‘All Raiders, retreat! Retreat!’ Captain Tyrell ordered. ‘Break off and fall back!’

Cut off by a wall of BattleMechs, Salvadore could not obey. His 'Mech's left leg had taken a full salvo of SRMs and a PPC burst.

and he was limping heavily now, the servo actuators in his knee barely functional. When a laser beam struck his right side, he spun his Centurionto face the new threat.

The cumbersome, 45-ton Blackjackwould not normally have been a worthy opponent for Salvadore's heavier Centurion,but his machine had suffered such massive damage that it could not take much more. His board controls lit up red across the console as autocannon shells slammed into his hull, and repeated laser strikes sloughed off armor that sent his internal temperature soaring. With the warning klaxon shrilling in his ear. he'd disconnected his helmet controls, flipped up the arming safety, and ground his thumb into the eject firing burton. By the time he came to ground a hundred meters away, his Centurionwas lying full length on the charred and blasted earth, unquenchable fires consuming its innards with a heat that forced him back even at that range.

The fight had not ended there for Salvadore. On foot, he'd made his way back through enemy lines toward the Kurita encampment, a 20-klick journey that took the better part of three days. The encampment was deserted when he reached it at last, dirty, hungry, and exhausted. Its only occupants were the corpses of the Tyrell Raiders who had escaped the Battle of the Ouros Crossing. They hung there in a ghastly row from a hastily erected gibbet.

He spent a long time staring at the body of his father, which swayed over his head with the wind.

He had no memories now of the time that followed, save one. He could recall foraging for leftover bits of food at the spot where the regimental mess had been. He had felt no emotion at all. It was only after an attempt to scare down a snarling, six-legged fuster-lizard that was challenging him for a scrap of meat that Salvadore realized his voice was completely gone.

He could not remember having screamed his throat raw.

By the time he rejoined the Kurita forces, the Second Benjamin Regulars had lifted offplanet. He'd learned the full story later, of how Major Victor Garreth had ordered the arrest of his father and his comrades for cowardice and treason, of how he had ordered the court-martial tribunal to find Tyrell guilty and sentence him to death. Raymond Tyrell and his men had been ordered to hold the lower crossing of the Ouros. In the face of roughly equal numbers, they had withdrawn, against orders, after suffenng only light damage and abandoning three of their 'Mechs to the enemy. Though treason could not be proved—there was, after all, no definite proof that Tyrell or his people had actually corresponded with the enemy—the charge of cowardice in the face of the enemy was obviously true.

Justice had been swift.

Salvador's options had been starkly limited at that point. He was a trained Mech-Warrior, a graduate of the prestigious Sun Zhang Academy on New Samarkand, but he had no BattleMech and no unit. The Mechs belonging to Tyrell's Raiders, he learned, had all become the property of the Second Benjamin Regulars.

Only one idea now dominated Salvadore Tyrell's thoughts. As a DropShip carried him above the smoke-smudged landscape of New Wessex on the first leg of his return to Kajikazawa. he swore an oath to avenge his father's death by somehow, some way, killing Victor Garreth with his own hand.

‘You murdered my father...and my comrades...to lay your filthy hands on those Battle-Mechs.’ he said. Garreth and Tyrell circled one another warily now, as the nobles and military officers in the Grand Hall moved themselves and the furniture out of the way to make room. Tyrell's wakizashishimmered, mirror-bright in the sunlight that spilled from the frost-tinged skylight. He hefted the blade, feeling its balance, its reassuring weight in his grip. Garreth moved easily beyond the point of the blade, then blurred, reaching in for a slashing cut toward Tyrell's abdomen. Tyrell leaped back and the slash missed. Tyrell parried, striking sparks from the other's blade.

‘How'd you get in here, pup?’ Garreth said, his eyes black and angry. ‘You would need a sponsor.’

‘You'd be surprised...’

Tyrell had met Lord Hassid Ricol almost a year after the disaster on New Wessex. He'd been living virtually hand-to-mouth, working when he could as a bodyguard for higher-ranking nobles. Without a Mech of his own, there was little for him to do. Openings for pilots in BattleMech units were few and far tween anyway, and Salvadore did not relish the alternative of joining a line infantry unit. At least, not yet.

The casualty rates in line units were shockingly high. Though Salvadore did not fear death any more than most others of his class and training, he was not ready to die just yet.

He had an oath to fulfill.

The strange thing was that it was Duke Ricol who had sought himout. contacting Salvadore through a servant who appeared one morning at the front door of his cheap room. The man had led him to a hotel near the city's spaceport, where Salvadore found himself bowing before a massively built, bearded man in a flamboyant red and gold uniform. A native of Rodiyo. far out toward the Draconis periphery, Hassid Ricol was known far and wide as the Red Duke.

‘You've been academy-trained.’ Ricol said after Salvadore. at the Duke's invitation, had taken a seat in his presence. Salvadore wore his two ceremonial swords, the scabbards tucked into the belt of his robe. The long, curved blade was the katana;the wakizashiwas identical to the larger blade, but shorter. The blades had been awarded to him upon graduation from the Sun Zhang school.

‘That's right, your Grace. Sun Zhang, class of '18.’

Ricol nodded, stroking his beard. ‘Then you have experience with BattleMechs.’

‘Yes. your Grace.’

‘Dispossessed?’

Salvadore had tried to hide his scowl and failed ‘Yes, your Grace. My Mech and my unit, were lost on New Wessex.’

‘Tell me about It.’

For the next hour, Salvadore relived the Battle of Ouros Crossing and the events leading up to it. Ricol listened intently, gently running his hand down his beard as Salvadore described the deployment of Tyrell's Raiders and the unexpected appearance of a full Steiner regiment where only a company had been expected.

‘I heard rumors of that business,’ Ricol said at last. ‘You are the first eyewitness to corroborate the stories, however.’

‘If I may ask, Lord...what is your interest in this?’

Ricol smiled, but there was ice in the expression of his eyes. ‘Let us simply say, Chu-i,that the Draconis Combine Is locked in a death struggle that will require every tool, every weapon at our disposal.’

Salvadore nodded. It was a basic fact of life among most of the inhabitants of the Combine that life was a day-to-day struggle to survive against the enemies that encircled them—the Lyran Commonwealth and the Federated Suns, in particular. That knowledge sometimes took on the sharp edge of xenophobia, though in the Red Duke, it seemed to have been redirected into a fierce will to triumph,

‘The one thing we cannot survive,’ Ricol continued, ‘is stupidity. And of that, I fear, we have more than our fair share.’

‘Stupidity, your Grace?’

‘A good military unit is a tool to be cared for. Not to be thrown away on a whim or to win some small, personal advantage such as the acquisition of BattleMechs. Many of my peers within the Combine have an aversion to the use of mercenary units, or experienced militias, and deny themselves access to some of the finest, best-honed tools available. That is stupid as well.’

Salvadore felt a thrill of anticipation, of hope. ‘Garreth. You want to...’