TEXT: BATTLECORPS
  Tears of Blood
  Chapter four
  By Randall N. Bills
  
  BATTLECORPS
  Tears of Blood • Page 2
  Training Outpost 7 
  Boques, York 
  Kerensky Cluster, Clan Space 
  24 August 3062
  The air stank of happiness, 
  good cheer and the aromas of 
  a magnificent feast prepared by 
  the lower castemen. 
  It made Caden sick.
  Stamping through the deso-
  late, rock-strewn field toward the 
  command building of Training 
  Outpost 7, Caden hitched his 
  shoulders at the cooler than usu-
  al wind for this time of year and 
  tried to ignore the Homecoming 
  festivities breaking out around 
  him. 
  Should’ve worn the jump suit. 
  Winter already coming? Not possible.
  Glancing toward the ocean less than a kilometer away, past the 
  steep cliffs of Aber, he could see the waters of the Lochlon starting 
  to turn the gray-white of cold, dead flesh. The size of the white-
  caps also told of the shifting of the moon and changing seasons. 
  He stopped and looked back over his shoulder at the Strathclyde 
  mountain range, its primary volcanic cone thrusting up a mind-
  numbing fifteen kilometers, renting the very atmosphere with its 
  arrogance. The snow line had moved down without him even no-
  ticing.
  The range was a giant fence separating the life he’d lost beyond 
  it in New Tara.
  He shook his head and stomped on. Nature moves on and I am 
  stuck here. Stuck beyond that stravag-impenetrable fence. My own 
  bid for the atmosphere failed and I’m left to flounder.
  His boots pounded harder.
  
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  “Star Captain.” Star Commander Jewel’s words came naked, 
  stripped of any emotion by the rising wind. But then that was her 
  usual delivery.
  For a moment he considering playing deaf, but thought better 
  of it. The last time had been…unpleasant. Caden turned. Braced 
  himself.
  “Yes, Star Commander?” Never a name. Not from him.
  “You have promised to train with my Star, quiaff” Those eyes—
  one green, one blue—were amazingly large in her oversized 
  cranium. Particularly effective with her surgically shaved head. 
  Her eyebrows and eyelashes were so thin and light, they appeared 
  shaved as well. He always thought of her naked, regardless of the 
  full-piece, skin-tight ribbed body suit she wore day or night. 
  It should’ve helped. Never did.
  “Aff, Star Commander. I apologize. However, I just returned from 
  patrol.” Did he hide the frustration. Patrol? HA! Next he would be 
  cutting down herds of Toliks with his large lasers, just to escape 
  the boredom. “I can’t right now.”
  She quirked an invisible eyebrow. He tried not to grimace and 
  failed. Stravag! If he stayed here much longer his language would 
  be worse than any labor castemen. He had just handed her the 
  moral high ground.
  “You have been commanded to train with my Star, Captain.” He 
  couldn’t imagine her short, waif-like body emitting any noise be-
  yond that soft voice. Yet she had a force behind those words he 
  lacked. 
  Caden tried another tack. “It is Homecoming day. Should we not 
  join the celebrations?” He cared nothing about the festivities, but 
  he grasped at straws.
  “The celebrations will continue to dawn, quiaff?” She continued 
  without a pause; he had already lost. “We are prepared.”
  She had a force he could not put his finger on, one he could 
  not resist when cornered. For a moment he tried to blame it on 
  her Enhanced Imagery circuitry, which glowed—even in this light—
  with a soft, algae-green luminescence across her face and scalp. 
  But, as usual, he could not lie even to himself.
  His jealously felt like an infected wound: burning, raw, and angry. 
  
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  Caden collapsed. “Aye, Star Commander. There will be plenty 
  of fusionnaires left for us all.” He could put down a score of pints 
  right now. “Lead the way.”
  She nodded and turned to lead; her giant skull reminded him 
  of a bald Tolik’s head. He grinned for a moment, then wondered 
  when he had become so petty. He ignored the pinching at his side; 
  that doctor knew nothing. No way could he have an ulcer.
  Caden cast a longing look toward the main command post, then 
  followed Jewel around the corner to the left. He walked lighter 
  than before, considering the wake of her soft footfalls as they con-
  tinued past the twin primary barracks, the hand-to-hand training 
  yard, and even the primary `Mech repair facility. Caden once again 
  felt the cool air, like a lovers cold fingers across his thighs and 
  shoulders under warm covers, and wished for the single-suit left 
  in the Blood Kite. 
  Finally, at the extreme edge of the entire compound, almost 
  to the edge of the cliff and well away from any other structure, 
  they approached the secondary repair facility. The cold, damp air 
  gained an edge, causing him to grit his teeth. Used when larger, 
  more prestigious units posted here, the facility had fallen into ex-
  treme neglect over the last decade. When Jewel’s Star arrived with 
  orders for him to begin extensive training exercises with them two 
  months ago, he’d assigned them to the dilapidated structure. Out 
  of sight, out of mind.
  Now, his mind reeled at the improvements he noticed. The area 
  immediately around the building had been completely cleared of 
  the tanglebrush which thrived in this region and could swallow a 
  building whole in a few years if given the chance. The structure 
  he’d almost considered condemning out of spite when first as-
  signed here after his failed Trial of Bloodright, now showed signs 
  of numerous patches and shorings.
  Moving through a small door to the left of the primary, he stopped 
  dead at the interior. Pleasant warmth flooded his body, unlocking 
  clenched muscles.
  How in the world did they secure this material? He gazed around 
  a moment, not sure he wanted to know.
  Where before had been a darkened, neglected interior, now a 
  fully active, well-lit room bustled before him. He could almost 
  pluck at the sense of purpose that vibrated within. Like a man wak-
  ing to a forgotten, lost sense, Caden felt other muscles—mental 
  
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  muscles—beginning to warm a degree. Muscles not used in long, 
  long months. 
  The `Mech repair facility’s ceiling lofted almost sixteen meters 
  above their heads, allowing for almost any `Mech to walk within. 
  Numerous catwalks ran around the interior walls at three meter 
  heights. The once cluttered ground had been scrapped clean and 
  power cords of various colors and sizes ran crisscross. The cries 
  of greetings and calls for equipment; the harsh whisper of arc-
  welders wedding armor to internal structure joists; the thrum of 
  fusion plants in test cycles vibrating up through boot soles; the 
  whine of servos as exoskeletons moved around heavy equipment: 
  a cacophony of exquisite music to his ears. 
  Neither he nor his unit could be named slouches. Yet this fren-
  zied, dedicated pace had been missing for long, long months from 
  Training Base 7. He could not understand how he’d missed this 
  activity under his own nose.
  Then again, he had been missing a lot of late.
  After such a lift to his spirit, Caden’s mood darkened once more 
  as he remembered the actual occupants of the various repair bays. 
  Like children attempting to dress up in adult clothing, the twenty-
  five ProtoMechs of Jewel’s command failed miserably to fill the 
  shoes of their superior cousins—each stood less than half the 
  height of a `Mech. He swallowed to remove the bad taste from his 
  mouth.
  Jewel turned toward him and quirked those invisible eyebrows.
  You will not get any comments from me, regardless of how im-
  pressive this place is. These are only ProtoMechs and you only 
  command a wanna-be-a-`Mech Star. 
  The sounds swirled around them, battering at the heavy silence 
  between them. 
  Jewel turned away and began moving toward the left bank of 
  ProtoMechs. Caden thought the one they were approaching might 
  be a Hydra, but they all looked the same to him: stunted, badly 
  formed children that should’ve been terminated before decant-
  ing.
  As they came to a stop in front of the ProtoMech, a metal claw 
  from the gantry above moved down and latched onto the chest-
  plate with a clang. The popping of metal and sighing of settling 
  myomer made him realize the ProtoMech had just returned from 
  
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  some exercise. A whirring of gears and locks echoed out of the 
  ProtoMech’s centerline. 
  Bad indigestion? Caden quirked a smile.
  The entire plate suddenly pulled away, revealing the large, 
  thrusting bolt of the locking mechanism and the piloting chamber 
  beyond. For a moment Caden could think of nothing more than an 
  iron-womb and the fetal position. He involuntarily shivered at the 
  comparison and the idea of such claustrophobic confines. 
  He could not imagine a life outside of piloting a `Mech, but the 
  gaping wound-hole (he couldn’t think of it any other way) with its 
  lack of visible controls reminded him too much of how entwined 
  a ProtoMech pilot became with his machine. Of how one lived 
  inside the other. He felt an upsurge of revulsion at such a loss of 
  control. 
  I pilot my machine! Not the other way around!
  A lithe, thin figure began to extricate herself from the padded 
  interior, unfolding like a flower under the morning sun. Numerous 
  wires fell away from contact points on her body without any visible 
  command and she leaned forward slightly, her strange, smallish 
  neurohelmet still trailing a half dozen wires, and opened her eyes. 
  Caden had coupled with numerous women in his life. He knew 
  not all of them had taken away the same experience, but he felt 
  confident most had been serviced and serviced well. Yet the 
  brightness of her eyes, the blazing gleam that accompanied her 
  slight panting, told of an ecstasy he’d never given. An ecstasy he’d 
  never be able to give. A rapture he himself would never know ei-
  ther in bed or at the helm of his own `Mech
  The disgust reached a new level.
  She pulled the helmet off of her head and stowed it up above 
  his line of sight. Then she stepped lightly out onto the missile 
  launcher grasped in the Hydra’s (he felt sure, now) left hand and 
  then onto the gantry, before quickly climbing to the ground. She 
  saluted both Jewel and Caden smartly. 
  “Welcome back, Point Commander,” Jewel said. “Success?”
  “Aff, Star Commander. The exercise could not have been more 
  successful.”
  
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  What exercise? He hid his confusion as Jewel dismissed the war-
  rior and turned back to him. He should have known about such an 
  exercise, but he would not ask.
  Jewel’s smile felt a little too knowing and he tried to hide the 
  flush to his face. “Alexia is my XO. Her Point just returned from a 
  three week foray into the Strathclyde Mountains.”
  “A success?” he said.
  Savashri. Why had he not been told about it? Caden thought he 
  managed to keep the anger from his voice. Then the memory of a 
  forgotten request form buried under a multi-colored mountain of 
  pulp on his desk percolated to the surface.
  “Aff. We are testing the extremes to which a ProtoMech-pilot can 
  be taken.” The way in which she managed to make “ProtoMech” 
  and “pilot” sound like a single word made his skin crawl. 
  Caden painted interest on his face, as Jewel prattled on about 
  the success of this test and that, gazing at the beehive around him, 
  hearing about the extremes her pilots were surviving with flying 
  colors. 
  My Kite’s large laser would show you extremes. For a moment 
  he felt like smiling. Yet, his belly began to ache once more. No 
  ulcer, stravag! 
  As Jewel’s soft words continued to fall like snow flakes against 
  the uncaring heat of his anger, shame once more crept over him. 
  His demeaning thoughts kept rising like surat Burrocks, who would 
  not die but lived on in the stravag Adders!
  For the first time in long weeks, standing among warriors mov-
  ing with such purpose, he could no longer ignore himself. Could 
  no longer evade the anger and jealousy that ate at him like an 
  Eden viral taint. 
  Caden’s fingers surreptitiously dug into his palms, as the reality 
  he no longer could ignore unfolded before him. 
  He had bid for the stars…and lost. 
  The pain still felt like the blade had drawn blood moments before. 
  Caden had been given the chance to be the youngest Bloodnamed 
  warrior in the history of the Clans and his impatience had cost him 
  everything. Now, he sat, forgotten at the tail end of nowhere. More 
  importantly, he had begun to even forget about his own honor; 
  
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  begun to set himself above the Clan; allowed his performance and 
  that of his unit to fall, due to self disgust. 
  Caden pushed fingers deeper into his palms and drew blood. 
  Such actions were for Steel Vipers or Jade Falcons. Not a Blood 
  Spirit!
  Looking around him with new eyes, he felt renewed self disgust. 
  To be shown his own faults by half-warriors—how could he ac-
  cept these abominations? More, another revelation that he did 
  not want to face blossomed. That Jewel’s commanding presence 
  came from her knowledge of her place within the Clan. A sense of 
  her own worth. A sense he had forgotten. 
  Focusing back on Jewel, he realized she had stopped speaking. 
  What were her last words? “I think we will show that ProtoMechs 
  have a place among our Touman?” He couldn’t recall.
  Not a hint of emotion marked her pert features, but the shadow 
  of condemnation for his lack of attention rode her two-tone eyes 
  liked charged PPCs. I do this because my Khan has ordered it!He 
  grasped onto the words as though they would keep him from the 
  edge of a cliff. 
  It helped. Helped enough, perhaps, for him to get out of his mal-
  aise. Though glancing back to the darkened hole in the ProtoMech, 
  he knew it would not be enough. 
  Not yet.
  The bang of the door slamming open rang out, slicing through 
  talk and heavy work. All eyes turned toward the newcomer
  Caden recognized the almost frantic features of his second in 
  command. He registered shock as Daneel raced to him—the man 
  never raced for anything. Almost sliding to a stop, he saluted 
  quickly and blurted.
  “There is a raid underway, Commander. I have been trying to 
  locate you. A Star Adder force has declared a Trial of Possession 
  for a Star of ProtoMechs.”
   “Why does this concern me?”
  The look of earnest confusion of Daneel’s face almost looked 
  comical. 
  “Because we are the ones contacted. They are making landfall in 
  four hours in our proximity. We’re the target of this Trial.”
  
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  “Watch your language,” Caden managed to get out as shock 
  swept him. A trial? Here? A real trial. Against the cursed Star 
  Adders. This is what this command needs. What I need.
  Caden immediately waved his XO forward and began to fol-
  low. He stopped for a moment and turned to Jewel. “Time to 
  prove whether you have value to the Spirits, Star Commander.” 
  I doubt it.
  He turned and strode away, feeling a long-lost purpose, missing 
  the dozens of smiles that swept the room.
  Caden was not the only one looking to prove himself. Not by a 
  long shot. 
   
  
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