The last time Will had seen that Koshi was at Red Ledge Pass, when the Highlander infantry held up the Steel Wolves’ armored column for thirty-six hours, buying time for the Countess of Northwind and Paladin Ezekiel Crow to organize the main defense. The rider of the Koshi had been heart and brain of that holding action, always there to back up the beleaguered infantry where the action was thickest, dealing out death to the Wolves’ infantry when they threatened to overrun Highlander positions.

The series of self-tests done, the Koshi came to the rest position and shut down. A minute or so later, the pilot left the cockpit and descended via the entry ladder. Even from the far edge of the pad, Will recognized the man’s ginger brown hair and erect posture. Fort Barrett’s important visitor was Brigadier General Michael Griffin—the pilot of the Koshi at Red Ledge Pass, and senior officer in charge of the infantry’s holding action.

Now Griffin had come to Fort Barrett. Not for a quick visit, either, if he’d brought the Koshi with him.

At noon in the Sergeants’ mess, Will’s suspicions were confirmed. He was talking with Master Sergeant Murray—who, while inhumanly spit-and-polish under all circumstances, had proved considerably more affable than Will had thought he could be—over the day’s lunchtime meal of fish and chips with sponge cake for dessert.

“I saw General Griffin warming up the Koshi this morning,” Will said.

“It’s an impressive machine.” Murray gave Will a suspicious look. “You’re not one of those foot soldiers who secretly wishes he could be riding a ’Mech, are you?”

Will shook his head. “Me? No. Too big, too noisy, too cramped… I’m all for living and dying in the out-of-doors. They’ll put me into a box soon enough.”

“Too true.”

“The Colonel is good, though… I remember the Pass.” Will finished up the last of his fish-and-chips and turned to the sponge cake. The battered fish had been excellent, made from the fresh local catch; the sponge cake tasted like it had been made by somebody who’d read a description once and missed the point. But enough chocolate frosting could make anything edible. Will chewed, swallowed, and continued, “What’s he doing here at Fort Barrett, do you know?”

“Regimental headquarters has some work for us. The Colonel’s come down here to do a reconnaissance-in-force, and we’re going to be supplying the force.”

“Somebody really likes putting him out at the sharp end,” Will said. “And us.”

“You ought to know how that works by now, Elliot: Show them that you can walk on water, and the next time around they give you deeper water with higher waves in it.”

“Aye. What are we going out looking for?”

Murray smiled. “You ought to know—you spotted her first yourself.”

“What…?”

Then Will remembered the celebratory dinner at the Riggers’ Rest, and the woman who had reminded him, as he was dropping off to sleep hours later, of Anastasia Kerensky. By the time he’d awakened the next morning, he’d convinced himself it was only a coincidental resemblance. He’d turned in a report anyway, expecting it to be filed somewhere and promptly forgotten, not—

“All this on my say-so?”

“I’m afraid so, son.” Murray chuckled. “No, not really. The bright boys and girls in Regimental intelligence undoubtedly had an entire box full of puzzle parts they fitted together to get the big picture. You just gave them the missing piece.”

15

Main Concourse

Tara DropPort

Northwind

December 3133; local winter

The DropShip Cullen’s Hound would lift from Tara DropPort in twenty-four hours, and Di Jones was scheduled to ride. She had her ticket and her papers in hand, she’d checked aboard her few items of luggage—she’d traveled light, as always, and in any case she hadn’t been able to bring with her on this mission the only thing she possessed that she truly valued, her Hatchetman ’Mech. Now she had time to kill before Cullen’s Hound took its departure and, thanks to Jack Farrell, damn his one remaining eye, she had an appointment to kill it with.

She met Farrell in the DropPort’s main concourse, a huge dome-covered expanse with transit links to the rest of the port and to the city of Tara proper. The concourse wasn’t as full of people these days as it would have been before the collapse of the HPG net, but it was still thronged with people. Casual interstellar travel had become a thing of the past—its existence had depended, more than most people realized, on rapid communications and a general peace—but the need to carry stored media or hardcopy news and correspondence from system to system had kept the DropShips coming to Northwind.

Jack Farrell sat on a bench near the outbound to Tara transit gate, reading a one-sheet printout of the day’s top stories from the Northwind Intelligencer. Di had a chance to read the top headline—COUNCIL PASSES ECONOMIC AID PACKAGE—before he folded up the one-sheet and tucked it into his jacket pocket.

“Di,” he said, rising to greet her. “Nice to see you again.”

“Farrell. Wish I could say the same about you.” The statement was only a half-truth. She had to admit that he was a dangerously good-looking man, even—or especially—with the black eye patch. She wished that the sight of him didn’t make her so twitchy, even after all this time.

As always, he seemed unaffected by her insults. “Let’s find a better place to talk. Maybe local intelligence has this whole building stuffed full of eyes and ears, and maybe it doesn’t, but I don’t feel like taking the chance.”

“Back into the city?”

“Works for me,” he said, and headed off with long strides for the outbound to Tara gate, leaving her to follow.

One light-rail ride and two hoverbus transfers later, they ended up sitting opposite one another in the back booth of a corner café in the working-class section of Tara. The air in the café was rich with the smells of sausages and steak and bacon, and the background chatter of the noontime crowd was punctuated by the pop and sizzle of hot fat.

Farrell ordered two luncheon specials—today’s offering was a mixed grill—and a pot of coffee from the booth’s touch-screen menu. The coffee was strong, black, and fresh; the cream came in a pottery jug.

Di frowned at Farrell’s high-handed assumption that he knew what she wanted without asking, but stopped short of actual protest. She’d missed breakfast in the rush to get her luggage checked aboard Cullen’s Hound twenty-four hours before departure. Now she was hungry, and she wasn’t going to let the fact that One-Eyed Jack Farrell knew her likes and dislikes keep her from enjoying lunch.

Of course, there remained the business discussion to be gotten through as well. Farrell began it, while they drank coffee and waited for their specials to arrive.

“How did the meeting with your target go?”

Even here—in a place as unlikely to be bugged as any in the city—he didn’t mention Anastasia Kerensky’s name. There was no point in drawing attention to themselves by speaking the name of the woman who had led the Steel Wolves to within hours of striking at the city’s heart.

“Eh. Turned me down flat.”

“It was always a possibility,” Farrell said. “Those people don’t think like us.”

“I didn’t meet any of ‘those people.’ Just her.”

“She’s one of them, never fear. Crazy like all the rest.”

“If you say so.” Di wasn’t sure exactly what she thought about the meeting with Anastasia Kerensky. The woman’s refusal had caused her to feel frustration, yes, but also respect. It was the latter sentiment that had prompted Di to let fall the bit of info about the mole in the Steel Wolf command—which was something she was definitely not planning to tell Farrell about, or Jacob Bannson either. “She doesn’t want to owe anything to anyone, that’s the problem.”