20

The New Barracks

Tara

Northwind

January 3134; local winter

Paladin Ezekiel Crow had his quarters in the New Barracks, in the building designated for housing long-term important visitors. He occupied a suite of rooms very much like the ones reserved for the Prefect whenever he or she was on-planet, and that Tara Campbell was now occupying: one inner room for sleeping and one outer room for working and socializing, with sanitary facilities off the first room and a cooking and dining nook off the second, all done up in a bland offend-no-one style.

Crow knew the look well; he’d been living with it, in one local version or another, for most of his diplomatic and military career. Sometimes the default inoffensive furniture was made of polished natural hardwood, and sometimes of matte black molded resin, and sometimes of chrome; in some places the local style called for deep crimson and bright green and royal blue, and in others for beige and gray and ivory. Good taste on Northwind demanded natural wood, and paint and fabrics in subdued but not drab colors at the cool end of the spectrum; the Prefect’s official quarters were another variation on the same theme.

The only difference was that Tara Campbell had added a number of personal touches to her quarters—a picture of her parents in a silver frame; an ornamental brass lantern from Sadalbari; chairs and other items of furniture not from the general mold, but much like those which filled the rooms at her family’s mountain castle. Crow had made no such changes to his own quarters. He never had done, not since Chang-An burned. Making a mere assigned place into something like home had always seemed disloyal to him somehow, a way of saying that something else could take the place of what was lost. He was not going to do that. If he could not bring his old home back, the least he could do was not forget it.

Crow also had an office assigned to him, not in the two-century-old New Barracks, but in the massive and much older structure known as the Fort. He had considered telling his visitor to meet him there, but in the end had decided that—since he would not be acting as a representative of Northwind—the Fort would be too official a location.

His quarters weren’t much better as far as seeming official went, but he didn’t want to handle the negotiations over drinks in a bar, either. People did that when they possessed money without possessing authority, or when they had things that they wanted to hide. He was a legitimate guest on Northwind, and a Paladin of the Sphere. He had nothing to hide.

The communications console gave the double beep that meant the building’s front-door security was on the line. He picked up the handset.

“Crow here.”

“Security here, sir. We have a Jack Farrell here at the information desk who says that he’s expected.”

“He’s here on business,” Crow said. “Send him on up.”

“Yes, sir.”

A couple of minutes passed—time enough to cover a hallway and an elevator and another hallway at a walking pace—and the doorbell buzzed. Crow opened the door, and saw that it was indeed One-Eyed Jack Farrell (as the merc was known to members of his profession) waiting on the threshold.

“Come in,” said Crow.

Farrell entered. The man was well-groomed and well-dressed but—to a trained eye—not nearly as respectable as his clothes would suggest. The black eye patch was a giveaway; even if the damage had been too severe for a prosthetic, the man could have gotten a cosmetic implant. That he preferred not to, Crow thought, argued that the eye patch must be a combination of advertisement and signature.

Though Crow had never met Farrell before in the flesh, the merc’s name and reputation were known throughout the Inner Sphere. One-Eyed Jack had the name of a tough and ruthless fighter, but—on the positive side—neither Farrell nor the units under his command had ever backed out of a lawful contract, nor were they prone to looting and rapine. When Crow had last heard of them, Farrell and his mercs had been in Jacob Bannson’s employ; but that had been before the HPG net went down, when Bannson was still trying to extend his business empire into all the farthest corners of The Republic of the Sphere.

Crow led the way to the living and work space. The chair and the couch and the low table between them were general issue, not as comfortable or as attractive as the deep, leather-covered guest chairs and the generously proportioned sofa in the Prefect’s quarters. Crow took the chair, leaving Farrell to the end of the couch.

“My compliments on your security,” Farrell said. “My name got checked against the invite list once at the main Fort entrance and once at the gate of the New Barracks before I ever got to the people downstairs here.”

“The Highlanders are good. And they’re careful.”

“But they have a problem they can’t handle,” Farrell said, “or I wouldn’t be here. I heard that you were hiring for some local work—and as it happens, my wayward children and I are currently between engagements and close enough to be available.”

“How close, exactly?”

“The entire force can be here inside twelve days.”

“That’s …prompt,” said Crow. His dubiousness must have shown on his face, because Farrell—as eager, perhaps, to obtain a contract as Northwind, through Crow, was to offer one—hastened to explain.

“They’re currently holding at the jump point. Pure coincidence—I came to Northwind to check on the news from around The Republic and get a line on where we might find work next, and the first thing I heard when I hit the bulletin boards was that you were in the market.”

“Yes.” Crow was careful not to appear eager. Nothing was more likely to sabotage a deal in the making than seeming to want it too much. “We’re considering it.”

“So.” Farrell leaned back in the couch. “What’s going on that’s too much for the locals?”

“They’re overextended,” Crow told him. “Not through their own fault; they’ve been tasked with defending other worlds in Prefecture III as well as Northwind.”

Farrell made a tsk-tsk noise. “Somebody was being ambitious.”

“The Senate and the Exarch didn’t anticipate that this planet would become a target as well when they gave the Prefect her orders. She lost a significant portion of her on-planet effectives during this past summer’s campaign, and the recruitment and training of replacements will take some months. If she is not to strip other worlds of their protection, then she must hire you—or someone like you—to fill the gap.”

“We’re talking garrison duty, then.”

“Essentially. Good pay for—if you’re lucky—very little work.”

“It’s one way to rest up,” Farrell said. “Is Northwind good for the money?”

“The Republic of the Sphere, through me, is good for the money. Is that enough for you?”

One-Eyed Jack Farrell grinned. “Paladin Crow, you’ve hired yourself some mercs.”