Chapter One

The Great Hall

Strana Mechty 

Clan Space 

12 June 2822

Khan Sarah McEvedy walked around the construction site, carefully eyeing the work in progress. The Great Hall’s cornerstone had been laid long ago, but progress had been slow, not due to motivation or desire, but in the detail of the craftsmanship. The stones for this structure, the seat of government for the Clans, were carved individually by hand on each one of the Pentagon worlds, then shipped to Strana Mechty. An equal number of stones from each world were to be employed in the grand structure. As she watched the stonemasons work, she wondered if she would ever see the completion of the structure.

As a team of men hoisted a block of marble up with a block and tackle, she surveyed the form of the building. Yes, it was to be a wondrous hall, a monument to the Clans and Nicholas Kerensky, the ilKhan, but at the same time it was to appear austere and even plain. How they would ever balance that mix was beyond her.

She chuckled to herself. If nothing else, it was a monument to the Clans themselves. The constant struggle to mix the ways of the past and the ways of Nicholas’s vision of the future…a vision that seemed to constantly evolve and change. Andery understood that.

Adjusting her uniform jacket against the chill of the evening air, she watched the workers struggle with the block, fighting not only it but the pull of gravity, the twists of the rope, and their own muscles. Yes, this was a fitting image of the Clans, at least in the last few months. There had always been an underlying tension among her peers, the khans, the rulers of each Clan. It was borne in the competitive nature of their existence, the fact that they were pitted against each other throughout their lives. This struggle seemed more prevalent though, at least as of late. The debates in the temporary Hall of Khans, a makeshift command post left over from the time of the Great Relief, had carried a sharper edge to them. The arguments had taken on a more personal tone. McEvedy herself had been pulled into three Trials of Grievance recently with other Khans, almost unheard of a few years before.

Worse yet, she had seen alliances forming. In the past, they had been one brotherhood of warriors under Nicholas’s banner. But lately she had seen the changes. There were the huddled, whispered meetings in the hallways and back offices. There was obviously aligning of voting. “It won’t be too long before we have to form a new caste—the politicians,” she had said sarcastically in one debate—one that had garnered her icy glares from some of her peers. Sarah had stayed away from any alliances, implied or otherwise. There was something distasteful about Clans working with each other against the benefit of others.

I don’t care about politics. I am a Wolverine. Khan McEvedy hoped that that would be enough in the years to come. Nicholas had asked her to stay a few days after the session for dinner, and she had been looking forward to it. They used to eat together all the time, before Operation Klondike, before the loss of Andery. During the Pentagon Civil War, they had dined in tents and over bonfires as battles raged. Those were the days—we had a cause, a purpose. The fighting had wrapped up weeks earlier, but peace was already uncomfortable for McEvedy and the other Khans. There was a chafing that came with peace. The Clans had been engineered for war.

Nicholas had been a unifying figure, despite his personality quirks. With the death of his father, Nicholas had taken on the image of the old man, he had offered hope where hope had been lost. He offered the people a future. During those dinners of years past, they had sat and talked about what the worlds would be like when the war was over. It was as if they were on a holy quest. The future was far away and was held up like the Holy Grail.

It had been like that since Andery’s death for her. The future was harder to see. Part of it was that Andery had burned with a streak of independence that she admired, cherished. Another part of it was that deep in her soul, she felt that Nicholas may have played some role in his death.

Adding to some of the new stresses the Clans were feeling was that several generations of the warrior caste were beginning to emerge. The original Khans that Nicholas had chosen were beginning to dwindle, replaced with younger warriors—warriors that had not fought in the civil war. They did not have the bonds that tied the Clans together.

This was not the image that Sarah McEvedy had envisioned. Time had changed Nicholas and the rest of them. His own cropped, salt-and-pepper hair told part of the story, the scars on his body and neck told the rest. Nicholas had always been a dreamer, always cast in his father’s shadow, always struggling to leave his own mark in the universe. He had with the formation of the Clans. Now there were no enemies to fight. Nicholas and the Khans had to face to the reality of a warrior people without a foe.

Sarah walked around the construction site and the mud built up on her boots. They became heavy, and no amount of effort seemed to shake the clay off. After a few moment, she ignored the extra weight. The construction workers, each from different Clans assigned to the building project, watched her out of the corners of their eyes. The Wolverine Khan could feel their stares. Not too many Khans bothered to come and watch the lower castes work. McEvedy felt she had an obligation to come and bear witness to the work being done. This is where we will lead our people, it is only fitting that we come here to watch it be built.

She headed down the hill to the command post that had been converted years earlier to the seat of government. The ramshackle buildings, a patchwork of temporary shelters, had seen better years. Contrasted to the work going on above them on the hill, they seemed like where paupers lived rather than a center of government.

She stomped hard on the paving stones to get the mud off as she entered the structure. Hanging her uniform coat up, she noticed that several of the other pegs held coats worn by other Khans. Will they be joining us for dinner as well?

She looked at the patches on the shoulders. The first one was the Widowmakers. That would be Khan Jason Karrige. Khan McEvedy winced at the thought of Khan Karrige joining her and Nicholas. His Widowmakers were a little extreme, even by Clan standards.

The other jacket was a little smaller and more appealing. Joyce Merrell, Khan of the Snow Ravens. Her presence would be much more pleasant. While Khan Merrell was far from being an ally of McEvedy and her Wolverines, they did share the same values and she appeared to be open to new ideas and thoughts, as opposed to Karrige and his Widowmakers. Merrell was one of the shrinking number of Khans from the old days, from the beginning of the Clans.

Checking her boots, she strode through the makeshift building as she had hundreds of times before. The hallways were crowded with couriers, clerks, administrative staff, and a handful of officers. She came to an intersection in the hall and scanned the hustle and bustle everywhere. McEvedy spotted Khan Karrige going over a report with a junior officer. He made eye contact with her, but did not offer even a bow. After all these years, he is still bitter over that loss in battle. It was an incident that had taken place during the Pentagon Civil War, and while McEvedy had managed to put it behind her, Karrige had taken it personally.

She walked into the officers’ dining hall. There were a scattering of warriors from different Clans, most of which only gave her a passing glance. Few Wolverine warriors were present, which was not uncommon. Her troops ate alone, as was tradition. Khan McEvedy didn’t mind. Sitting with other warriors and fraternizing often led to information being passed. If her warriors wanted to eat alone, she was not going to discourage it. If they want to think of us as arrogant, let them.

The ilKhan’s dining room was a small room off the officers’ hall. It was small, unadorned, in fact, quite plain. The window gave a view of the city. Nicholas stood at parade rest, looking out the window, ignoring her at first, staring out at the city. Master of all he surveys… From behind, the height, the shape of his almost bald head, his martial bearing; for just a moment Khan McEvedy thought it was his blessed father, Aleksandr.

As Nicholas turned, the Wolverine Khan saw the few subtle differences in the face. There was more. She had known Aleksandr Kerensky, and had a cherished holoimage of her being presented a commendation by him. There had been a warmth to his expression. With his son, there was none of that warmth.

He gestured to the table where the food was waiting on warming plates. “It is good to see you, Khan McEvedy. I am pleased that you could join me.”

Sarah waited until Nicholas sat before joining him at the table. She had once seen someone before sit down before the ilKhan, and get dressed down for his actions, to the point of a Circle of Equals. There were quirks in Nicholas’s personality, things that people didn’t expect. Those that worked close to him learned to work around them. They avoided deliberately setting him off. Sarah only deliberately set him off when it was important, where the risk was worth it.

The ilKhan preferred his steak rare, and did not salt or pepper the food. Again, it was one of the little twists in his personality that McEvedy noted, and then attempted to ignore. These quirks were numerous, and speaking about them was all but forbidden. Little would be discussed until the main course was done—that was his way.

Once Nicholas finished his steak, he paused and rested his forearms on the edge of the table. Now, and only now, would conversation begin.

“How are my Wolverines, Sarah?” he queried.

“They are well, ilKhan.” The use of the title was important. Nicholas could speak informally if he chose, but that was not a luxury for even his Khans.

“I have heard that your harvests have produced a surplus. This is welcome news, given how some of your brethren have fared.”

“We have indeed,” she said. There was a slight pause on McEvedy’s part. The harvest report information had just come to her attention three days ago. How had the ilKhan heard of it so quickly? More importantly, who else knew? “We are more than willing to share our bounty with those less fortunate, of course.”

“Of course,” Nicholas said, staring at his plate, pushing his whipped garlic potatoes around as if he were a sculptor. “When I heard of your fortune, I also heard that you achieved this by allowing some members of other castes to—what was the word used? ‘migrate?’—to your labor caste. Is that true Sarah, quiaff?”

“Affirmative,” she replied slowly and carefully. So that is what this is about. It had to be the Smoke Jaguars, Widowmakers, or the Jade Falcons that were in an uproar about this. They were among the most hard-line traditionalists.

I must find out how they learned of this and plug that leak. She wanted to offer an explanation, but held off. Nicholas often was given to a tantrum, and interrupting that could be worse than the offense that triggered it in the first place. “I did not mention it before because it seemed so minor, ilKhan. It was an internal affair of my people.”

“This disturbs me,” Nicholas said in a calm tone, still not looking into the eyes of the Wolverine Khan. “I created the caste system with purpose, a purpose that I thought you understood. Having our people in castes removed some of the societal tensions and rifts that our forbearers dealt with. Castes remove the drive of people to attempt to better themselves through bringing civil disorder. I thought you understood that.” With his last words, his icy stare bored into McEvedy’s eyes.

“I do understand,” the Wolverine Khan replied. “At the same time, it was you who said that the caste system was a matter of necessity. I believe the phrase you used was, ‘for the duration of the crisis facing our people.’ The civil war is over, ilKhan, and we have brought peace to our people. Some of my castes were chafing, and I felt it necessary to allow some migration between them to preserve civil order. I had no idea that it would bother you.”

There was more to it than that. Nicholas’s reforms went far beyond the caste system, and McEvedy had been struggling with keeping them in place for some time. The genetic engineering program for warriors, for example, had been a temporary measure that had evolved into a program that appeared to be one that was not going to end. The experimental use of drugs to suppress sex drives in the warriors to prevent the urge to procreate had been experimented with, and had caused some minor incidents until the practice was cancelled. The Clans were still coming to terms with the societal changes that had been imposed years before.

McEvedy had always believed that the measures were temporary, but over time, she saw that not only did Nicholas have no desire to remove them, he had other changes planned.

“It does bother me. It is not minor in my eyes, or those of your fellow Khans. The Wolverines are part of a larger society, Sarah. I have put such measures and changes in place in our society to prevent some of what led to our civil war and near destruction. If not for the formation of our Clans and the guides of the caste system, I would be guilty of ending one war and laying the foundation for another.”

“I always assumed that there was some degree of control that each of us had over our own Clan. Khans rule their own people. I am not abolishing castes, simply allowing more flexibility than my peers.”

“Neg,” Nicholas said, pausing for dramatic effect. “We are one people, under one vision, my own. It is a vision that saved us from destruction. You are a Khan, but you rule at the behest of your superior.” His words were like that of judge passing sentence.

“The caste system is now permanent. There is no movement between them, quiaff?”

Nicholas smiled, but it was not a warm, friendly grin, but one that showed hints of danger at the edges. “Aff, Khan McEvedy. I cannot have your Wolverines implement changes that would cause strife in other Clans and ripples of dissent in our society as a whole. You will go back to your people—my people—and tell them the wisdom of the castes. You will reeducate them if necessary. Those individuals that you have moved from one caste to another will return to their former roles.”

McEvedy shifted in her seat. “This is likely to cause strife with my people, ilKhan, those affected by these changes.”

“You will deal with them. Deal with them harshly if you must. I will not create the groundwork for another civil war. We saw what happened to our original colonies when the old ways of my father were allowed to take root. Neg! It will not happen again.” He pounded his fist on the table with his mention of Aleksandr, his father.

Khan McEvedy bowed her head slightly. “I meant no affront, ilKhan. Nor did I intend to raise your anger. I simply was doing what I could to serve my people as I thought best.” It stung her emotions and memories of Andery to kowtow to Nicholas—but he was the ilKhan. He was a good friend, despite his tantrum.

Nicholas’s temper melted away in a heartbeat. “There is no harm done, as long as matters are put back the way that they were. You will go and make this happen. Your people are part of a much broader plan, Sarah. They must not ever forget it.”

“As for these Khans that did not have the integrity to bring the matter to me…if you will simply provide their names, I would like to settle this in a Trial of Grievance.” She made sure her controlled temper showed through slightly. Someone must pay the price for trying to taint my relationship with the ilKhan…

Nicholas waved his hand. “There has been too much of this type of activity as of late. I believe we should let this matter rest.”

“Honor must be served.”

“Yes—when it is to the benefit of our people. Waging a private war with other Khans would not be productive right now.” Kerensky’s word was law on such matters. McEvedy knew to let the matter go. I had so hoped to learn the truth, who was behind this matter. She suddenly found herself wondering what the “broader plan” was that Nicholas held for the Clans.

Sarah no longer felt hungry. She stared at the unfinished portion of her own meal and slid the plate a few centimeters  away. Someone has been spying on my Clan and is using what they find to poison the thinking of the ilKhan against us—against me. I will find this leak and plug it…then attempt to implement Nicholas’s edicts. “IlKhan, I appreciate you coming to me as a warrior and sharing your thoughts with me. They will help me be a better leader in the future. If you will excuse me, I will need to go now and make your word the rule of law.”

Nicholas Kerensky rose and grasped her hand tightly. He slapped McEvedy’s shoulder, on the Wolverine patch she wore on her shirt. “My Wolverines have always made me proud. I know you will do what is right, Khan McEvedy.”