Xiapu

Huáng-yù Province, Liao

9 June 3134

Ritter Michaelson sat astride an Eridani mare. He hadn’t been born to the saddle, but was growing comfortable with it after several weeks. He shifted his weight carefully, not wanting to spook the animal. Her ambling walk rocked him easily back and forth, back and forth, but he knew better than to let down his guard. The mare had already proven herself to be proud and headstrong as any of her breed. On his morning ride out, she had taken the bit between her teeth and ate up several kilometers with long, powerful strides before he’d regained control.

He had learned one thing from that wild ride: he could hang on more easily during a gallop than during a canter or slower trot. A gallop rolled beneath him like the swaying gait of a light BattleMech. The short, choppy strides of a trot tended to slam the base of his spine right up between his shoulder blades.

It all took some getting used to.

The small ranch could not have been more different from the city life he had grown up with. Grassy plains stretched for hundreds of kilometers in every direction, cut apart by windbreak forests and a few muddy rivers. Eridani horses and beef cows shared the range. Simple barbed-wire fences kept the herds separate, and someone had to ride those fences every few days. It was a task he found almost enjoyable. It gave him time to be alone with his thoughts. As alone as he could be, for a man who had lived two other lives.

Both of them ruined by bad choices.

Daniel Peterson had been a young man caught up in large events. A fresh-faced lieutenant thinking he could force his homeworld into a confrontation with its Capellan heritage, with the Confederation. One DropShip. That had been the arrangement. Flashes of memory from that night haunted him still.

…Chang-an, burning. He ran through the streets, fighting his way back to his parents’ home.

…Muddy bootprints heading up the stairs, and a wet stain of blood seeping into the hallway carpet from behind the door.

That had ended his first life and begun his second, where he’d tried to accomplish good works in penance. Becoming a Knight of the Sphere, then a Paladin, Ezekiel Crow gave selflessly to the homeland he’d failed. Twenty-three years, only to have his past catch up with him on Northwind. Blackmailed, he had again betrayed those around him—and himself as well. Was there salvation after that?

Daniel Peterson, the Betrayer of Liao. Ezekiel Crow, the Black Paladin.

“Who will I be this week?” he asked out loud.

The mare snorted and shook its head, long mane whisking along the side of its neck. Michaelson patted the muscular neck with a gloved hand, calming the high-spirited animal. For a second he thought he heard the distant, thumping echo of VTOL rotors, but saw nothing on the horizon. He heard nothing more except the slow clop of hooves and the whistle of dry wind combing through tall grasses.

Who would he be?

Ritter Michaelson was all he had left.

Things were heating up with the arrival of the Second McCarron’s Armored Cavalry. A veteran Confederation unit, its arrival put Liao on notice that the world had not been forgotten. The supposed minority of pro-Confederation residents became more vocal, swelled their numbers every day. Republic responses grew more determined in turn. A citywide labor strike in the southern city of Jíla turned ugly when the local magistrate shut off residential power as a way to force people back to work. The industrial sector was still burning, two days after the resulting riots.

Michaelson had seen this kind of schism before, up close, and if someone did not head it off soon, blood would run in the streets again.

Only there didn’t seem to be anything he could do about it. He had no BattleMech. No unit. No appointment by Exarch Redburn. All he had was a tenuous relationship started with Legate Ruskoff, and the ranking officer had not returned one of Michaelson’s calls in over a week. More important things to do.

Then he heard it again. The thumping beat of rotor blades, soft, but getting louder, bouncing down against the grasslands and seeming to come from all around him. A nearby herd of grazing Eridani horses raised their heads, stamped at the ground.

Lifting his eyes to the horizon Michaelson did a long slow scan of the leaden winter skies. There! A small dark smudge moved against the gray backdrop, dipping down and back up, making long, sweeping runs. Looking for someone. He rubbed a gloved hand over his face—the glove smelling of leather and horse, and always sliding too easily over the glossy healed burns.

Coincidence? He didn’t believe in it. Not anymore.

Who would he be? The question mocked him even as the helicopter swooped in close and circled once, twice. Nearby, the Eridani startled, trying to decide which way to run. His own mare tossed its head, pranced sideways. Michaelson bent forward to calm the beast, and she bucked up violently, throwing him overhead and into a bone-jarring heap. The ’copter flattened out and drifted down for a landing. The horses bolted northeast, a fine golden stallion running at their head and his mare trailing only a few lengths behind the herd.

Michaelson untangled himself, rising on shaky legs. An angry shout died on his lips as Jack Farrell jumped down from the VTOL’s passenger compartment.

No mistaking the tangle of coarse, dark hair, the eyepatch worn over his ruined socket, or the challenging set to his shoulders which held the proverbial chip up there. The veteran raider walked tall beneath the still-pounding rotors where most men would have ducked just out of forced habit. So far as Michaelson knew, Farrell bent his neck to only one person in all of The Republic.

Jacob Bannson.

“One-Eyed” Jack Farrell looked the part of rogue and pirate raider. His lean features were chiseled and hard. His good eye was pale blue, and seemed to bore right through you. That eye fixed on Michaelson now, who limped forward with fists clenched. The two men did not shake hands or even nod a greeting. There was history, yes, but most of it bad.

“What do you want?” he asked Bannson’s man, shouting over the deep rattle of the still-spinning helicopter blades. He pulled off his gloves and tucked them into a back pocket.

“Not to be here, you can bet. I can think of ten things I’d rather be doing than watching you rot out here in the desert.”

Most of which involved stomping through cities in his Jupiter BattleMech, at the head of a raider company. Michaelson nodded back at the ’copter. “Don’t let me keep you.”

Farrell hawked, spat to one side, and glared with his good eye. His contempt for Ezekiel Crow, never a secret, had degraded another few notches since the Paladin’s fall from grace. That likely translated over to the entire world of Liao.

“Doesn’t work that way,” he said, obviously not liking the matter any more than Michaelson. “Bannson told me to ride herd over things on Liao.” He glanced across the golden sward, at the fleeing colorful shadows of the Eridani. “Didn’t know he meant that literally.”

“Your boss gave me up on Terra. He told them everything. Tara Campbell. Jonah Levin. Because of him I had to bury Ezekiel Crow and start again.”