But people had been freezing in the snows and parching in the deserts of temperate worlds all across the Inner Sphere for as long as humanity had been keeping track. Temperance was misleading, and Ezekiel Crow did not believe in allowing himself to be misled.

Prefect Tara Campbell, Countess of Northwind, was in many ways an even more disquieting factor than the planet of Northwind itself. The young Countess’s family history and her dossier of public service were matters of common knowledge. Crow knew, therefore, of her birth off-planet to Colonel Jon Campbell and Republic Senator Moelene Jaffries-Campbell; and of her childhood stint as the darling of the news and entertainment media in the aftermath of the Capellan Campaign. He also knew of her outstanding record at the Northwind Military Academy, and of her appointment—more or less by acclamation—to the position recently vacated by Katana Tormark.

The files Crow had been given contained several likenesses of Tara Campbell, all of them recent pictures from open sources. She was a petite, platinum-haired woman who, at least in her official appearances, bore only a slight resemblance to the precocious auburn-haired moppet whose likeness had won the hearts of so many back in her poster days. What Crow wished he knew, and what he had been sent to Northwind at least partially in order to find out, was whether the Countess’s delicate appearance was as misleading as the term “temperate” applied to the climate of a habitable world.

She was, undeniably, young for the position that she held. She had a rash streak in her, as well. One of the tri-vid clips had been particularly disturbing. Ezekiel Crow searched for the file amongst the others in her dossier, found it, and sent it to his cabin’s display unit.

The air above the unit filled for a moment with static fog, then resolved into the image of a crowded street. A reporter armed with a microphone—and followed, Crow guessed, by a videographer—eeled his way through the press and up onto the wide marble steps of a looming piece of governmental architecture. Either by accident or by deliberate timing, the reporter reached the top of the steps just as the Countess of Northwind emerged from within the building.

The reporter stepped forward and extended the microphone, while at the same time deftly blocking Tara Campbell’s further progress down the steps.

“Countess!” he said. “What’s your reaction to Kal Radick’s suggestion that The Republic of the Sphere should be supplanted by a new Star League?”

The reporter’s videographer brought the focus zooming in tightly on Tara Campbell. In the close-up, Ezekiel Crow could see how much the question angered her: The color rose in her fair-skinned face, her blue eyes darkened, and her full lips thinned.

“The Star League’s time is past,” she snapped at the reporter. “Perhaps Kal Radick’s time is past as well.”

Watching the videographed encounter yet again, Ezekiel Crow wished that he knew for certain whether the Countess’s sharp retort had been made in the heat of the moment, or if it had been an intentional provocation thrown out at the first opportunity.

Kal Radick had certainly reacted as if the insult had been deliberate. The Prefect of Prefecture IV had come within a hairsbreadth of formally demanding that Tara Campbell meet him for a Trial of Grievance.

The Countess, for her part, had either ignored or affected to ignore all of the Wolf Clansman’s angry protests, and had made no direct response at all to his angry comments. Her actual reply to Radick’s demand—“If he feels slighted, I invite him to Northwind where we can discuss matters in a calm and civil manner”—could have been mere empty speechmaking. On the other hand, the reply could have been exactly what it must have sounded like to Kal Radick: She was daring the Wolf to attack.

Ezekiel Crow closed down his computer files for the evening and stretched out on his bunk, dimming the lights with a gesture in the direction of the cabin’s environmental sensors. He might as well start getting his body accustomed now to the length of Northwind’s days and nights.

His mind, unfortunately, showed no interest in relaxing and going to sleep. Instead, he kept on thinking about the ins and outs of the situation—and the players—on Northwind.

Bad enough, Crow thought, if Tara Campbell’s words had been accidental. Youth and outraged patriotism, confronted with a question posed unexpectedly, and given no chance to prepare a more considered response, could have worked together to produce a hasty reply that could be understood even if not excused. But if the provocation had been deliberate—if the young Countess had intentionally given offense to the man who was now the leader of the Steel Wolves, and had done so in a way that all but invited that faction into battle on Northwind—then the future looked bleak indeed.

It’ll be Liao all over again, he thought, if we can’t stop it in time. Death everywhere, and blood ankle deep in the streets…

…the night sky an ugly red-brown in the lurid glow of the burning DropPort…

…a man’s high-pitched screams, going on for long minutes without stopping…

…silence, worse than the screams…

…bodies scraped up like garbage and tipped by the ’Mechload into mass graves…

Helpless against the onslaught of memories, he closed his eyes and let the rush of images bear him away once more into nightmare.

6

City of Chang-an, Liao

Prefecture V, Republic of the Sphere

October 3111, local summer

Twenty-two years before, the night sky over Chang-an had been a lurid red, shot through with yellow and streaked with black. The wind that blew across the city stank of smoke and spilled fuel and the sour nose-prickling smell of Gauss rifles in prolonged use. It carried with it the heavy crump of explosions, the crash of structures collapsing into rubble, the tumult of voices shouting and screaming.

He was running, dodging through the streets, trying to make it home on foot. He’d seen the Liao Conservatory of Military Arts go down, seen the main building collapse into itself when the missile hit, seen the pillar of smoke and flame rising into the sky. The deed was necessary, he knew, for those on the other side—the cadet corps had been holding the Conservatory in force with small arms and at least one autocannon. Still—minutes ago the school had been there, and now there was nothing where it had stood except craters and a pile of rubble.

He was out of breath, stumbling as he ran. He’d come on foot all the way from the DropPort. Hours and hours it had taken—walking fifty paces, running fifty, walking fifty again, as he’d been taught in his military training to reserve his strength—and he hadn’t dared to grab a vehicle for any of it, because that would have made him too good a target.

The streets were blocked by people trying to escape the city, and choked with Liao defense forces coming in, while the invaders poured from the DropShip and spread out into the city like ink into water. When he’d seen on the news-screens the path the invaders were taking, and the places where resistance was gathering to meet them, he knew that he had to go home. Not to his own small bachelor apartment near the Port, but to the house he had grown up in, where his parents still lived—right along the path where the forces would collide. Were now colliding.

He saw Xin Sheng Boulevard ahead at last, a broad avenue running through the heart of the city from the business district to the Hall of Civic Governance. He had to cross it, one way or another. Home lay beyond, in a city neighborhood of town houses grouped around open squares. His parents had chosen to live in that district because of him—children could play safely in the squares, watched over by parents and nannies and the vigilant local police.