Tara sighed. They would get into that soon enough. “Let’s just say that there have been some changes since you were here last. It’s a different war we’re fighting.”

“But with many of the same allies, it seems. We almost didn’t make the trip, but Jasek seems to believe that we have something about us which is needed here.” Did Kerensky notice the way Tara startled at Jasek’s name? “At least”—she smiled thinly—“by him.”

Was it her taunt or the familiar use of Jasek’s name that warmed the back of Tara’s neck? She caught her discomfort in both hands, and throttled it.

“I’m sure that Jasek made his desires clear.”

“Very,” the other woman said, layering several meanings behind her simple reply. “I have to admit, I find his boldness very refreshing. Unusual in an Inner Sphere leader. He’s a fascinating man, don’t you think?”

There was no doubt now that Kerensky had caught her hesitation. The mocking tone. Her sudden informality. Tara flushed.

“No, I don’t think,” she said crisply.

“Easy, Countess. No autopsy, no foul, quaiff?” She held her hands apart. Shrugged, as if to say it did not truly matter to her at all. Though obviously it did. “If you have some kind of prior claim…”

“I do not.”

“Truly? Well, some of his warriors seem to. There was one who I think was most upset that she was sent on to Glengarry while my Steel Wolves accompanied Jasek to Chaffee.”

“Tamara Duke,” Tara said at once, nodding. But Kerensky only smiled cryptically. What was that other one? The commander of the Tharkan Strikers? “Alexia Wolf?” she asked, frowning. The smile did not reach Kerensky’s eyes, and Tara realized that she was being baited. For a woman who was supposedly disinterested… damn her!

“I imagine several of Jasek’s officers were displeased with the division of forces.”

Kerensky hedged, as if balancing between desires to continue teasing Tara and to shift over to more serious matters. Serious won. “They were,” she admitted. “Though Paladin McKinnon could not seem to make up his mind whom he’d rather be stuck with.” Her face darkened. “And I hear that the Stormhammers had a hard time escaping Glengarry.”

News of the nuclear weapon had flashed across Skye with dramatic speed after the return of the Glengarry raiders. Not surprising that the Steel Wolves already had it. “It was a tactical nuke. Caught the Freedom’s Fist on descent. With the Friedensstifter taking off, fully loaded, we think there was a mistake in targeting. It could have been much, much worse.”

Not that it wasn’t bad enough. As it was, Tara would be responsible for informing Jasek of the loss of a Union–class vessel, fourteen crewmen, and a dozen embarked technicians. If the leader of the Stormhammers ever returned from Chaffee.

“Where is Jasek, anyway?” she asked, forcing the conversation over to practical matters.

Kerensky pursed her lips. “He sent us ahead almost as soon as he accepted the Jade Falcons’ formal surrender. We had to repair and refit en route. By the time we jumped from Chaffee, he was repairing what units he could from the salvage and stores left behind by the garrison, and after our share.” She shrugged. “Quite honestly, I expected him only a few days behind us. He must have been caught up with something.”

“And Star Colonel Helmer? What of him?”

Now it was Kerensky’s turn to frown. No doubt she thought that her report, transmitted ahead of her arrival, had covered that. “Helmer jumped out of the Chaffee system three hours ahead of us. I would assume to return to Glengarry.”

Tara let Kerensky stew in her assumption a moment. It was a petty revenge, perhaps, for her earlier goading about Jasek, but it would also serve to put the other woman on the defensive, turning her strategic thinking toward the larger problems at hand.

“You would assume that. So would I, in fact. But we have intelligence out of the Glengarry system that is less than a week old, and as far as we can tell no retreating forces from Chaffee have arrived there.” She leaned back against her Shandra. “So the big question is, where did they go?”

If one thing could be said about Anastasia Kerensky, it was that no one put her on the defensive for very long. She waved a hand at Tara. “That’s still a little question,” she said dismissively.

All right. “So what is the big question, then?”

Anastasia Kerensky’s smile widened into a predator’s grin, showing the teeth behind. The question, when she asked it, sent a chill through Tara Campbell. The Countess knew that the Steel Wolf leader had the right of it.

She also knew, without a doubt, that they were fortunate to have her back on Skye.

Tassa Kay blew on her fingertips, flexed the hand like a gunfighter preparing for a speed draw.

“When will they be here?”

22

DropShip Himmelstor

Over Hesperus II

Lyran Commonwealth

22 November 3134

Refusing with a sharp shake of his head to leave the bridge of the Himmelstor, Jasek weathered Kaptain Goran’s pointed stare and belted himself into the chair normally reserved for the ship’s executive officer. The DropShip’s command center was a beehive of activity as they approached atmospheric insertion over Hesperus II, with crewmen manning the different stations, calling out time checks, attitude adjustments, and range to target on a contact that Jasek would feel better forgetting was even there.

“And I can’t convince you to go below,” the kaptain said, his voice rough and gravelly from decades of calling out orders. Thick-necked and heavy-browed, Eduard Goran was a fourth-generation spacer with family ties back to the Lyran Commonwealth.

Jasek gripped the arms of the command-style chair. “I will if you will,” he said easily.

The Stormhammers’ leader had had enough of “below” after four days under a high-gravity burn, ramping up and holding at the equivalent of 2.5 Gs. Except for short low-gravity periods where a skeleton crew made their rounds and everyone was allowed to eat or take care of personal ablutions, Jasek had been confined to quarters and strapped into bed, feeling as if his spine were threatening to snap in half. Hammered until his joints ached and every muscle felt bruised.

A “suicide sled” run, that’s what Goran had called it when Hesperus authorities approved Jasek’s request for a fast insertion lane. A Lyran Scout jumped the Himmelstor to a special Lagrange point in-system, near Hesperus III. Then the trial began.

After barely an hour of the rough treatment, Jasek could think of it only as a necessary evil.

Even with his personal JumpShip fitted out with lithium-fusion batteries, able to make the double-jump transfer from Chaffee’s Lagrange point to the Hesperus system in less than a day, this was the only way he hoped to get in and out fast enough to do Skye any good. Using a closer set of nonstandard jump coordinates was out of the question. Jasek had been willing to risk it—anything to save himself the eighteen-day insertion time—but Goran had flat refused. There were things worse than a deep gravity well protecting Hesperus II from unwanted trespassers.

And thinking of which… “She’s going to come down our port ventral side,” the ship’s sensor officer called out, and if it was possible to ratchet tension on the bridge up another few degrees, that did it.

Goran grunted. “Roll five degrees starboard. Bring her up on the main screen.”

There was no ferroglass viewport on an Overlord bridge. No “weather deck” bulkheads at all, in fact. The command center was nestled safely and securely in the DropShip’s centerline spaces where only a naval-class missile might hope to penetrate.