Anastasia didn’t waste breath. Instead she kicked out at the left leg that supported her opponent in his attack. He turned to slip the blow, and Anastasia sprang forward, throwing the whole weight of her body against him. The two of them went down in a tangle together: Kal Radick on the bottom; Anastasia above him and facing away.

So far so good, but in a prolonged fight, the larger and more muscular Radick would have an advantage in stamina. She had to end the combat now if she didn’t want to lose.

Anastasia jabbed her left elbow backward at full strength into Kal Radick’s torso, and struck meat. She pulled her arm forward and struck back again at the same point. This time she was rewarded with the sound of a sharp exhalation, and a solid impact that told her she was hitting Radick’s rib cage.

But Radick still had not given up. He threw an arm around Anastasia’s neck and pulled backward, cutting into her windpipe and choking off the blood in the arteries that fed her brain, and not letting go. Blackness gathered at the edges of her vision. If she let the blackness take her, the night would never leave her and she would die.

She struck again with her elbow. The solid ribs that she struck cracked. Another blow in the same place—she could no longer feel her elbow; had she dislocated it?—and the ribs became suddenly softer. Again and again she struck, feeling the ribs fragmenting beneath her blows while her lungs cried out for air and the blackness rose steadily behind her eyes.

At length she felt Radick’s arm fall from around her neck. She rolled away from him, and without the aid of either arm—both of them were useless now—she staggered to her feet and looked down at where Kal Radick lay choking and struggling for breath. The Galaxy Commander’s face had gone gray and was covered with sweat, and pink-tinged foam bubbled from his lips and nose.

“Punctured a lung, did I?” Anastasia said. The blackness had receded from her vision, leaving an array of floating bright spots in its place. “No worry. I can fix it.”

She dropped full weight with both knees onto Radick’s chest. More of his ribs snapped as he convulsed under the blow. She struggled back to her feet and dropped kneeling onto his chest for a second time. This time he didn’t move, and it felt like dropping onto a sack of wet sand.

Still kneeling on Kal Radick’s lifeless chest, Anastasia looked up at the ring of spectators. “This Trial is over,” she said.

Her voice was scarcely more than a harsh rasp, and she drew each breath with difficulty—her throat had begun swelling from the damage that it had sustained when Radick had gotten his forearm across her neck and pulled back. But there was no other sound in the room except her words.

“I am the Galaxy Commander now. I, Anastasia—”

“Kerensky!” shouted a voice from outside the ring. Then again, in chorus, “Kerensky!” out of many throats.

“Yes,” Anastasia said. “We have been quiet too long, my Wolves. But soon all the worlds—soon Terra herself—will hear us howl.”

She stood. She did not allow herself to sway, in spite of the fact that the room was spinning around her. She walked forward, out of the ring.

“I am going to my quarters,” she said. “Star Colonels, tonight, report to me. Be prepared to tell me how soon you will be ready for combat operations. Our target is no longer Small World. It is Northwind.”

19

Clan DropShip Lupus

Northwind Drop Point

Prefecture III, Republic of the Sphere

June, 3133; no season

“Immediately,” when speaking of a full-scale invasion of Northwind, still required a certain amount of time spent in preparation, even for a Steel Wolf force already bent on attacking Small World. by the time the Wolves left Tigress, Anastasia Kerensky’s bruises from her fight with Kal Radick were fading, although her hand was still splinted. The injury was not important—she had no need for those fingers in either planning strategy or riding a ’Mech—so she ignored it.

During her time aboard the DropShip Lupus, she made a point of seeking out and talking with as many different elements of the Steel Wolf invasion force as possible—seeing and being seen, letting people know directly that the new Galaxy Commander was not at all the same as the old one. The get-acquainted process also gave her a better feel for the strength and composition of the force for this mission than she could get from cold words and numbers on a notepad or in a file. There were other Steel Wolf resources in the Prefecture engaged in other missions. She’d worry about them another time.

The news for now was both bad and good. On the bad side, the Wolves—like everybody else these days, it seemed—had more qualified Mech Warriors than proper ’Mechs to carry them into battle. The invasion force possessed a Koshi, a MadCat, and a Catapult, plus her own Ryoken II; beyond that, the MechWarriors had to make do with retrofitted Industrial and ForestryMechs. Thinking about it, she could not resist an inward sneer. The Wolves should never have given up their BattleMechs, no matter what Devlin Stone had promised them in return.

On the good side, the Steel Wolves had more than a sufficiency of tanks and other vehicles, both troop transports and motorized cavalry. Another pleasant surprise, this one on a more personal level, came from her perusal of the personnel files: Nicholas Darwin had turned out to possess an excellent battlefield record, as well as the respect of his peers among the tank officers.

She could use that. If she decided to promote him—as she was toying with the idea of doing—she would have at least one Star Colonel firmly on her side in the coming fight. Which would mean a smaller chance of accidental or deliberate sabotage of her plans, and a better chance of actually having them understood.

She could have used more air and aerospace craft; Radick and his chosen commanders had spent those elements heavily in the past few campaigns. As matters stood, the Steel Wolves had sufficient helicopters and VTOL craft for close air support, and enough aerospace fighters to either take out the air defenses over Tara or protect their DropShips from aerial assault after landing, but not enough to do a full-scale job of both.

The Steel Wolves also had units of both regular and Elemental infantry—though again, not nearly as much of the latter as she would have liked. Still, the invasion force overall was fairly heavy on infantry, and she would have to craft her battle plan to make use of it. The mix was not exactly as she would have liked, but it was adequate, and she would play the hand that she had been given.

Anastasia looked at the maps of Northwind, and at the data in the Galaxy Commander’s files, and pondered strategy. The character of the opposing commander was always an important consideration, and the news in that department was both good and bad. Kal Radick’s most recent intelligence reports put Prefect Tara Campbell in residence on Northwind, backed up by a Paladin of the Sphere. Northwind was Tara Campbell’s home world, and she was its Countess, which gave her strong ties to the place, plus strong loyalty from the local forces. Add to that a Paladin’s authority and resources and the corresponding boost to morale in general… and the combination could mean trouble.

On the other hand, a divided command held considerable potential for disputes in authority. The Paladin technically outranked the Prefect, and could overrule her decisions if he so chose. If the two of them had not managed to achieve a working partnership, they would be fighting each other as much as the enemy, and both efficiency and morale would suffer.

Anastasia Kerensky contemplated that possibility, and felt a certain amount of justified scorn. Among the Clans, such a situation would never be allowed the chance to develop. There would be a Trial, and the question would be settled. One way or the other.