“So, what have we got in here?” Michael asked, stepping through the doorway. One hand smoothed his well-trimmed fringe of beard. A few gray hairs peaked through, but not many for a man of forty-five. Steiners aged well when they weren’t sitting on the throne of the Lyran Commonwealth. With luck, Michael Steiner II would never bear that kind of weight. His older brother Jonathan was Archon, which allowed Michael to return to Tharkad University as a research assistant and, soon, the eccentric life of a celebrity professor.
An odd friend for twenty-year-old Alek to have made, but a friend nevertheless.
“Thank you for coming, Michael.” Alek limped forward, trying to cover for his swollen right knee. “Let us get out of here, yes?”
“Hold it, wunderkind.”
Alek hated it when Michael called him kid. Their age difference rarely mattered except when Michael wanted to make a point.
“I had to sign you out of here, since you won’t take yourself to the hospital and the university is worried about liability. Which means you go nowhere until I’m satisfied.” He leaned forward, inspecting the younger man’s face. “Ja. Those will darken up nicely I expect.”
Alek didn’t care what his eyes looked like. He’d received blackened eyes before. Would do so again, most likely.
He looked past Michael at Nurse Dragon. Cynthia Durgen, the wonderful, old battleaxe, had the same look of distaste she slapped on every time students carried him in from another hazing. Alek knew the look wasn’t for him, but for the “don’t ask” policy Tharkad University generally took toward such happenings. It didn’t help that he pretended not to know who had come after him.
“Michael signed me out?” he asked, cutting to the bottom line. Lyrans understood bottom lines. She nodded reluctantly. “Then I’m leaving. Thank you for your attentions.”
Michael fell into step with Alek as he limped down the hall and into a crisp Tharkad morning. Winter still had a stranglehold on late-arriving spring. The sky was a calm, anemic blue, but a rime of icy snow clung to the campus’s park-like grounds. Alek stumbled as sunshine stabbed golden daggers behind his eyes. His temple throbbed.
“You look awful,” Michael said, helping him down the non-skid steps. “Why do you let them do this to you?”
“‘Not all of me is dust,’” Alek quoted. He shivered, missing the parka they had taken from him. “‘Within my song, safe from the worm, my spirit will survive.’”
“Always back to Pushkin. Was he beat a lot as a young man too?”
Hero worship through masochism? Hardly. “That’s not what this is about, Michael.”
“I know what this is about,” Michael said, stopping Alek with a hand on his arm. “You’re young and brilliant, and they hate you for it.” He let go of Alek’s arm. “They hate you, Alek. And they’re spoiled mama’s boys who think they can get away with anything. Or that daddy will buy it off when they don’t.”
Staring out over the campus grounds, Alek refused to meet Michael’s eye. Other late arrivals slushed their way to class, hands thrust in pockets and breath frosting. One of them paused long enough to staple a plasticized handbill to a magnificent pine. “Aren’t they right?” he asked. “It’s your world, Michael. I’m just a guest here.”
Michael shook his head. “Well, some of our Lyran students have a strange way of showing their hospitality.”
“They’re Star League cadets. They belong to the entire Inner Sphere now.” Which was as close as he would come to naming them. Alek figured Michael knew who they were, of course, but Alek wouldn’t put his friend in the position of having that knowledge confirmed. His choice. His bruises.
“They’re supposed to be professionals. You would be doing the Star League, and the Commonwealth, a great service by forcing them to deal with the consequences of their choices. ‘Some sense of duty, something of a faith, some reverence to the laws ourselves have made.’ Lord Tennyson speaks as true as any dead Russian poet.”
Alek had classes this morning. He should get going. “‘Everyone thinks of changing the world,’” he drew upon Tolstoi. He offered Michael a short wave as he headed off. “‘No one thinks of changing himself.’”
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Michael called after him.
Alek raised a victorious fist into the air without looking back.
But if he thought to escape on a position of strength, those desires went unanswered. Grabbing his ‘corder and spare coat from the dorms and shuffling to class, his nausea increased. The final flight of stairs leading to the lecture hall swam before his eyes, and he nearly collapsed.
He felt bone-weary, but if he missed the entire Poli-Science lecture, they would know they’d gotten to him. He hadn’t stood up under two years of their “special attention” to lay down now with graduation so close. Elias Luvon and his friends would respect Alek’s determination, someday. Maybe they would become better soldiers for it.
Elias was nearest the door when Alek slipped in at the back of the sloping hall, and his smirk faltered when he saw no hint of surrender in Alek’s stoic gaze. Elias Luvon had strong, handsome features and an over-inflated sense of his own position at Tharkad University. He might very well be the Nagelring’s top MechWarrior cadet this year, allowed to use Star League billets purchased at the university, but he barely held his own in academics. On merit alone he was likely failing Poli-Sci, but the class was considered a must for sons of noble families and his father’s latest endowment to the university guaranteed him a passing grade.
Alek moved by deliberately, barely
