“Down the hall and on the right. Mr. Suvorov is waiting.”

Crow shook his head and made obvious the presence of the slug-pistol he had been carrying in his coat pocket. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but no. Precede me, please. To wherever Suvorov actually is.”

An elevator ride up to the penthouse later, Crow and the security guard arrived at a posh carpeted room with picture windows that looked out over the lights of the city. Suvorov was there, sitting at his ease with a drink in his hand.

“Ah,” he said, smiling. “Paladin Crow, after all.”

Alexei Suvorov was a good-looking man in late middle age. He appeared exactly like the successful club owner and entertainment entrepreneur that he was, and not at all like the ultimate Terraside organizing force behind the infamous Footfall smuggling ring—which he also was.

“I didn’t think you’d be foolish enough to let my security take you out,” Suvorov continued, “but it was worth a try. Thank you for not breaking him, by the way.”

“I didn’t want to cause a scene.”

“Again, my thanks. You can go, Benson.” The guard left—Crow was not foolish enough to think that he went very far—and Suvorov gestured at the couch. “Please, have a seat.”

Crow sat. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, of course. Now, what is it that brings you to the Garden of Earthly Delights?”

“I have a business proposition for you,” Crow said.

Suvorov’s expression sharpened. “Do you indeed?”

“Yes. I need all the Terran DropPorts watched for new arrivals from a certain quarter, and I need it done discreetly. The reports should come to me directly, without going through official channels.”

Suvorov didn’t bother denying that he had the ability to carry out such a request. “You don’t have sufficient leverage—”

“Sufficient evidence.”

“Very well. Evidence. You don’t have sufficient evidence to force me into anything.”

“You’re right,” said Crow. “I don’t, or you would have stood trial years ago. Which is why I’m offering you cash in return for services rendered.”

“Ah. That’s different.” Suvorov relaxed in his chair. “In that case, Paladin Crow, I think we can do business.”

7

DropShip Fenrir

Saffel System

Prefecture II

February 3134

Ian Murchison—once of Northwind, and once the medic on Balfour-Douglas Petrochemicals Offshore Drilling Station #47, now Bondsman to Galaxy Commander Anastasia Kerensky of the Steel Wolves—finished counting the full and partial boxes of latex gloves in the sick bay storage locker.

He made a note of the number on his data pad. Murchison found the work soothing, a welcome distraction from the many changes in his life since the Steel Wolves had taken over Balfour-Douglas #47 for their base of operations on Northwind.

Murchison’s peculiar status aboard Fenrir–more than a prisoner and less than a fully trusted passenger or member of the ship’s crew—led him to spend most of his time in the vessel’s sick bay. His sleeping quarters were nearby. He bunked with the Wolves’ tech and support people, not with the Warriors, which he suspected was meant to keep him from getting an inflated notion of his own importance.

He didn’t mind. The Wolf Clansmen who did the actual hard work of keeping the ship’s engines running, its communications gear listening and talking, and its crew and passengers healthy, seemed less alien to him than the Warriors. All of them, he was convinced, were crazy. From Anastasia Kerensky on down.

Fenrir’s sick bay, on the other hand, bore a comforting similarity to every other sick bay in The Republic of the Sphere. The Steel Wolves even bought their medical supplies from the same catalogs. Murchison kept himself busy inventorying supplies and making up requisition lists. The ship’s stocks had been depleted on Northwind—the Wolves’ victory there, he thought with a bitter pride that he didn’t let show, had been far from bloodless. Fenrir would need more of everything soon, if the Steel Wolves intended going into battle on Terra.

Murchison fiddled with the single cord around his wrist. It had formerly been a doubled cord, but Anastasia Kerensky had remained true to her word. She had given him the job of finding Jacob Bannson’s mole in the Steel Wolves, and had cut the first cord herself after he had done so, bringing him in one stroke halfway from Bondsman to adopted member of Clan Wolf.

She had cut the traitor’s throat as well—and would undoubtedly do the same for Murchison, if he ever did anything she saw in that light.

It disturbed him sometimes that he didn’t feel more concern for the fate of Terra. Any attachment he had to humanity’s home planet was low-key and mostly abstract. He’d never been to Terra and he didn’t know anyone who had. He’d never even bothered working for Republic citizenship. Northwind had always been enough for him. He suspected that his homeworld wasn’t as thoroughly conquered as Anastasia Kerensky thought, but it wasn’t his place to say so and he definitely wasn’t going to bother telling her as long as he wasn’t asked.

He’d certainly never sworn any oaths of allegiance to Terra or to The Republic. The only oath he had ever sworn was to care for the sick and the injured wherever he might find them. That oath, he had kept.

The sound of footsteps approaching roused him from his reverie. He knew the sound. Not a heavy tread, but a firm and aggressive one all the same: Anastasia Kerensky.

Murchison braced himself. Conversations with Anastasia were like playing a game of catch with a live grenade—never dull, but hell on the nerves. He’d wondered at first why she bothered talking with him. Eventually, he decided that it was precisely because he was not a Steel Wolf Warrior. His lack of status, in fact, made him one of the few people in the whole expeditionary force who was not, ultimately, Anastasia’s rival for power.

When Anastasia entered the sick bay, Murchison saw that she wasn’t wearing a uniform. Instead, she had on her black leather trousers and matching jacket, and her high leather boots. Murchison became even more wary. That outfit usually indicated to the cautious spectator that Anastasia was in one of her wilder moods, and that reckless, or at least headlong, action was in the offing.

He put aside the data pad with its inventory and requisition data, and said carefully, “Galaxy Commander.”

“Bondsman Murchison.”

“Is there something that I can do for you?”

“As a matter of fact,” she said, “there is. I need you to board the Saffel Space Station with me.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Just the two of us?”

“No. There will be others. But you will conduct yourself as the JumpShip’s medic.”

Murchison nodded. “If the Galaxy Commander asks it, I’ll do my best. But—” He let his curiosity creep into the unfinished phrase.

“Yes, Bondsman?”

“I’d heard that the Akela was going to use its solar sail to pull in the power, and sunlight’s free. In that case, why bother with a courtesy visit at the station?”

Anastasia smiled. “Because nobody’s luck is perfect. It will happen that the solar sail failed to deploy properly, and that it sustained structural damage as a result.”

“Ah,” he said. He had been with the Steel Wolves long enough by now to understand that something other than random bad luck would be at work in the matter of the damaged sail.

“Ah, indeed,” said Anastasia. “It will therefore become necessary for us to enter into negotiations with the station.”

By now Murchison was unsurprised. “And where do I come in?”

“Your job is to lend an air of respectability to the boarding party. And to take care of the wounded, if there is any trouble.”

There would naturally be trouble, Murchison thought. They were talking about Anastasia Kerensky, after all.