The second MiningMech had not yet given up the fight, but was pressing in close. Four more short-range missiles fired from its torso. That’s it, Tara said to herself. No more reloads until it gets back to a field armory. The MiningMech only had machine guns now. And she had speed on it.

She checked her heat dials. No, she didn’t have speed on it. If she didn’t watch out, before very long she’d be sitting in a ’Mech that was overheated and refusing to move.

But the MiningMech didn’t know that. Tara fired her laser full on into its midtorso.

Rainwater flashed into billowing clouds of steam around both of the ’Mechs as it fell onto their external heat sinks. Fog enshrouded them.

“Surrender,” Tara said over the common ’Mech frequency that both the Highlanders and the Steel Wolves used. “You have no choice. You have no weapons.”

“I have this,” a voice came back. The MiningMech raised its rock cutter. “I will have you out of your tin can in a moment, my lady, and feed you to the dogs.”

The speaker was a woman, from the sound of it—a light, high voice, made hoarse with tension. If we’d met under different circumstances, Tara thought, maybe I’d be buying her a beer instead of braining her.

Aloud she said, “You had your chance,” stepped forward, and engaged the Hatchetman’s jets for another crushing leap.

The MiningMech broke and ran.

Tara came down, turned to give chase, and abruptly froze as the Hatchetman’s self-preservation clicked in, refusing to take any more heat-producing actions until some of the heat already released had a chance to dissipate.

It didn’t matter, though; she wouldn’t go unprotected while her ’Mech recovered. Infantry was coming up—scouts and engineers, wearing the uniforms of Northwind.

My people, Tara thought.

The engineers approached the two fallen Steel Wolf ’Mechs, and placed charges. Then one of the engineers attached demolition blocks around the MiningMech’s entrance hatch.

Another soldier approached Tara. She turned on her outside microphones in time to hear the engineer saying, “Prefect, if you wish, could you call this stubborn bastard over your comms and tell him to come out with his hands up?”

“Yes,” Tara replied on external circuit.

The trooper saluted.

She keyed the mike on the ’Mech common channel, and spoke.

“Steel Wolf, there is no dishonor in surrendering. Your ’Mech is immobilized, and my troops are wiring it for demolition even as we speak. It’s up to you if you’re inside when we blow it up.”

A pause, and then the reply, “You would not.”

“You had your chance,” Tara said.

She addressed the engineers over her external speakers, but made sure that the intra-’Mech link was also open and live.

“I can’t do a thing with him,” Tara said to the engineers, over both circuits. “Destroy the ’Mech. It’s no use to us, it’s damaged already.”

“No, wait!” came the voice of the Steel Wolf. “Will my friend in the ForestryMech and I be harmed if we surrender?”

“I guarantee that you will be treated with all honor,” Tara said.

The rear hatch of the MiningMech opened. A young man emerged, his skimpy MechWarrior shorts and vest soaked with perspiration. The rain caught him and rendered him shivering.

“Take him to the rear. Take them both to the rear,” Tara said. “Before they get hypothermia and die on us.”

She checked her cockpit dials again. The heat was lower. The autoshutdown routine had worked and she could move again. The third ’Mech had gone …that way. She prepared to follow.

Before she could make a move, a Fox armored car bearing Northwind insignia approached. A short-range signal crackled over the Hatchetman’s inside speakers.

“Prefect—the Paladin needs you, now.”

“I’m on my way,” she replied.

She followed the Fox all the way back to the hill where Ezekiel Crow’s Blade was standing and looking out over the field—a mass of rain-sodden ground, half-obscured by mist and drifting smoke, covered with crumpled machinery and the bodies of Wolves and Highlanders alike.

“My lady,” he said over the command circuit as she approached. “Galaxy Commander Kerensky’s ’Mech is disabled and the Wolves are running. I believe the day is ours.”

50

White Horse Bar

City of Tara, Northwind

June, 3133; local summer

Drinks were on the house in the White Horse Bar—drinks were on the house in every bar in Tara, if you wore a Regimental uniform—and the tri-vid behind the counter was tuned to a news channel showing pictures of the Steel Wolves DropShips lifting from the salt flats beyond the Bloodstones. Will Elliot, who had found himself promoted to Corporal in the aftermath of the battles for Red Ledge Pass and the Plains of Tara, was happy to watch the tri-vid and nurse the same beer he’d purchased at the start of the evening. Jock Gordon and Lexa McIntosh, to either side of him at the counter, were both well on the way to becoming completely and happily drunk, and somebody was going to have to stay sober enough to see them back to barracks before morning.

Lexa raised her glass to the image of the departing DropShips. “Good riddance to bad rubbish, and don’t come back!”

“We had them on the run,” Jock said. “Once the aerospace fighters showed up from Halidon, we had them on the run. I still say that we shouldn’t have let them go.”

“The Countess didn’t want to let them go,” Lexa said. She emptied off her drink and gestured at the bartender for another of the same. “She wanted to chase them until they dropped and then cut them up into pieces. That’s what everybody says.”

“Everybody says a lot of things,” said Will. He found it easy to believe that the Countess hadn’t wanted to give up the pursuit—he and Lexa had gotten a good view from their foxhole of her three-on-one melee with the Steel Wolf IndustrialMechs, and the spectacle had left no doubt in his mind that Prefect Tara Campbell could be a brawler when she had to be, but he didn’t think she was the type to become vengeful in victory.

Listen to yourself, he thought. Thinking you know what the Prefect thinks, just because you fought in the same battle as she did. You don’t know anything about her worries, any more than she knows about yours.

He had to admit that he would have been feeling a good deal more vengeful himself toward Anastasia Kerensky and the Steel Wolves if things had turned out only a little worse. Liddisdale had been one of the mountain towns in the path of the enemy’s advance, and the house Will grew up in had sheltered a Highlander missile battery for a few hours, until one of the Steel Wolves’ MiningMechs had taken both house and defenders apart.

Will had heard the news from his mother. Jean Elliot had taken shelter with Old Angus and Robbie Macallan when the fighting started, and was staying in their mountain cabin until Will’s sister in Kildare could make it across the mountains. He hadn’t yet gone back to Liddisdale to look at the wreckage for himself, and wasn’t sure that he wanted to.

The tri-vid news channel changed its picture from shots of departing DropShips to an image of the Fort, followed by a close-up of a dark-haired man in plain clothing. The identification block at the bottom of the tri-vid told the viewers that they were looking at a live image of Paladin Ezekiel Crow.

Will regarded the Paladin’s projected features with mild curiosity. So this was a Paladin of the Sphere—not much to look at, considering that in popular stories all the Paladins were six feet tall and practically glowed with virtue. Ezekiel Crow was just another tired-looking survivor of the Wolves’ invasion, as far as Will could tell.

“Is it true, my lord,” said the voice of an off-camera news reporter, “that you told the Prefect to let the Steel Wolves go?”