Chapter 14
DropShip Lair, zenith Jump Point
Unknown system, Deep Periphery
2 February 3051
The three weeks since Victor’s adoption ceremony had been incredibly busy. To start with, wherever the fleet was going, they were going fast. The Wolves were traveling by command circuit, and Ulric’s DropShip at least was Jumping twice a day most days. Some of the Jumps were not accompanied by the DropShip detaching and re-attaching, which meant that the Clans could somehow store an extra Jump charge; Victor tried to remember if the Star League had had that capability but could not.
And besides that, the adoptee’s education as a Warrior had begun. Evantha Fetladral and Rotheran had apparently taken on an obligation to see him educated in matters relating to ground and sky when they had spoken for him, and both were taking their responsibilities very seriously.
Rotheran, on one of the 279th’s DropShips, was not able to instruct him in person and so entertained herself by assigning him coursework in orbital mechanics and meteorology. He thought longingly of Renny Sanderlin, his old roommate at the Nagelring who had helped him with astrophysics at the Academy.
Evantha Fetladral, however, was a member of the Golden Keshik and traveled on Ulric’s personal Overlord. Which meant daily sparring sessions.
This is not going well, Victor thought as he was slammed to the ground once again. At the Nagelring, he had done quite well in Kampfsport und Selbstverteidigung, taking extra classes in Aikido and other forms intended to help redirect an opponent’s own force to compensate for his smaller stature.
But a hip throw didn’t work all that well against someone three times your weight, and it was very hard to joint-lock someone half again as tall as you. And there was the Elemental’s sheer strength, which allowed her to simply power through even the techniques that Victor had had some success with against all 195 centimeters and 110 kilos of Wilhelm Garrett, the largest cadet in his class. For example, a desperate attempt to break her knee with a direct kick had apparently done more damage to his foot than to her knee.
His only real success in three weeks had come from getting onto her back, a trick he’d managed twice. Of those, he’d almost managed to choke her out once, but she had pulled his leg out of the socket the second time he had tried it.
“Victor, you are well, quiaff?” asked Evantha after he didn’t get up for several moments.
“Aff,” he replied with a grunt as he levered himself off the ground and immediately threw his body into a lunge at the larger woman. Maybe if I get inside her guard quick enough, I’ll have half a chance.
As he lunged, he held his right hand in front of him, fist hard and pointed at the solar plexus. His blow hit with the full force of his body behind it, and he heard Evantha’s grunt as the air was knocked out of her lungs. He thought that he may have also heard something pop inside her chest, but that was probably wishful thinking.
However, Victor was sorely mistaken if thought that that was going to grant him victory. His opponent immediately grabbed him in a bear hug and began squeezing him hard to her chest in an act that must have been incredibly painful if he had managed to pop a rib, and would still have been very uncomfortable if he had not.
Without anywhere to tap to indicate surrender, Victor gasped out, “Concede,” despite having almost all of the air forced out of his lungs as he was crushed against Evantha’s chest.
He was immediately released and barely caught himself as he was dropped down. His partner was red in the face and breathing raggedly, but was smiling.
“Well done, Victor Wolf! I did not expect you to attack without preamble, which was my mistake. You have been learning quickly.”
“I have had an excellent teacher,” he replied. After a moment, he added, “Also, pain is a powerful motivator.”
“So it is,” mused Evantha. She then rolled her shoulders back, wincing. “Still, it is also there to teach us our limits. I would continue sparring with you, to show that very few injuries need be debilitating, but I may be called upon to fight a real battle soon, and I do not wish to risk injuring myself further. Shall we go shower, quiaff?”
Victor blushed, but nodded assent. After almost a year, he had become accustomed to the Clan practice of universal coed showers, but still was not entirely comfortable with it. When they had first been taken bondsmen, the Lyrans had attempted to shower in shifts by gender, but highly irregular schedules had quickly ended that; at 0200 or after a 30 hour shift, no one cared about nudity in front of anyone.
Evantha grabbed a towel from a box near the gymnasium’s door and threw it to Victor, who used it to wipe off the worst of his sweat before discarding it as he left the room. As they walked to the showers, the two reminisced about past education they had received in fighting. The infantrywoman evinced great interest in Victor’s description of the multiple different styles the cadets had been exposed to at the Nagelring, and for his part, Victor was horrified by Evantha’s description of 7 year olds regularly being hospitalized during training.
The more he heard about sibko education, the less he liked it. The results were hard to argue with, but he wondered how much of that was the brutal training, and how much was simply the highly selective process, graduating 5% or fewer of each class. There was also the Eugenics Program to consider, and while Victor had been incredibly skeptical about forcing human evolution in a dozen generations, it only took one look at his sparring companion to show the effectiveness of its results.
Later, as Victor stood under the shower, letting the hot water flow over his bruises while staring hard at the floor, he saw an enormous pair of feet walk up to him, accompanied a moment later by several others. Raising his gaze, he was confronted with five Elementals. At their front stood a woman whose left arm and shoulder were covered in horrible burn scars that crawled up her neck and stopped just under her chin. Victor stared at the scars until he realized how rude it was, then switched his gaze to the center of her chest, where he quickly became embarrassed when he realized he was now staring at her breasts.
Desperately, he raised his eyes to fix on the woman’s face to find her looking somber, though with a twinkle in her eye that might have been amusement.
“Greetings, Victor Wolf.”
“Uh, greetings,” he replied, trying to place her.
He was just about to ask how he knew her when she continued, “I suppose you do not recognize me out of my armor. I am Jenno Fetladral, commander of Point Second, Charlie Star, of the Golden Keshik. These are Warriors Alice, Robert, Ali, and Lu.” She indicated each of the four behind her in turn.
“Honored to meet you all,” Victor said, then realized that he was supposed to know them and tried to backtrack, “That is, I am honored to meet you again.”
Jenno smiled slightly. “It is alright that you do not remember us; as I said, we were in armor and you were busy when last you saw us, by the door to the bridge of the Dire Wolf.”
And now the newly-minted Warrior began to panic, for he had been a mere bondsman last month when he had taken command of the Point that stood in front of him.
“We are here to tell you that whatever obligation you may have for your actions there,” she continued, alluding to the highly illegal orders he had issued, “You bear no debt of honor to us.”
The surprise and relief must have shown on his face, because she explained, “What you did was incorrect by the laws of the Clan, but sometimes honor and duty require that you bend the laws slightly. When you arrived, we and the Jaguars were at loggerheads, arguing over how to proceed. It is very unlikely that the situation would have resolved in time to act. You forced us into action and led to the saving of the lives of 8 Warriors and 3 Civilians, not least of them the Khan of Clan Wolf. Our gratitude to you outweighs any insult.” The other four members of the Point nodded agreement.
While Victor struggled to figure out the correct response, she added with a grin, “And besides, you will be of higher rank than us soon enough, quiaff? So your sin is simply a misstep in timing more than anything else.”
Victor suddenly remembered that he was standing by Evantha, who was currently of higher rank than the men and women arrayed in front of him, and was in fact their commanding officer. He looked at her, hoping for some clue as to the correct course of action, but she simply stared back impassively. Then he remembered that she was naked, and he blushed again, any hint of a response he might have been formulating rushing out of his mind.
“Uh, thank you,” he finally stammered out. “I am honored by your forgiveness. Or, uh, your not needing forgiveness?”
Picking up on his discomfort, Jenno took pity on him and said, “No, we thank you for saving our Khan, and our honor with him. One day, I will tell others that my Point were the first Warriors to serve under your command.”
And with that, she nodded at her Star Commander, and the five of them walked to the other side of the shower room.
After they left, he turned to Evantha and asked, “I apologize, but could you explain what just happened?”
“I feel that it was fairly clear,” she responded. “Normally, a bondsman giving commands to a Warrior would be a great insult, and you would owe a debt of honor to the Warrior you had insulted as well as to your bondholder. Jenno’s Point have declared that you hold no such debt to them. As I believe that you have already resolved your debt to Star Captain Kerensky, your only obligation remains to the Smoke Jaguar Elementals.”
Lines appeared between her eyes. “I doubt that that one will be so easy to resolve, especially since I have heard that Point Commander Ezriel was harshly punished for his actions. He will likely seek someone to blame. Were I you, I would redouble my efforts to learn how to fight Elementals; you may need those skills sooner rather than later.”
—
It was a thoughtful Victor Wolf that encountered Katya Kerensky at the door to his quarters. Though she was a member of the 279th and thus technically quartered aboard the DropShip Golden Bow, her status as the Khan’s protégé meant that she was currently sharing his quarters so as to always be readily at-hand. Which meant that, on occasion, Victor was also sharing the Khan’s quarters, as early on it had been discovered that the Khan’s full-sized bed was much easier to maneuver in - also, in transpired that Ulric Kerensky was far less likely to walk in unannounced than Natasha Kerensky (she and Victor had worked out a system involving tacking a sock to the archway of the door, but the septuagenarian seemed to have difficulty seeing it more often than not).
Unfortunately, Katya’s appearance in a formal uniform suggested that, while Ulric’s quarters lay in the near future, the resulting events would not be especially enjoyable.
Still, Victor greeted his lover with a kiss, which she returned after a moment. For as casually as they consider sex, they are very strange about public displays of affection. It was not the first time he had had such a thought, and it was one of the few contexts where he continued to think of the Clanners in terms of “us and them”.
After he pulled away, Katya said without preamble, “You must come with me.”
“And hello to you, too,” he replied with a smile. When the smile failed to be replicated on his counterpart’s face, he immediately sobered and asked, “I shall change into my dress uniform as well, quiaff?”
“Neg,” she said, shaking her head. “It would be good, but speed is more important now.” She beckoned to him, and the two began walking down the corridor.
As they walked, Victor slipped his hand into hers. She blushed as always, but then began to explain by way of distraction.
“You are aware that we are currently on the JumpShip Timber Wolf, quiaff?”
“Aff,” Victor responded, “We transferred over this morning.”
“Yes. Well, you should know that we are approaching the Homeworlds, and that the Timber Wolf brought with it a number of important people, with whom the Khan and I have been meeting all morning. We are going now to meet with Cyrilla Ward, who is leader of Bloodhouse Ward.”
“What does it mean for someone to be the leader of a Bloodhouse?” asked Victor, who had been learning about Bloodnames but had not yet heard about their leadership.
“She is the most senior member of the House. Noting also that House Ward are one of the most important Bloodhouses in the Clan, this means that Cyrilla Ward is very influential in the Clan.” She paused, then added, “She is also an ardent Warden.”
“...Which makes her one of Ulric’s most important allies.” finished Victor.
“Precisely.”
“Then why do you look so nervous?”
Katya hesitated, then said, somewhat haltingly, “An important ally is not necessarily a close one. And the Khan’s actions have not necessarily been pleasing to all.”
They were silent for a moment before something occurred to Victor, “Wait, you said that Cyrilla is in charge of House Ward. But Galaxy Commander Conal is a Ward, quiaff?”
“Aff,” she agreed, “He is indeed. But while the leader of a Bloodhouse may have great influence over its members, she is not some feudal lord. Every Warrior is permitted to hold their own opinions, so long as they do not harm the Clan.”
“So what does it mean to be leader of a Bloodhouse?”
Katya began to answer, but as they came down the hall, they heard Natasha Kerensky say in a loud voice, “...I’d have long since stopped lying and fighting altogether!” and then two women laughing.
A moment later saw Victor and Katya at an open door that led to a small room holding half a dozen chairs, two of which were occupied by Natasha Kerensky and an elderly but vital-looking woman who was presumably Cyrilla Ward.
As Cyrilla shifted her gaze towards the pair of youngsters, Natasha turned in her chair to look, and waved them in. Victor looked at Katya - it did not seem to be Natasha's room - but the Star Captain entered, and so he followed.
The Black Widow made the introductions. First, she indicated Katya, “Ril, this is Katya Kerensky, Ulric’s pet ristar.”
The object of the statement bristled, until Cyrilla said, “I have had the honor of previously meeting the Star Captain,” which seemed to calm her.
Natasha then went on, “And this is Victor Wolf.” She waved her hand in a vaguely correct direction.
Now, Cyrilla looked very interested, pinning him with a steely blue gaze. “This is…?” she began, drawing the two words out like a question.
Natasha nodded.
“You have caused quite some commotion; let us see if you are worth the trouble. What do you think, child?”
It was clear that she had addressed him, but Victor did not know how to answer. He suppressed his first instinct, of humility, having noticed that the Clanners did not seem to value it very highly. He decided to hedge. “It is not my place to say, House Leader.”
Cyrilla barked a laugh, and looked at her old friend, “And what do you say, Tasha? That is, if it is your place to say.”
“I always say, whether or not it’s my place to,” she replied in a tone that was not quite a joke.
Natasha turned her gaze on Victor, tilting her head like a dog - or a wolf - encountering something new. “He’s a good kid,” she said at length. “Raised well. He was actually one of the first kids to run through our sibkos, though he didn’t stay for the full program.”
“Oh?” asked Cyrilla.
“Yeah. For some reason, folks were a little wary about us taking all of these orphans and educating them. They seemed to be afraid that we were trying to raise an army of child supersoldiers.” She and Cyrilla both laughed before she continued, “So his mom gave him over to us for a bit. It helped smooth some ruffled feathers.”
“His mother is a diplomat?”
“A damn good one. And smart as a whip. But she was a soldier too; she spent a little time commanding a platoon of jump infantry, and then a company. She never saw real combat, but I’ve seen BattleROMs of her planning ambushes and scurrying up a Mech’s legs in exercises. Infantry are shockingly fragile outside of Battle Armor, but I would not have wanted to face Melissa Steiner on the field.”
It was Cyrilla’s turn to look at Victor appraisingly. “And his father?”
“The Fox!” Natasha exclaimed. “How to describe him? Brilliant, crazy, one of the best commanders in the Inner Sphere at every level, and one of the best MechWarriors besides. On top of that, he founded the best technical university in the Inner Sphere and negotiated an alliance that might have ended the Succession Wars in two generations if other events had not interrupted.” Her tone left no doubt as to the other events in question.
After a brief pause, she added, “Oh, and the kid was top of his class at the Nagelring.”
“The Nagelring?” the house leader mused before assuming an expression of intense thought. She turned to Victor and asked him, “Before you were Victor Wolf, you were Victor Steiner, quiaff?”
“Victor Steiner-Davion,” he corrected.
“Your mother was the Steiner.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Aff,” he responded, feeling slightly confused.
She looked back at her old friend and spoke slowly, “You know, Ulric has already sent a message along to Homer.”
Natasha looked perplexed, “Homer? Why Hom - “ she cut off mid-sentence, shut her mouth and then laughed, saying, “Ulric, you magnificent bastard.”
She suddenly wore a predatory smile, and asked Cyrilla, “How many people know?”
But before Cyrilla could answer, a polite knock came at the door, and at Cyrilla’s “Come in!”, Khan Ulric Kerensky entered the room.
Cyrilla immediately stood, and Katya stiffened to attention. Victor took his example from her, even though he noticed that Natasha continued to lounge in her seat.
As Ulric waved the others to ease, she said, “Speak of the devil.”
“And he shall appear,” completed the putative Satan. “Should I feel my ears burning?”
“Natasha was admiring your foresight in sending word to Homer,” said Cyrilla as she waved Ulric into one of the chairs. Katya and Victor remained standing.
“Yes,” said the Khan, “I was rather proud of myself for that.”
Victor burned with curiosity. Who is Homer, and why would Ulric contact him? What does that have to do with my parents? Or is it just my mother?
But everyone else in the room seemed to understand what was going on, even Katya: and so he held his tongue.
“So,” said the Khan, giving Cyrilla his full attention, “What is the situation?”
She heaved a great sigh. “Where to begin?”
“Let us begin with Clan Wolf,” he replied.
“You know as well as I do, I suspect,” she said. “The lion’s share of the Bloodnamed went with you. We were left with the elderly, the dregs, and those who possessed both too much ambition and yet not enough.”
Ulric nodded, but gestured at her to continue, and so she did.
“The Crusaders will try to censure you, but they will fail; after all, have you not led the Wolf to greater success than any other Clan? The Wardens by contrast…many understand why you have acted as you did, myself included. But many are not pleased with the…enthusiasm with which you acted. Also including myself.”
He ignored her statement of disapproval and changed the subject, asking “And the boy?”
Cyrilla shrugged, “What grounds do they have? You cannot Refuse an adoption. The Clan Council may technically oppose making a warrior abtakha, but I doubt if this has been done in the past century or longer.”
“Anything else?”
She shrugged again. “Not really. The minor Houses are clamoring to somehow expand the Invasion, but they have no answer as to how. The new leader of House Radick is a Crusader, but then so was the old one.”
“And the Grand Council?”
“It depends a great deal on who they pick as ilKhan, as you well know.” She paused for a long moment before continuing, “The new lines are not Warden and Crusader, they are those Clans chosen to invade and those left behind. The Adders will submit a proposal to include all Clans when we return, as they did the first time.”
Ulric stroked his chin, “And do you think that it will pass?”
“It is hard to say; the so-called Home Clans are jealous.
“Obviously we would oppose such, alongside the Jaguars, Falcons, and Bears. Activating the reserve Clans would get the Vipers and Cats on-side. The Sharks and Ravens have been profiting from the Invasion as it is, but the Sharks have first priority if the Invasion is expanded, and the Ravens know that they have no chance of being selected for anything less than a full activation of all Clans.”
“So that is 12 votes against any expansion, 2 votes against total expansion, and 2 votes against partial expansion, quiaff?”
“Aff, though the Ravens may vote against full expansion as well, if they decide that they would rather pick at our carrion than expend themselves. On the other side, we know that the Adders will vote for a full expansion and will likely oppose a partial expansion. The Spirits will also almost certainly vote against partial expansion but for a full expansion.”
It dawned on Victor that Ulric and Cyrilla were discussing the possibility of not only resuming the Invasion, but expanding it. The thought filled Victor with dread: if four Clans had already wrought so much damage, how much could seventeen do? He wondered if perhaps so many Clans invading would cause them to start tripping over each other more often, given that the frontage against Inner Sphere forces would be so reduced - and how would that work with the strike towards Terra? Would the four Clans that already had extensive Inner Sphere holdings be forced to allow new Clans to stage from them, or even to hand some of them over? If that were the case, would the powers of the Inner Sphere somehow be able to play the Clans against each other?
That last seemed like a hopeless pipe-dream: it was true that Ulric Kerensky had shown on several occasions that Clanners had buttons that could be pushed, but he suspected that even with the advice of Wolf’s Dragoons, it would be some time before anyone in the Inner Sphere understood the Clans well enough to manipulate them - time that they almost certainly did not have. Well, that they presumably did not have; to be honest, Victor had no idea how long it would take the Grand Council to elect a new ilKhan and renew the Invasion.
He knew that he should be paying attention, trying to understand the lay of the land in the Kerensky Cluster, but he could not focus, taking in only the odd snippet, like the fact that the Scorpions might be swayed by some sort of visions or that the Fire Mandrills apparently had their own incredibly complicated process for decision-making that was completely opaque to outsiders.
Three tones sounded, interrupting Victor’s train of thought.
Ulric clapped his hands together and rose, apparently signaling an end to the meeting. Cyrilla Ward rose with him, and Natasha Kerensky joined as well after waiting long enough to make it clear she was standing out of practicality and not respect.
“Let us go to a viewing gallery,” he said, putting actions to words and leading the party through the corridors. As they walked, Victor tried very hard to see if he could determine any major differences between the halls of the JumpShip and of the WarShip he had spent most of the Invasion on, but the only thing he really noticed was the whispers and glances that they left in their wake. Feeling somewhat self-conscious, he tried to watch the watchers, and decided that no one was watching him - rather, it was the Black Widow that held the crew’s attention.
Between this and the reaction at my Adoption ceremony, I guess Natasha Kerensky’s just as famous here as in the Inner Sphere.
The thought initially struck Victor as odd, but upon reflection he realized that there was no valid reason he could think of that she should not be. Certainly, it made sense that a warrior society would raise up exceptional warriors as their celebrities, and Natasha Kerensky was nothing if not an exceptional warrior.
It did, however, raise the question of exactly how much the Dragoons had communicated with the Clan Homeworlds during their time in the Inner Sphere. A comment that Natasha had made to Katya (“I hear that you’re the second-youngest Warrior ever to get a Bloodname. Remember who the first youngest was.”) had led to some gentle inquiries and he had come to understand that Natasha had been a legend in her time before heading off to the Inner Sphere. But that had been half a century before, and given the startling short lives of Clan Warriors it seemed unlikely to him that her fame was built solely on less than a decade’s worth of service a literal lifetime ago.
He filed it away as another topic for Katya to defer to Ulric about, Ulric to deflect away, and Natasha to either lie about or plain refuse to answer, as was so often the case with his questions about the Dragoons.
They arrived at the gallery, and the three grown-ups made meaningless small talk, mostly updating Natasha on major changes since she’d left. Victor kept his attention on the conversation, continuing to learn whatever he could about the Clans and their culture, but most of it was either things he already knew (like the fact that the 328th still did not like their new commander) or things that made absolutely no sense to him (like the fact that the Hellions had managed to anger every single Clan in what Cyrilla described as a “temper tantrum”).
Soon enough, the final tones of imminent Jump sounded, and then the usual something happened and the JumpShip was somewhere else.
A crowded somewhere else, it turned out. From the gallery window, Victor could see a large space station and what looked like well over two dozen JumpShips, making this quite a busy system.
“Welcome,” said Ulric Kerensky, “To the Land of Dreams. Welcome to Strana Mechty.”
------
One of the things that most annoyed me about Blood of Kerensky was Phelan going toe-to-toe with Elementals and winning. Anyone who knows anything about personal combat can tell you that in a fight, size matters a lot. I'd put odds on someone Evantha-sized over someone Phelan-sized every time, even if the Elemental wasn't trained from birth in personal combat. For someone normal-sized who had some personal combat training but not a huge amount, it would have been a joke. The size ratios basically work out to an average adult fighting a 10 year old. For Evantha vs Victor, it's more like an 8 year old. Here, Victor gets a lucky shot in...and finds that a lucky shot isn't the same as winning.
Aside from that...
Cyrilla Ward is a very important supporting character, and she serves that purpose here even without the House Ward connection.
Victor sees a bit more of the political situation among the Clans. Now is a very important time in Clan politics, when the factions are completely reorganizing and realigning. It's going to take a bit to get there, but Victor is ultimately going to have much more to say about Clan politics than Phelan did.
As for Homer, well...
