"No."

"Yes." Hohiro folded his arms across his chest. "I've watched you, Kai, and I also read carefully the reports the ISF has prepared on you. Our analysts have labeled you a coward. They claim you are afraid of war and only became a MechWarrior so that you would not disgrace your parents by not doing so. They interpret your tendency to overwork plans as excessive timidity. They insist that your victory on Twycross was sheer accident, that your escape pod's rocket blasted the shielding from your fusion engine in a malfunction."

"Is that what you think?"

Hohiro shook his head. "What I think is that our ISF agents are fools. You're not afraid of war. You're afraid of what would happen if you ever let yourself go. You're terrified that you would not stop, that you would not know how to draw the line. At Twycross, you ordered a half-dozen men to return to their post and to blow the Gash. You had to issue that order—it was the right one at the right time—because you had no way of knowing you would make it into the Gash. If their 'Mechs had been a half-minute faster, you would have arrived too late. What you fear is that you are capable of ordering men to their deaths without a second thought.

"I come from a tradition where life is not held so dear. Instead of ordering men into battle against foes, I can 'invite them onward.' A pretty euphemism for ordering someone to die, isn't it? I have that sort of power of life and death over anyone in my realm. Because of it, I also share your fear."

Hohiro hesitated a moment, then plunged on. "I know what it is to look in the mirror and wonder what kind of a monster I could become. That is natural, and what's more, it is vital. My father has taught me that if we did not question ourselves about the uses of power, we would never notice the boundary between just use and despotism until we'd overshot it by light years. If we did not question ourselves, we might not have a clue that we had gone too far until we started to drown in the blood of our victims."

Kai winced as Hohiro's words seemed to touch the core of his being. "No, no, you're wrong."

"He's right, Kai." Victor joined them, with a nod toward Hohiro. "I heard what Hohiro had to say and I concur fully. Morgan Kell first brought the same point to my attention, back when we all arrived on Outreach in January. He said you were one of those rare warriors who keeps a tight rein on himself because you fear what would happen otherwise. 'Just be thankful he's on your side,' Morgan said. 'If he ever cuts loose, there's not much in the Inner Sphere that could stop him.'"

Hohiro bowed his head in a salute to Victor. "Colonel Kell is a shrewd judge of character, and a warrior of long and distinguished career. It does not surprise me that he saw this so clearly."

The Kurita Prince stepped forward and rested his hands on Kai's shoulders. "Kai, the power we possess is given only to a few because of the immense responsibility that comes with it. We are the arbiters who must sometimes decide whether to risk a small group to prevent suffering by a greater number of people. Even at the best of times, in the most clear-cut of cases, this is not an easy decision. You just have to trust yourself and your innate sense. You have resolved to do the right thing, and you will."

Kai turned away. "I've wrestled with this demon since Twycross, and even before that. I thought my initial solution was right, but Twycross proved me wrong."

He turned around again and let his arms fall to his side. "I've decided the potential for wielding such power in error is too high. In the future, if ever I am forced to issue orders that are suicidal, I will give them. But I will also lead those troops personally."

A slightly lopsided grin spread across his face. "Perhaps your ISF people were right, Hohiro. Perhaps I am a coward. I believe it is much harder to live with the knowledge that I had to push people into a situation that caused their death than to die with them in that effort. I refuse to treat life so cheaply, no matter what the cause or how great the justification. If that proves to be my epitaph, I will rest well through eternity."

15

Kerensky Sports Centre

Strana Mechty, Beyond the Periphery

1 June 3051

"So,when you dropped your 'Mech down on its haunches and cranked the torso back to give your arms more range, I had to break off. It was a good move."

"Thank you, Carew." Phelan Wolf nodded solemnly as his companion finished his explanation of the exercise they had just completed. Carew was a small, slender man of the type common among Clan pilots. His unruly shock of blond hair made his head seem yet bigger, and his large green eyes gave him a look of childlike innocence. Still, in all the time Phelan had spent training in antiaircraft maneuvers with him, the MechWarrior knew his friend to be anything but childlike or innocent.

Carew shrugged. "With Natasha, Ranna, Evantha, and me training you, the only question when you test out is whether you would do it as a MechWarrior, a pilot, or an Elemental."

Wearing shorts and T-shirts in place of their cooling vests, the two men marched up a grassy slope to a massive plateau. The flat expanse had been sectioned off into a score of playing fields, each carefully delineated by a chalk line. Each field was split in half across the middle and each end had a circle surrounding a goal approximately two meters square and located four meters from the end line.

The players out on the field wore helmets with a mesh cage to protect their faces, padded gloves, arm guards, and padded torso protectors with a red or blue circle in the center. They carried sticks whose length varied, depending on the player's position on the field, but all had triangular nets on one end. Phelan noted that defensive players carried sticks as tall as they were. As most of them were Elementals, that meant they were long, indeed. Offensive players, mostly pilots like Carew, had short sticks that could be whipped around very quickly. Midfielders carried sticks about a meter and a half in length, as did the goalie, but the net on his stick was four times the size of the others.

Phelan smiled. "Hey, lacrosse. We used to play this on Outreach and I played for the Academy during my time at the Nagelring."

Carew nodded. "I think you'll find this game a bit different than what you played on Outreach." He held up his hand to forestall Phelan's question. "I've been talking to Natasha's archivist about the differences between how we play here and they play there. But if you go on this field thinking the game is the same, you'll get yourself killed."

Phelan looked out at the field and watched the players chase the ball around for a while. The red team caught and tossed the small white ball back and forth, working it in toward the blue goal. One of the midfielders cut across the middle, caught a pass from a forward, and sent the ball whistling in at the goal. The goalie scooped it up and started it heading back down the field.

"I hear what you say, Carew, but aside from a lot of butt-ending by players, it does not look that different."

"Butt-ending?"

"Smacking another player with the aft end of the stick. You know, a foul."

"Foul?"

Out on the field, one blue player jabbed his stick into the ribs of a red player, crumpling the victim. "Yeah, like that, spearing. That's a foul. It's illegal. Against the rules."

"Phelan, we have no fouls. You get points for that sort of thing."