they are all female. We thought of petitioning for at least shared barracks with them, but we know Sourfaced Othy would not approve."

The others nodded in agreement. Even Horse's face seem to relax at the thought of the shared barracks.

"Othy?" Aidan prompted. "Is he pretty tough on you—on us?"

The others seemed to approve of the way he had included himself in the group.

"He's incompetent," Spiro remarked. "Fortunately, we have Falconer Abeth, who is on leave at the moment. She makes up for his mistakes. And she doesn't seem to hate us as much as Othy does."

"I know what you mean," Aidan said, remembering the way the falconer had treated him ever since he had reported in. "He would barely talk with me on the walk over here."

"That's Othy, all right," Nigel commented.

Looking up, Aidan saw that Horse was still staring at him, apparently searching his memory for a clue to Aidan's familiarity.

"We make a living hell out of Othy's life," Tom said, "or at least we try. We play the role of what he believes freeborns to be, slothful and uncooperative and disgusting and all the rest. Horse says it's stupid of us."

"It is," Horse said. "If we want to be accepted, we should show them our best. Even Othy."

"You may be right. But he brings out the worst in us. Abeth knows our true worth. She doesn't much like us either, but she's fair."

The others muttered approval of Tom's words.

As they told him about their training experiences so far, Aidan was astonished by the camaraderie among them. Until now, he had believed camaraderie to be a singular thing, found only among sibkin and warriors. It had never occurred to him that freeborns could have emotional ties and warm feelings. In fact, he would have to go back to his childhood days to recall a time when his own sibko had displayed the warmth that this quartet of freeborns did. And they all came from disparate backgrounds, which made their camaraderie even stranger.

He had come into the room with his usual disgust for freeborns, wondering how he could ever play the role, yet these first moments were not bad. Freeborns looked all right, acted all right, smelled all right. Perhaps their genetic backgrounds did not supply them with the same skills and traits of sibko members, but they seemed human enough to do many things well.

If it were not for Horse and his obvious suspicions, Aidan began to believe this masquerade was going to be easier than originally expected. But what to do about Horse? Should he wait for a moment alone and kill him? Or just tough it out? Aidan could let nothing and no one interfere with his progress toward a second chance at being a MechWarrior, even one from a freeborn unit. He would have to watch Horse carefully. Very carefully.

35

Falconer Abeth was all that the others had said she would be, and certainly the opposite of Othy. She had the competence he lacked, and more. She was not like Falconer Joanna either. Somewhat shorter and plain-faced, with hair cut short and a stocky body, she spoke more gently than any falconer Aidan had ever met. But she acted with a swiftness and efficiency characteristic of all good falconers, and with something of the tenaciousness of the bird that gave the Clan its name. When one of the freeborns erred, Abeth was quick to strike him painfully with a whip or plain staff. She accompanied the blow with no words, and her silence was more effective than long diatribes from others.

Because Aidan had already succeeded at this stage of training, he soon led the freeborn unit in performance. Sometimes he wondered whether he should hold back and attain only at the levels of the others. But even when he tried, he could not contain his abilities. Tom offered to turn over leadership to him, but Aidan told Tom he was doing too good a job. Privately, he wondered why sibkos did not have leaders. He suspected that for beings who were created from the same genetic material, it might be difficult for one to emerge as a leader, but he also thought that his sibko might not have fallen apart so easily in its latter stages if he or one of the others had been a leader.