“It’s not my back I’m worried about.”

“Well, that part is in a sling, Countess. No mistaking.”

Despite the Paladin’s excellent military skills, and her own, they were both hanging out in the wind when it came to the tactical situation on Skye. “We’ll give it everything we have, plus ten percent. We can’t do any more than that.” She wrapped her arms around her sides.

“Desperate times, Tara.” He smiled thin and hard. “Desperate measures. Get used to it.”

“I’ll do what needs doing, but damned if I’ll get used to it. It’s a slippery slope, David”—Tara saw him startle as she used his given name for the first time—“and if we aren’t careful, we truly will make Skye a world not worth having. Then what will keep us here?” She looked askance at him.

“How far do we let desperation push us?”

Miliano

The Avanti Assemblies factory in Miliano was no stranger to military machines. Though perhaps not so many as this, Alexia Wolf decided.

The main floor worked in quality-controlled teams to assemble Kinnol main battle tanks under a recent license from Kressly Industries. Their work area was shrinking with each passing day, however, with auxiliary stations being taken over by the Tharkan Strikers and Lyran Rangers as maintenance and repair docks. ’Mechs and tanks were braced up against the walls, and infantry in powered armor worked alongside astechs in exoskeletons to lend muscle where it was needed.

Military technicians and factory workers shouted back and forth, often with colorful invective, calling for equipment that had been shared. Or borrowed. Or simply taken when no one was looking. Pieces and parts were routinely scavenged from the factory line, and cutting torches flared as armor plating was chopped up and then welded slapdash over whatever holes needed patching.

The stench of scorched metal hung over everything. It was the smell of desperation.

From her vantage point, sharing the crew boss “nest” with the resident manager and Niccolò GioAvanti, Alexia watched as a scarred Kelswa assault tank rolled by. Broken treads slapped against the ferrocrete floor, and gritty black smoke chuffed from the engine compartment. A floor monitor saw this, flagged down the vehicle, and made a throat-slashing gesture. While the crew seemed confident in their ability to drive the Kelswa in, rules were that factory managers called the shots (against the targets they saw, anyway). The tank engine was shut down and the vehicle rigged to be towed the remaining thirty meters to a berth.

A master sergeant in the Lyran Rangers ran up to argue with the manager. Both gestured to the nest, which was raised only two meters over the floor, but the crew boss let it go and for Alexia it was a lower-caste matter. The situation would resolve itself, the tank would get repaired, and her Strikers would be ready for battle again. Soon, she hoped.

There was no need to involve herself directly.

Not until a LoaderMech tried to walk off with a BattleMech gyro.

Alexia saw the IndustrialMech grab the gyroscope’s carrying flanges with its vise grip hands, lifting the valuable component and marching it bowlegged over to a waiting truck. A frown creased her brow. Vehicles came into the Assemblies plant to be worked on. Parts and pieces did not go out to them.

She swung down from the nest, feet hitting the ferrocrete floor, wondering what was going on. Then she saw Tamara Duke.

Then she knew.

Striding over to the waiting truck, Alexia did not hurry, but she did not allow herself any distraction either. Sharing the facilities here with the Lyran Rangers had lent itself to several tense days, and far too many bristling encounters with Kommandant Duke. The lack of Jasek’s presence, always a calming influence among the Stormhammers, had put both women on edge.

In a Clan military, Tamara would have already challenged for a Trial of Position. Or Alexia would have simply invoked a Circle of Equals to put the other woman back in her place.

Whatever the Inner Sphere equivalent was, it looked about to happen.

Tamara saw her approach, staring at the leutnant-colonel over the noteputer she held in both hands.

“Kommandant,” Alexia greeted her with bare civility. “We seem to have a problem.”

“No problem.” Tamara used a stylus to check something off on the screen. “One two-ton gyroscope. And an actuator and several tons of armor.”

It was all stacked up on the flatbed, being lashed down by the crew under her command. Hauptmann Vic Parkins labored alongside another of the Rangers’ warriors and half a dozen techs to secure the load. “We have what we need.”

“If you have a crippled ’Mech, load it on a recovery vehicle and bring it in. All repairs are handled here.”

“With two of your Strikers seen for every one of my Rangers.” Tamara turned her back on Alexia, her dark hair swinging across her shoulders, closing a curtain on the argument.

Alexia felt her hands wanting to curl into fists. “This is our operations area,” Alexia reminded the other woman, working on a diplomatic solution. Jasek would not appreciate losing one of his best field commanders to a hospital stay. “I agreed to lend support to the Rangers after you lost one of your maintenance depots.”

“A maintenance depot, two munitions dumps, and a nighttime attack two days ago that cost us a pair of salvage vehicles.” Tamara whipped around to face Alexia, temper coloring her skin. “We’re facing the brunt of the Jade Falcon push into this district while your Strikers handle the light loads.”

Swallowing back the metallic taste of anger, Alexia Wolf stepped right up into Tamara’s face. Quietly, coldly, she said, “You point out one vehicle being repaired in this Assemblies plant, or one of my people laid up in the field hospital, and tell me who is getting off lightly. Kommandant.”

In fact, her losses had been staggering. It might be true that the Rangers saw more desperate fighting, but then, her Strikers were quite a bit greener and had nowhere near the level of materiel readiness that had been prepared for the Lyran Rangers. Alexia might share Jasek’s favor, but the Stormhammers’ commander did not let that interfere with sound military decisions. And neither would she.

She roped in Vic Parkins by eye. “Hauptmann. You will unfasten that materiel and see that it is placed back where it belongs.”

With a hard glance toward Tamara, Parkins shook his head. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Colonel.” He braced himself up stiffly. “Orders.”

This was not the confident officer who had walked the fine line of insubordination a few months before. Alexia wondered how Tamara had finally gotten to him.

As it turned out, she hadn’t. Tamara thumbed a new screen onto her noteputer and flourished it in front of Alexia’s face. Orders, countersigned by Colonel Petrucci, commandeering specific parts and supplies. In Jasek’s absence, and that of Colonel Vandel, his rank held sway among the Stormhammers. Even over her.

“Is there a problem?” Niccolò GioAvanti asked, stepping up at Alexia’s shoulder. She wasn’t certain if he had followed her over earlier or had just arrived.

“No problem,” both women said at the same time. Alexia with a touch of darkness, Tamara smug.

GioAvanti reached in and took the noteputer from Tamara’s hands. There was never any doubt in his demeanor that she would surrender it. The man looked calm and well appointed, even in the frantic sweatshop his family’s local factories had become. The braid he wore down the left side of his face was tucked back behind his ear, and pale blue eyes skipped over the screen.

“This looks legitimate,” he said evenly, drawing hard stares from both women, if for different reasons.

Of course it was legitimate, though Alexia had a good idea how Antonio Petrucci had come to pull rank over her Tharkan Strikers. It was a violation of military courtesy, taking advantage of Alexia’s offer to share resources from her operations area. It wouldn’t have happened unless someone—a particular someone—had whispered in Petrucci’s ear that Jasek would back his play. When the landgrave returned.