His fingernails were as black as his hair.

His mirror-image slid away as Deirdre opened the door. "A bit underfed, but you look healthy." She placed the towels and soap she was carrying on a stood next to a huge wooden cask. Her voice grew a bit distant. "Am I allowed to ask why you've appropriated the identity of another member of the Guards, or is that some secret you nobles keep to yourselves?"

The ice in her voice stung Kai, but he reined in his hurt. "Mahler saw the name on the jumpsuit and figured me to be David Jewell. As he had a shotgun on me at the time, I decided going along was easier than explaining the truth."

"Really? Or is it that you think a disguise will make you less valuable as a hostage when the Clans capture you?"

Kai pulled off his own dog tags and tucked them into the small pocket inside the waistband of his shorts. "I don't intend to be captured."

Deirdre gave him a hard stare. "What happened to Jewell?"

He suppressed a shudder as he recalled climbing into the Wolverine'scockpit and looting it. "He was killed in battle. He died protecting Prince Victor."

"Of course." A sour expression sharpened her face and scored lines at the corners of her eyes, but those eyes reflected sadness. "What happened to you?"

Kai crossed to the silver pump beside the tub and began to work the handle up and down. "I was left for dead after it looked like my 'Mech had been destroyed." As water gushed into the tub in frothy pulses, Kai felt his anger getting the better of him. He decided to change the subject to something more neutral. "You said the Clans overran your hospital. What happened?"

Deirdre's face took on a dazed expression and she lowered herself like a zombie to the bench. "It felt like a replay of Twycross. Elementals came into our area and began to shoot up what vehicles we had. Meanwhile, the veterinary hospital we had converted into a clinic offered us no cover. Things just started exploding and there were fires and glass flying everywhere." She covered her face briefly with her hands, as though the memory were too painful. "So much blood. I was working on a boy who'd been hit in the chest and we couldn't stop the bleeding. And then one of my nurses got hit and I realized they were shooting at the hospital."

Tears rolled from her red-rimmed eyes. "I told someone to call for you on the radio because you'd told me you had our sector and that you would protect us." Her hands curled into fists and she stared defiantly at him. "I should have know better."

Kai ground his teeth. "Victor was in trouble. The Clans had trapped him. I wason the way to help you, then his call came through. I knew I was the only one who could reach him in time. I had to go to him."

"Blue blood is thicker than red, isn't it, Leftenant Allard-Liao?" Her lip curled up in a snarl that blasphemed her beauty.

"Come off it, Doctor!" Kai posted off the top of the pump and leaped over the tub. He grabbed her by the shoulders and dragged her to her feet. "It was triage, just the same as you practice in your hospital. Yes, I'll say it, Victor was more important than a whole DropShip full of wounded men. Do you know why?"

"He's an adventuristic noble who leaves broken and bleeding bodies wherever he goes." Her eyes blazed with fury.

"No!" Kai shook her roughly. "No, the reason Victor was more important than your wounded men and women is because he is important to all of them. If Victor died, or was captured, we'd all lose the heart to fight. Every one of those people who died in your hospital had been fighting withVictor to oppose something they felt was evil, something destroying their way of life. Saving Victor gave their sacrifice meaning."

"Dead is dead, and there is no meaning in it!" Deirdre pulled away from him. "Damn you and Victor and Hanse Davion and the Clans and everyone. You all see wars as the place where glories can be won. You all brag about courage and bravery and sacrifice as if that ennobles the death of some half-trained schoolboy who's blown apart while carrying a gun. That's obscene, because it fosters the mistaken idea that life is cheap enough to waste if the cause is right or just."

She thrust her right hand toward the Mahler house. "Look at him, look at Erik. He's an old man crisscrossed with scars. He's got a scar on his left shoulder that looks like someone tried to take his arm off with a sword. He's stiff and he moves slowly, but when he decided to wait for you to return to steal food, he was like a commando out there. It was a return to some malignant time that made him feel wonderful, and quite probably would have, gotten him killed."

Kai saw her tremble with rage, but he said nothing. He understood that her fury, though vented on him, was not meant for him alone. Her ranting struck chords in him, and brought back memories of the battlefield he'd greeted after escaping his 'Mech.

"You don't know what war really is, Leftenant, you really don't." She slapped her hips in frustration. "I have a boy brought in and I open him up as soon as they can put him under anesthesia. But when I open him up, I find his insides are a jigsaw puzzle. His bowels have been perforated with shrapnel, and feces is mixed with blood and whatever he last ate. I can clean him up and I can resect his small intestine into a colostomy, but I know he's going to be septic and I don't know if I have enough drugs to deal with him. Still, I put him back together.

"Have you any idea what it's like," she demanded, pounding her fists against his chest, "to have a kid ask you to let him die? I had a boy who was looking forward to a professional sports career come into the clinic with the lower half of his right arm hanging on by a tendon. He was out of his mind with pain, but he wouldn't let us put him under until I'd promised that if I couldn't fix it, I'd just let him die. And, dammit, I almost wanted to because I knew, for him, having to adapt would be impossible."

Kai settled his hands gently on her shoulders. "I know. My father lost his forearm."

"Yes, your fatherlost his forearm." Her voice grew cold as she twisted out of his grasp. "Well, let me tell you, not everyone is such a good friend of Hanse Davion that he gets the New Avalon Institute of Science to make him a new arm that functions better than the original. No, you and your father and Victor are all special, and why these people are willing to catch the bullets and missiles meant for you, I will never know."

She picked up the bar of soap from the bench and tossed it into the half-filled tub. "There, Leftenant. Go ahead and clean yourself up. See if you can ever wash all the blood from your hands."

6

Avalon City , New Avalon

Crucis March, Federated Commonwealth

1 February 3052

Hanse Davion, First Prince of the Federated Commonwealth, lay his half-glasses down on top of the report on his desk. As he did so, one of the massive bronze doors across from his antique desk swung open on well-oiled hinges. Through it the Prince saw a veritable phalanx of security guards and the tall, slender form of his acting intelligence secretary. Good, Alex, you're right on time.

Alex Mallory entered the room with a limp that was a remnant of torture suffered on the Liao homeworld of Sian more than twenty years before. Hanse knew the limp only showed up when Alex was tired, and he sympathized with the man. While his gray eyes were still bright, the dark crescents beneath them spoke of too much work and not nearly enough rest.