"Battletech.-.Jade.Phoenix.02.-.Bloodname" - читать интересную книгу автора (Battletech)

Battletech - Legend of the Jade Phoenix Volume 2
BLOODNAME

by Robert Thurston

[There is a glossary at the end of the e-book for anyone unfamiliar with Battletech Terms]

*** TRUEBIRTH ЧBorn in the laboratory, these genetically engineered soldiers train to be the ultimate warriors. They are the elite pilots of the Clan's fearsome BattleMech war machines.
FREEBIRTH ЧBorn of the natural union of parents, these too are soldiers, but pale imitations of their truebirth superiors. Despised for their imperfections, they fight where and when their Clan commands.
Aidan has failed his Trial of Position, the ranking test all truebirth warriors of the Clan Jade Falcon must pass. He is cast out. Disgraced. His rightful Bloodname is denied him.
But with a Bloodname, all past failures are forgiven. With a Bloodname comes respect. With a Bloodname comes honor.
Aidan will do anything to gain that name. Even masquerade as the thing he has been taught to despise.
A freebirth. ***

Prologue
Some years previously, when Diana was still a child, she had learned many things about her father.
"He is of the Clan and yet not of the Clan," said her mother, whose name was Peri.
"I do not understand Clan," Diana piped, her voice clear and precise even at the age of four years. Though she often heard other children or lower-caste adults use contractions in their speech, Diana never did, nor even slurred her words so that childish sounds might be mistaken for contractions.
"Clan is what we are, what we belong to, what we are loyal to. The Clan provides for us, for all castes within it. It is the Clan that makes sure all have useful work, work that contributes to the common goals. Someday we of the Clans will return to take our rightful place in the Inner Sphere, restoring the Star League that once ruled all the stars in that vast space."
"What is the Inner Sphere? What is the Star League?"
"In time, Diana, you will learn about both, but in the proper places."
"What is wrong with this place? "
They were in a corner of a large laboratory, the largest at the science station on Tokasha, where Peri had worked as a lab tech for more than five years. Even though their quarters provided for child care, Diana considered the lab her real nursery, the place where she loved to come and sometimes play, but mostly in-habit just to be with Peri. She was at the stage of not wishing to be parted from her mother.
Freeborns were like that, said a portly man named Watson, the project leader on Tokasha. In a sibko, on the other hand, the children could only depend on one another; their alliances were intersib. Because freeborns usually had at least one known parent to care for them, their tendency was to stay close out of fear that the parent might be taken awayЧby death or by the Clan. Children learned very early that the Clan did not respect freeborn parentage and did not hesitate to separate parents from children. Even at age four, Diana feared that more than she feared monsters or shadows in the night.
It was a legitimate fear, as events turned out. When Diana was nine, Peri was assigned to the Main Science Center on Circe, where her work would not permit taking the child with her. Now a full-fledged scientist, Peri sent fewer and fewer communications to her daughter. Her specialty was the study of how sibko members went from childhood to warrior training to the Trial of Decision, where they got their one chance to become members of the warrior caste. For each stage Peri compiled data on how many sibko members did not succeed in the Trial and into what other roles in Clan life they were channeled. She was particularly concerned with how many cadets made it to the Trial (damn few, as it always turned out) and how many of those actually tested out to become warriors.
Diana's father had been a cadet who failed in the Trial, and one of Peri's goals was to establish for her own knowledge why that had happened. And, for that matter, Peri wanted to know why she herself had flushed out during one of the later stages of warrior training. (During this period, she often recalled the afternoon she had to leave the sibko barracks forever after flushing out, and the talk she had with the boy who would one day become Diana's father. As a result of that long-ago conversation Peri had conceived the ambition to do exactly the research that was now her work.) As her work began to absorb her more and more, the writing of reports superseded the writing of letters to her daughter. Her findings were, Peri was informed, an important contribution to a much larger project whose purpose was to discover methods to graduate more warriors from the sibko/cadet groups into the warrior caste.
Then Diana received her own assignment, and mother and daughter lost touch completely. But when Diana was four, they were still very close.
' 'There is nothing wrong with the laboratory,'' Peri said, smiling down at her daughter. "It is just the wrong place for you to learn about the Clan. There will be schoolrooms and training sessions and memory drills. You will know enough soon enough. Now is the time to be young."
"Tell me again the name of our Clan."
"We are the Jade Falcons."
"And what is a jade falcon?"
"A bird that may be mythical, although some claim to have sighted them and even trained them for the hunt. They fly high, it is said, and do not easily come down to ground level."
"Like my father."
Peri laughed. "Like your father. He wanted to be a great warrior, your father, but he tried a trick during what is called a Trial, a test by which warriors are chosen, and he lost his chance. Not long after, other warriors came here, to Tokasha, and took him away. I do not know what has happened to him since."
"And my father's name?"
Peri hesitated for a moment, but the child Diana could not have guessed that it was because her mother was uncertain about whether the child should know his name. In that brief instant, she must have decided it would do no harm, given the size of the Clan sector and all the possible planets where Aidan might eventually have gone.
"Aidan. His name is Aidan."
"I wish he would return to us."
"No, that would not be Clanlike. Whatever task he is fulfilling right now, he is a warrior at heart. He is from a sibko, which means that he did not have a mother and father, but was formed from what are called genesЧand do not ask me to explain them. Warriors, even those reassigned to another caste, do not oversee their children, especially freeborn children."
Peri had never told Diana that she had once belonged to the same sibko as Aidan, a fact that should have prevented her from ever giving birth to a child in the conventional manner. Being a scientist, however, Peri had been able to alter her own body chemistry so that she might know the freeborn privilege (she thought of it as a privilege, even if most trueborns would not) of childbirth. She had never fully understood why this had become so necessary. Having failed as a warrior, she had known almost immediately that if she would not be seeing life through the viewscreen of a BattleMech cockpit, then she would never be able to go it alone. Diana had been the solution to her loneliness.
Later, after Peri had more or less abandoned Diana, similar thinking had guided her. Seeing Diana's potential, Peri had reasoned that it was best to cut the cord of parentage and leave Diana to find her own way. Otherwise Peri's own need might someday make her do something that would hold the child back. It was not an easy decision, but she had made it with the coolness of one bred and trained to become a trueborn warrior.
"Mother?" Diana asked after a long pause during which her brow was furrowed in what Peri knew was complicated thought. Diana was a specialist at complicated thought, very complicated for her age.
"Yes?"
' 'I do not think I want to be a scientist when I grow up." For the past year Diana had told Peri every day that she intended to be a scientist.
"Oh? And you would like to choose your caste? That is not like a freeborn, you know."
"No, it is not. But I know what I want to be. I want to be a warrior.''
Peri's heart seemed to stop beating. These were not words she wanted to hear. It had nothing to do with wanting less than the best for her daughter, and more to do with the kind of treatment suffered by the few freeborns who qualified for warrior training. Sometimes they had to become cannon fodder for sibko cadets, while the few who made it to the Trial of Decision would face even worse odds than trueborn cadets. Peri did not like the idea of Diana going into that kind of life. Warriors were the most honored members of the Clan, and even menials from the lowest castes dreamed of becoming warriors, but some maternal instinct made Peri want an easy life for her daughter. In the warrior caste, life was never easy, whether you were free- or trueborn.
"You have plenty of time to plan your life, Diana. Be four years old for now.''
"I am four years old, mother."
"I know that. I meanЧwell, it does not matter what I mean. I see your father in your eyes. You will seek whatever you decide to seek. I cannot stop you."