This time, Kal Radick’s policy had led not just to embarrassment, but to disaster—defeat and humiliation, ending in a retreat to the DropShips and a run back home, on a world that she, Anastasia Kerensky, could have taken with no BattleMechs at all.

Anastasia knew the dark mood that had over-taken her. It made her dangerous, to herself as much as others, and made her liable to do rash things. The last time she had been in such a state of mind, she had ended up leaving Arc-Royal for The Republic. That decision had proved not so bad, in the long run—but it could have been bad, if her luck had been worse, or if the long DropShip passages had not given her the opportunity to stop and think and plan.

I need to work this off right now, she thought, before I do something stupid and ruin everything.

She looked about her apartment. She had chosen to live on her own outside the Clan enclave on Tigress for a reason. She had guessed it might come at some point to this. It was time to call on an expert at having the kind of fun that would ease her mind and burn away some of the physical need that threatened to push her off the true path.

It was time to bring out Tassa Kay.

Anastasia turned to her closet and found the clothes she needed. She laid them out on the bed, item by item: the black leather breeches, cut to fit snug against the skin; the black silk shirt; the black leather jacket with its patches from Dieron and Achernar; the boots, polished black leather rising up past the knee.

And one more thing—a knife in its sheath, designed to be hidden up her sleeve. She had not needed the knife on Achernar, among comrades-in-arms; and she would have scorned to wear it on Tigress, among the Wolves. But the knife had come in handy more than once on the journey from Arc-Royal, and Tassa Kay liked it very much.

She dressed quickly, then left her apartment and headed for the Strip. Every DropPort had a Strip, regardless of what name the district might actually carry. It was the part of town where the entertainment establishments stood open all night and all day, where there were always bright lights and loud music, and where the law walked carefully if it entered at all. The Strip was full of places to spend money and blow off the mingled tension and boredom of long DropShip passages.

One would not—most of the time—find top-ranked Clan Warriors in places like that; only—sometimes—Clan members from the other castes, and non-Clan citizens and transients. And if one went looking for it, one could find trouble.

Anastasia Kerensky found a barroom. It had a garish multicolored facade, all pulsing lights and pounding music. Pleased by the gaudy spectacle, she went in.

She didn’t have to work her way through the crowd. It parted for her as soon as she stepped across the threshold. She went up to the bar, and similar magic made an empty place appear.

“Vodka,” she said, before the bartender could speak.

“Yes, Star Colonel.”

Damn, she thought. Even here they knew her. She tossed back her drink, and made to leave the cash for it on the bar.

“On the house, Star Colonel.”

A wave of frustration washed over her. She pulled out more cash and laid it down. “Buy the house a round on me, then. Good night.”

She turned and left. As she went, she heard the excited murmurs behind her… “Kerensky?” “Kerensky!” …and headed deeper into the back alleys of the Strip.

Anastasia found, at last, a dive. The building had no windows anymore—the windows it had once were now all bricked up. The sign over the door, in mostly burned-out lights, read: BUCKET OF BLOOD.

She had to elbow past a stubble-bearded thug in a greasy coverall to make it in through the door, and then push herself in between two other lowlifes to reach the bar. She was not the only female in the room; but she was the only one whose occupation was not immediately obvious. Of the other women, two of them wore DropShip workers’ coveralls—they were a pair, it looked like, and smart enough to do their payday drunken revel on the buddy system—and the remaining three wore skintight skirts, mesh blouses, and body glitter. All five of them looked at her glossy leathers with surly resentment.

The bartender eyed her suspiciously. “What do you want?”

“Strong drink,” she said. “Vodka.”

“Pay first,” said the bartender. “No tabs here.”

She slapped money down onto the bar. “Tell me when this runs out. And give me a drink.”

Hot breath stirred the hairs on the back of her neck, and she half-turned to see the man she had shoved coming in the door.

“Hey,” he said, in angry tones. “Who do you think you are?”

She gave him a sweet smile. “The person who is drinking here,” she said. She felt the adrenaline rising, and shifted her position and her balance to be ready when Big-and-Greasy made his move. “If you want to drink here, you will have to do something about it.”

He gave her a truculent glare. “You better be careful. Talk to the wrong person like that, and somebody could get hurt.”

But not him, apparently, not here and not now. He was backing down and moving away grumbling. Damn. She was really feeling it now, the angry reckless burn, and she had nothing to let it loose on. She downed the last of her vodka, swept the bar with a contemptuous gaze, and swaggered out.

Anastasia made it two blocks before the footsteps she heard behind her gathered enough courage to come at her in a rush. In a surge of wild fierce joy she spun around and stepped into it, the knife dropping into her hand and punching upward into the attacker’s gut.

Big-and-Greasy, she thought. Bleeding out on the pavement. No surprise there.

A voice from the street ahead commented, “That was nice.”

She looked at the speaker. He was young and dark-haired and muscular, his voice and his dress both Clan-but-not-quite—freeborn to a local, perhaps? In the light from the nearest streetlamp, he was smiling.

“I wasn’t doing it to give you a show.” She let her accent slide downward out of true Clan precision—she was Tassa Kay tonight, and Tassa suddenly had another need, as strong as the need for violence. “But if you liked it—”

The man’s smile grew wider. “Oh, I did.”

She smiled back at him, the corpse of Big-and-Greasy already cooling at her feet. “Then we can go back to my place and do some other things that you might like even more.”

16

Kerensky residence

The Four Cities, Tigress

May, 3133; local summer

Anastasia Kerensky woke up in a much better mood than the one that had sent her out looking for trouble on the DropPort Strip. Daylight filtering in through the drawn curtains of her bedroom brought her to full awareness slowly and comfortably. Her muscles felt relaxed and pleasantly fatigued, and she was conscious of the warm weight of another person lying next to her. Full memory of the night before returned, and she smiled as she treated herself to a langourous, full-body stretch.

It was a damned good thing, she thought, that the bed had turned out to be a solid piece of furniture, and not a shoddy piece of work some local landlord had purchased on the cheap for a furnished rental unit. Otherwise, the two of them could have broken it, after the point where she had discovered that her partner for the evening—freeborn local or no—was strong enough that she had no need to worry about breaking him.

She rolled over to look at him, and saw that he was already awake and looking at her. In the daylight that made its way past the curtains, he was not quite as young as she had guessed in the streetlamp’s glow, but still perhaps a year or so her junior. He was dark-skinned and muscular, in a pleasantly compact kind of way, with black hair cropped short and a nicely shaped skull underneath. He had surprisingly full lips, and his eyes were a dark brown, almost black, very lively and curious.