“I’ll do it—” Julian agreed. His dark glance in Caleb’s direction promised words later. Quite a few of them, the heir thought. But of course he would fight for the honor of the Federated Suns.

Really, what choice had Julian ever had?

Terra

Republic of the Sphere

12 May 3135

The Genève Auxiliary Training Center was not for the common soldier. That much was apparent to Julian the moment escorts appeared to walk them across the grounds. Men wearing conservative dark suits, with military buzz cuts and restless eyes.

The training center bordered the well-guarded facilities of SIS, the Sphere Intelligence Service, and Julian quickly compared it to its analog back on New Avalon: the Advanced Simulation Project housed beneath the Watchtower, pride of the Federated Suns’ military arm. He also had seen the short bank of lockers in the outfitting room. Seventeen of them, with a thumbprint scanner set near each lock. No names stenciled or etched into the doors. Everyone knew to whom these lockers belonged.

Paladins.

Julian leaned in toward Callandre as they shouldered their way through heavy doors, back into the hall. “If I had to guess,” he said, “this is where they run simulations based on the intelligence recovered from other nations.”

“Guess that means you’ll be running this one without being able to hack the hardware first.”

He affected a wounded expression. “That was your specialty,” he reminded her. “Not mine.”

Sandra Fenlon, with her own plainclothes escort, waited for the warriors in the hall between the outfitting room and Simulation Center. Hearing the end of their conversation, Sandra shushed them both. “Don’t even joke about that here.” She glanced at the back of the two well-dressed men who led the way, obviously uncomfortable.

With reason. It had taken several days to set up the simulator grudge match. Not just to program the historical battle, but also to secure permissions. A few diplomats from The Republic made halfhearted attempts to cancel the event, but with Prince Harrison as well as Warlord Toranaga supporting the honor match, and both determined to view it from the SIS data center next door, there was no stopping this ball once it got rolling.

International relations at their finest.

The entire building was brightly lit, but cold, the hallways particularly so. The chill was emphasized by a tiled floor, steel walls painted a neutral beige, and overhead lights that flooded every corner. Dressed only in MechWarrior togs—shorts, cooling vest and combat boots—Julian shivered. The touch of cool air raised gooseflesh on his arms and legs. Callandre had on padded tanker’s gear, which gave her a bit more protection, but Julian caught her rubbing her arms. Only Jasek Kelswa-Steiner did not seem to notice the cold at all, ranging ahead with long, eager strides.

Their escorts split up at the next corner, where a stairwell shot off from the branching corridor. Just ahead, along the main hall, were the reinforced doors leading into the simulator room. One escort set his hand over a scanner built in next to the doors. There was a buzzing sound inside the walls.

The other escort waited at the stairs. “I’ll escort Miss Fenlon to the observatory.”

All four scions paused, and Sandra wished them luck.

“Don’t worry,” Callandre whispered, sneaking furtive glances from side to side. “I got us an inside guy. He’ll bring you a minirecorder to the observatory.”

“What’s that good for?” Sandra asked, wide-eyed, falling into the trap.

Julian smiled. “About fifteen to twenty. With time off for good behavior. Stop it, Calamity.”

Jasek laughed and Sandra scolded Callandre Kell with a sharp glare. But she couldn’t hold it. No one stayed mad at Calamity Kell for long. She shooed Julian on with a quick kiss on his cheek and a wave.

Julian turned around, clapped Callandre on the shoulder and turned her into Jasek and the doorway. “Time to get our game faces on,” he said.

“Let’s go to war.”

Yori Kurita rode out the hard shaking as her Grand Dragon tumbled backward and slammed into the ground, laid flat out on its back as the artillery barrage continued to shatter the ridgeline on which she’d stood. Fire and smoke rolled over her position. Gravel and blackened earth pattered against her ferroglass shield.

She heard frying sparks and smelled burning ozone as one of her auxiliary monitors crashed.

She tasted blood where she’d bit her tongue.

The simulation was that good.

Yori Kurita had not given Republic programmers enough credit. Or their hardware. She had expected simulators of similar or lesser quality than what she had trained on at the Sun Zhang academy. But The Republic had built theirs on some of the best ComStar hardware available before the Jihad, offering full sensory immersion, the smells and sounds and visceral feel of being in a live-fire situation.

The taste of blood, that was real. Being slammed back as the simulator pod rolled and jumped in its gimbaled framework, she’d truly bitten her tongue. It throbbed with dull pain.

Wrestling with her control sticks, Yori struggled her Dragon back to its feet. The grasslands burned in large patches for kilometers in every direction, but eight meters above the low ridgeline she looked out over the worst of the smoke. On the ground, vehicles tore through patches of flame while armored infantry used the ash-choked columns as screens.

Calling down her fighter screen in an attempt to silence the Long Tom artillery fire working over her line, Yori carefully walked her ’Mech down into the general fray. The sixty-ton Grand Dragon had lost serious armor across its shoulders and chest, but the machine was still plenty randy, with hard-hitting power behind it.

As a Davion Firestarter found out in the next moment as she speared it in the chest with her particle projector cannon, ripping through armor and myomer muscles and opening up a huge wound with molten edges, dripping crusted splashes of ceramic composite to the ground. A double handful of LRMs slammed into the wound right after, tearing apart the fusion reactor and releasing the golden fury deep inside the ’Mech.

It disintegrated in a violent explosion that overturned a nearby pair of Joust tanks and spilled riders from the seats of hoverbikes.

And left a large gaping wound in the line of Julian Davion’s main thrust.

“Ghost Company,” she ordered, “advance and fire.”

Her voice-activated mic picked up the commands, relaying them to her teammates and to the central computer that juggled all auxiliary units. Three heavy lances pushed forward, swinging into the Davion line, spreading the gap wider as they used their firepower to worry the Federated Suns positions. Two Warhammers and a Catapult, leading forward a pack of Demon assault tanks and several APCs full of Raiden battle armor. The mix of units was not perfect, historically, but did a good job of capturing the flavor.

Countess Tara Campbell, refereeing the match, had been very specific on that point.

“The historical records are not one hundred percent,” she’d expained the day before. “And The Republic’s best hardware is configured for modern-day units and for running auxiliary null-tactical slaves using today’s force-mix philosophies.” The successful simulation of any large-scale combat came down to the ANTS. Units run wholly on computer probabilities, based on overall strategic commands given by the “real” commanders.