“What happened?” asked Ruth’s husband.

“I went to Castle Northwind instead.”

There was a long pause. Then young John broke the silence. “Is it true what everybody says, that the Countess blew up the castle herself on purpose?”

“Is that how they’re telling the story?” Will laughed a little, not in amusement, but in rueful acknowledgment of how things worked. “The Countess gave permission, true enough, but it’s those of us who were there who set the charges, chose the time, and brought the whole place down.”

His mother said wistfully, “It was always a beautiful place in the pictures.”

“Aye, it was.” Will was silent for a moment, remembering the gray stone castle cupped in its mountain valley. “Too beautiful to leave for the Steel Wolves. Better to break it apart ourselves first.”

There was another pause, longer this time. Will found that a good dinner made an excellent excuse for not talking. His sister Ruth was a fine cook, and his mother was a better one. Between the two of them they’d made the best meal he’d had in months. He finally looked up from his berry tart with heavy cream to ask, “What about the house in Liddisdale?”

Ruth said, sharply, “What about it?”

“It’s half rubble, that’s what about it, and it’s been standing open to the weather since before the start of winter. If it isn’t rebuilt soon, it’s not going to be good for anything but selling for the land under it.”

“Do you want me to rebuild it, Will?” his mother asked.

“I want you to do whatever pleases you with it,” he said. “I’m just saying that if you plan to do anything, you’ll need to do it soon.”

“I don’t want to sell your home out from underneath you.” His mother looked old suddenly, old and uncertain, and Will cursed himself inwardly for bringing the subject up. “The house was always meant to be yours, you know.”

“Don’t worry, Mother. The regiment takes good care of me.”

He heard another disbelieving snort from Ruth. “Tries to get you killed, is more like it.”

“Hush, Ruthie,” his mother said. “He won’t be in the regiment forever, and when he comes back home he’ll need a place to live.”

Will Elliot didn’t know what to say to that. The version of himself who’d lived at home with his mother and hiked the trails of Red Ledge Pass as a wilderness guide was not exactly dead, but he’d left that man somewhere a long way behind him, in a place he didn’t think he could ever get back to again. As for the new and different Will Elliot that the Highlander regiments and the Steel Wolves were making between them—he didn’t know yet what kind of place that man might eventually call home.

“It’ll be a while longer before anyone needs to fret about afterward,” was all that he said aloud. “We’re going to Terra first to catch the Wolves and break them if we can.”

3

DropShip Fenrir

Saffel Space Station Three, Saffel System

Prefecture II

February 3134

In her office aboard Fenrir, Galaxy Commander Anastasia Kerensky looked over the fuel expenditure reports for the Steel Wolf DropShips. To herself—but to no one else—she would admit that work such as this was, for her, the least favorite of the many tasks that her rank required.

Give her a military objective and she would take it. Give her a challenge and she would meet it. Wrestling with inventories and invoices and spreadsheets… even though she assigned as much of it as she could to members of the service and support castes who were trained in dealing with such things, nevertheless at some point the final numbers had to come across her desk.

At the moment, those numbers looked grim. She had brought the Steel Wolf JumpShip out at Saffel to recharge the Akela’s Kearney-Fuchida drive prior to making the second jump that would bring the Wolves to Terra. The reports from the engineers on the DropShips told her that their arrival would be longer coming than she had anticipated.

“The time we spent under the sea on Northwind did not help,” said Star Colonel Marks.

He had brought in the engineering reports—for the pleasure, she suspected, of watching her get the bad news. Marks had been one of the late Kal Radick’s favorites, and Anastasia Kerensky’s most recent successes on Northwind had only served to add fuel to his dislike of her.

“The DropShips were bleeding power the whole time,” Marks continued, “without a chance to make it back up. If we are to cover the distance between the Terran jump point and Terra itself in the fastest time possible, we will need to refuel the DropShips as well as recharge the JumpShip’s drive.”

“How long to full charge for the JumpShip?” Anastasia asked.

“Six point eight days using the solar sail,” he replied.

“That is too long,” she said. “We have the advantage, now, of surprise, and we cannot afford to lose it. Every day—every hour—of delay increases the resistance we will find when we reach Terra.”

“The Highlanders are in no shape to oppose us on Terra,” Star Colonel Marks said. “And Terra’s integral defenses are comparatively weak; they have wasted themselves in sending troops out to protect other worlds, and have kept too few behind to protect their own.”

“If underestimating the enemy is your idea of planning,” she told him, “then do me a favor and check the air lock for leaks. From the outside. The Countess of Northwind blew up her own castle rather than let me take it. Do you think she would hesitate to strip Northwind bare in order to stop us from seizing Terra?”

“If the Galaxy Commander says so—”

“I say so. We cannot afford to throw away any advantage that we may have. Nor can we afford to use anything less than maximum speed for the DropShips’ approach. We have no choice—we will have to recharge and refuel at the Saffel station.”

Once again, Marks took on the manner of someone taking pleasure from the delivery of bad news. “There is a problem. If we refuel and recharge at the station, we will have to pay for the privilege.”

Anastasia frowned. “Do we not have sufficient funds for the purpose?”

I really wish I could trust somebody else with this part of the job, she thought resentfully as she spoke. Growing up in the full Clan tradition on Arc Royal, in her childhood dreams she had pictured her older self doing many things—fighting for honor, for advancement, and for the right to direct the future of Clan Wolf in The Republic; handling weapons and vehicles and all manner of BattleMechs; surviving and holding her own in the literal cutthroat arena of Clan politics. Despite the fact that over time she had acquired an intellectual awareness of the importance of supplies and logistics, she had most certainly never cherished the image of herself as a glorified accountant and purchasing agent.

“The station will charge a high price, especially for refueling the DropShips,” Marks told her. “If they realize that we are in haste, they are likely to raise their prices even more. They might be willing to accept trade goods instead of cash—”

“But warships do not carry trade goods,” Anastasia finished. “The solution would seem to be obvious, Star Colonel. We are, after all, the Steel Wolves. Allow me some time to work out a plan—and meanwhile, see that the JumpShip makes ready to approach the station.”

Cecy Harris, duty sensor tech on Saffel Space Station Three, was midway through the watch and scanning her screens for arriving ships. The work was at once duller and more nerve-racking than it had been in the days before the collapse of the HPG network. Duller because the slowdown in communications meant fewer people making interstellar journeys on a casual basis, and fewer travelers meant fewer ships; more nerve-racking because the confused political situation and the lack of up-to-date intelligence meant that the crew of Station Three had no idea, most of the time, what might come through the jump point next.