Natural Selection

Phelan shrugged. It matters no longer. They are gone. The Red Corsair is gone.Phelan realized that someone might give her more men and materiel, but it was unlikely. This foray had cost her backers more than 20 fighters, 103 BattleMechs, and 2 OverlordClass Drop-Ships. The gamble had been worth it, but repeating it was not. He'd have liked to have her in his hands, though, to learn who else was involved in this conspiracy.

Phelan's thought vanished as the door to his office burst open. He looked up and saw Nelson Geist standing in the doorway. Pressing a key to wipe the screen, the Khan brought his head up. "The stellar hermit emerges from his celestial lair?"

Geist's eyes blazed with zealous fervor. "I can give you the Red Corsair."

Phelan raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"I know where she's going." Geist held up an optical data disk as if it were a holy relic. "How?"

The man laughed aloud. "Not how, Ward, but how much. How much is the information worth to you?"

"I won't be blackmailed, Geist."

"And I won't be left behind." Nelson ran the fingers of his half-hand back through his hair. "You know I am not a traitor. You know I hate her. Promise me I go too."

"Bargained well and done." Phelan stood. "Where is she?"

Nelson Geist's lungs pumped like a bellows. "When she had me, she ran me in a computer simulation of her base. She made me learn it and promised me that I would live out the rest of my days there as her slave." The MechWarrior tapped the disk against the steel manacle he wore. "I learned my lessons well, very well. I outfoxed her."

The man tossed the disk to the Khan. "While there I spent time studying the night sky on her world. I picked out and named constellations. It has taken me two weeks of reviewing star charts from worlds you Clans have taken. I saw them all, season by season, hemisphere by hemisphere."

Nelson Geist smiled for the first time in Phelan's memory and it was not a pleasant thing to see. "Elissa. That's where we'll find her." Geist's smile broadened. "And that's where she'll die."

39

Arc-Royal

Federated Commonwealth

19 September 3055

Looking skyward, Nelson Geist could just barely make out the four DropShips the First 'Mech Regiment was using for transport to the waiting JumpShips. He dropped his half-empty dufflebag and gave Phelan a smart salute. "Kommandant Nelson Geist reporting as ordered, sir."

The tall, slender Khan nodded curtly. "You will be billeted aboard the Owl's Nest,sharing a cabin with Mr. Bates."

Nelson felt his heart sink into his stomach. "Bates? But I thought?"

"You thought what, Kommandant?"

"I thought you trusted me."

Phelan's eyes hooded over and Nelson felt a chill run down his spine. In an instant he knew that the Khan trusted no one outside his circle of advisors or the Kell Hounds. The Red Corsair had gotten to him that much. That kept Nelson an outsider, but he knew it also made them kindred spirits.

"You have provided me information that is very useful, Kommandant. I am bringing you with me because that was our agreement in trade for your information." The edge in Phelan's voice eased a bit. "And you do know the Red Corsair. But trust?Trust in this matter is a very volatile commodity."

Nelson's head came up. "When we get there, I will get a 'Mech?"

"No."

"No!" Nelson's jaw dropped. "But ..."

"You bargained to come along, nothing more. I hold you to your bargain. You can come or not, your choice."

The fantasy Nelson had nurtured since his escape, the vision of facing the Red Corsair in a gigantic Circle of Equals vanished. Who was I kidding?He tried to ball his hands into fists, but his half-hand mocked him. He is Clan, she is Clan. The conflict is beyond me.

Nelson looked up at the Wolf Khan. "She still has my men. I'm going."

* * *

Phelan drummed his fingers impatiently on the arm of the chair in his cabin aboard the Owl's Nest.Dan Allard, sitting next to him, smiled. "Phelan, you'll have worn your way through the arm by the time we get there. Patience is a virtue."

"True enough, Colonel, but I fear this is one race that will go to the swift." Phelan tugged at the restraining belt as he watched the timer on his commlink computer tick down. After the initial jump from Arc-Royal, both JumpShips immediately made another hop to Yeguas. There they wasted a week charging their Kearny-Fuchida jump drives' coils from their solar sails while recharging the lithium-fusion batteries aboard both ships at the recharge station at the star's apex jump point.

The older man shook his head. "I think we must be ahead of her already. We have no word of her raiding a recharge station in the Federated Commonwealth for a recharge, so she's probably still in our space. I don't think your Clans are going to be any more charitable to her than the Feds will be. We will reach her base and inhabit it a month before she comes home."

Phelan kept his face expressionless. Unless she reaches the Jade Falcons and they speed her on her way.He drummed his fingers some more. "I hope you're right, because I do not want to give her the chance to rebuild and re-arm, then come back. Elissa is a planet settled by a pacificistic sect known as the Inheritors. Its members have given up on technology. They live as simple farmers, scattered in little villages across the planet. Clan Wolf doesn't even have a garrison on the world. But it is possible that a Star League depot still exists there and the Red Corsair has tapped into that as a source of supply ..."

Dan smiled. "We fall back on your secondary plan. We use the Kell Hounds to blockade the world and you summon up your Galaxy to destroy her. Either way, she's done."

Three tones sounded throughout the Owl's Nest.Phelan forced himself to relax as the timer clicked down to zero, and the universe suddenly collapsed in on him. Blackness curled upward and around in a bowl starting at his feet, like the trough of two black waves headed at each other. They continued to pull back and grew higher and higher until they closed over the top of him.

The bubble in which he had been trapped began to thin at the walls as the first jump ended, but it imploded when the second kicked in. The black water roof fell in on him. He felt himself drowning and watched images of the Red Corsair, Ulric, Conal, Victor, Ra

The second jump ended and Phelan shook his head to clear it. The commlink on his desk showed a Jade Falcon logo, then dissolved into the face of a Cla

Phelan sat up, releasing the restraining belt. He tugged at the base of his tunic. "I am Khan Phelan Ward of the Wolves. Recharge both of these ships immediately."

The commtech looked surprised, then his face darkened. "I do not have you scheduled here, Khan Phelan."

"We are on an urgent mission for the ilKhan. Do as I have commanded."

That brought the man's head up, and Phelan instantly knew he had overplayed his hand. "The ilKhan and I do not correspond, and the authorization you seek is not mine to grant. I will switch you."