The letter contained only three sentences:
Farrell’s mercenaries are at your disposal. Anastasia Kerensky wants Northwind. See that she gets what she wants.
32
The New Barracks
Tara
Northwind
February 3134; local winter
Captain Tara Bishop was working late in her office at the New Barracks. Night had already fallen outside, but she still had files and papers to go through in the interest of preparing economic and intelligence summaries for the Prefect—who had left her own office and gone back to her quarters precisely at the end of the working day, in direct contravention of her usual practice. Tara Campbell was a habitual overstayer at the office, to Captain Bishop’s periodic dismay—since unlike the Prefect, the Captain had something approaching a private social life.
Of course, the Captain thought, there was always the chance that Tara Campbell had at last acquired a social life of her own that didn’t revolve around will-attend, will-have-fun diplomatic and military occasions. The Prefect hadn’t said anything to that effect—she was a very private person, most likely in response to having grown up in the political spotlight—but she’d had the look about her this morning. Not as tense as usual, and happier, and just a little smug. Captain Bishop recognized the signs, and there was only one person who could be the cause.
I wonder, Bishop thought, if I tracked down our friend Paladin Crow, would he be smug and happy too?
Captain Bishop smiled to herself and opened up the next file. She wasn’t going to begrudge either one of them the chance. Both the Prefect and the Paladin were too straight-arrow to let a relationship get in the way of their duty; what would have been hormone-addled slacking off in less driven and committed types was likely to manifest itself in the pair of them as nothing more than a retreat from their usual high levels of overwork.
And even that, she suspected, wouldn’t last for long. Give them a while to get used to the idea, and they’d go right back to working eighteen-hour days. They’d just be working them together instead of separately.
Captain Bishop turned her attention to an economic report on reforestation policies in the planet’s lumber-producing regions. She was scarcely a page in, and chewing her way through a dense paragraph on the development of second-growth forests in the lower Rockspires, when her desk’s communications console suddenly erupted in flashing red lights and began sounding an alarm. And not her own desk alone—the sound-and-light display was also coming from the Prefect’s empty desk in the outer office, with backup alarms echoing from desks both occupied and unoccupied all over this part of the building.
The alert might be sounding throughout the New Barracks, but the message was coming in straight to the Prefect’s desk. Captain Bishop pushed the button that routed the absent Prefect’s calls to her own desk, picked up the handset, and said, “Prefect’s office Captain Bishop speaking this is not a secure line how may I help you?” all in one rapid nonstop breath.
“This is Tara DropPort,” said the voice on the other end of the line. “We have DropShips landing without authorization. I say again, DropShips landing without authorization.”
Oh damn, Captain Bishop thought. Oh damn oh damn oh damn. We didn’t find them in time.
With her free hand, she slapped the button that sent the “wake up and get the hell back up here” alarm to the Prefect’s quarters. As an afterthought, she sent it to the Paladin’s as well, then went on to hit the General Quarters alarm, the signal that would have every soldier in the New Barracks at his or her duty station within minutes.
At same time, she asked, “Do you have an ID on the ships, DropPort?”
“It’s the Steel Wolves—we saw their insignia and configuration enough times last summer to know.”
“Recommend you evacuate your personnel now, DropPort.”
“Already on it,” said the voice at the other end. “It’ll take the Wolves a little while to open up and roll on out, and everybody who isn’t going to fight should be gone by then. We’ve got a couple of civilian ships caught down on the ground; they’ll just have to button up tight and wait for the dust to settle.”
The DropPort commander sounded calm, almost cheerful, but Captain Bishop knew it for the calm that comes after ceasing to waste energy on things like hope. If the Wolves were planning to force their way from the landing field into Tara proper, the fighting was going to be vicious, and the troops stationed at the DropPort would be the city’s first line of defense. Bishop racked her brains, trying to remember the size of the force stationed at the port. Her mind eventually supplied her with a dismayingly small number.
This, she thought, is going to be a very long night.
Even the few minutes it took for the Prefect to come at a run from her quarters to the office in the New Barracks seemed to stretch out forever. When the Prefect arrived, Captain Bishop handed over the conversation with the DropPort commander—and the responsibility for the defense of the entire planet—with an unvoiced sigh of relief. Ezekiel Crow arrived a few minutes later, looking grim.
“Paladin Crow,” the Prefect said as soon as he entered the office, “I need you to take command of Farrell’s mercenaries. If we can hit the Wolves from two directions at once before they penetrate too deep into the city, we’ve got a good chance at pushing them back onto their ships. Or at least of pinning them down hard enough to force a negotiation.”
“Anastasia Kerensky doesn’t negotiate, that I’ve noticed,” Crow said.
“Then she needs to learn,” said Tara Campbell. “And I’m counting on you to help me teach her.”
33
Fort Barrett
Oilfields Coast
Kearney
Northwind
February 3134; dry season
The Balac Strike VTOL taking the General back to Fort Barrett took off in a cloud of white dust and arrowed away northward at top speed. Will Elliot was already urging the members of his scout/sniper platoon back onto their Shandras before the noise of its departure died. Up and down the line he could hear the voices of Jock and Lexa and the other sergeants chivvying the rest of the soldiers into the troop trucks. Not more than a minute later, the major who commanded the reinforced rifle company—with General Griffin gone he’d be the senior officer, and in command of the whole task force—gave the order to mount up and move out.
“Sarge?”
That voice, on the other hand, belonged to one of the privates in the scout/sniper platoon. Will suppressed the urge to look over his shoulder for Master Sergeant Murray or Sergeant Donahue or one of the other godlike figures of his own early enlistment.
“What is it, soldier?” he asked.
“Were those the DropShips we’ve been looking for?”
Will bit his tongue. Be patient, he thought. You were this green once yourself, not so long ago. “That’s right, soldier.”
“Where do you think they’ve gone?”
“I don’t think anything,” Will said. “But the General thinks they’re heading for Tara.”
“What about us, Sarge?”
That one was easy. “We’re going back to Fort Barrett, on the double. And after that, we’re going where we’re told.”
Thinking on it afterward, Will decided that the forced march back to Fort Barrett rated as one of the most unpleasant experiences of his entire first term of enlistment—worse even than making a fighting retreat out of Red Ledge Pass in the pouring rain. The misery that time hadn’t lasted nearly as long, and he’d been able to relieve his feelings by shooting at things. This was nothing but hard going from before dawn to after dark, in the choking dust and the relentless sun. The column stopped periodically for rest and food, but only long enough to ensure that the soldiers did not collapse from exhaustion. But worst of all was knowing that on the other side of the world, the Steel Wolves had already landed at Tara DropPort.