High above the restless ocean, the lone man climbed the moonlit cliff face with no more effort than if he’d been running on flat, open ground. He leaped upward with great force, scrambling around overhangs and up fissures in the stone, never slipping, always advancing. Far below, the waters of the Ginaz Sea crashed against treacherous reef rocks.

But Jool Noret would not fall; he never did. For nine years, he had thrown himself into the jaws of Death— and Death had always spat him back out.

The most extraordinary of all mercenaries wore a white combat suit— sleeveless, with trousers to the knees— an outfit that offered no armor but permitted him full range of movement. A black bandana encircled his head, tied in the manner of the ancient ronin fighters of Old Earth. Though he cared little about impressing the ever-present onlookers, Noret wore the white suit so that they could observe his progress up the sheer rock face.

Above, shadowy forms lined the top of the cliff, a score of Ginaz trainees watching him, accompanied by Chirox. Noret saw the angular multi-armed sensei mek glistening dull silver in moonlight. He knew the combat machine was telling the students what they should attempt, without exceeding their own abilities. As Noret glanced up at the group, part of him was pleased to have inspired so many more fighters to destroy the machines. At the same time, he was bewildered by all of the attention. He had never asked for it.

Without doubt, he had become the greatest warrior the Ginaz archipelago had ever produced— perhaps the finest it ever would produce.

But Noret was also the most enigmatic of men, speaking only rarely to his students. Several years ago, a downcast trainee had etched the Swordmaster’s most famous quotation into a polished stone near the cluster of huts on the island. “I am still unworthy myself. I am not fit to teach others.”

When asked about his legendary victories, Noret said nothing… which forced the students to learn and embellish the tales for themselves. He alone knew the full truth. On battlefield after battlefield, he charged into harm’s way, seeking ever more dangerous confrontations, more lethal foes. Shattered robots lay strewn in his path wherever he fought. Jool Noret never held anything back, became nearly invincible because he simply did not care if he survived or not. His death wish had grown plain for all to see, yet he continued to live.

He fought for the beauty and release of the battle, for the artistic expression of violence. It was what he had been born to do, carrying the spirit of Jav Barri within him, building upon the inherited instincts, turning himself into a superlative fighter. It was what the death of his father had imposed upon him.

Noret had become a one-man rebellion on several of the weaker Synchronized Worlds, infiltrating imprisoned human populations, providing them with scrambler weapons to fry gelcircuitry, or more conventional explosives and weapons to initiate sabotage. Noret would also slip in among the machines, deactivating and destroying scores of robots like an assassin in the night. And when the hornet’s nest had been stirred and he had inflicted enough damage, he would slip away and return to the League Worlds.

Yet it was never enough.

Scaling this sheer cliff was a far simpler exercise than overcoming the self-imposed conditions he had placed on his life and his worth. On the most difficult section of rock, a perilous overhang, Noret even increased the pace of his treacherous ascent.

He realized that demonstrations like this always carried great danger— not to himself, but to any of the young mercenaries who might try to emulate him. But the lesson was valid: in life there were few safety nets, and there were certainly none during war, when unpredictable violence could change any situation in a matter of seconds.

On the rare occasions when he returned to Ginaz, he conducted these exercises for his own benefit, honing his skills while giving the others something to strive for. He still isolated himself, keeping away from the shining eyes of the students. Merely by succeeding, Noret gave them the certain knowledge that the human body could indeed achieve remarkable things. Human beings should kill with precision and refinement, an art form that even the most efficient of thinking machines could never master. He flung sweat out of his pale hair and kept climbing, approaching the top of the cliff.

Abruptly he slipped silently to the side, into the thick shadow of a rift in the rock where moonlight did not penetrate, then darted beneath the overhang and the waiting students. Noret scampered along a narrow ledge, then resumed his ascent. He did not care what others said about him, or about his aura of mystery that only increased people’s curiosity and fascination. As far as he was concerned, his reasons for training so relentlessly were private.

“Where is he?” he heard one of the trainees ask. “I don’t see him anymore.”

“He is behind us,” Chirox answered, turning to greet Noret. “In this game, he has killed all of us.”

Twenty sets of eyes turned to look.

Jool Noret stood poised in a fighting stance, his scarred, bronzed face made more enigmatic by night shadow. Without warning, he bounded past the students— his long hair flying— leaped off the edge of the cliff, and disappeared from view.