When the column arrived at Fort Barrett, they found the base in a state of furious activity. The barracks were crowded with soldiers from units normally stationed at smaller bases all over Kearney; some units were even housed in rows of tents set up on the sports field and the parade ground. And every Regimental troop-transport aircraft in Kearney—or what looked like it—was lined up on the landing field, wingtip to wingtip, with barely enough room left open for landing and takeoff. Mixed in among them were passenger craft bearing the insignia of three different civilian airlines.

Lexa McIntosh whistled in amazement as soon as she saw the civilian aircraft. “Where the hell did they get those?”

“The General commandeered them, I suppose,” Will said.

“Can he do that?”

Jock said, “Doesn’t look like anybody’s stopping him.”

“I’m surprised he hasn’t sent troops off to Tara already,” Lexa said. “I don’t know what the Wolves are planning, but it can’t be good.”

“They have to be bleeding over there,” Jock rumbled in agreement.

Will shook his head. “Look at it. He’s planning to hit the Steel Wolves with everything that Kearney’s got.” He was speaking slowly, because he hadn’t had to think about things this way before. “It must have taken him this long to get all those aircraft together, and to get all the troops and supplies and weapons ready.”

“Couldn’t he have sent some on ahead?” Lexa wondered.

“He probably wishes he could send himself on ahead,” Will said. “Remember the Pass—he was in the thick of it there. But he can’t do any good this time unless he brings enough muscle with him to make a difference.”

34

Jack Farrell’s Mercenary Encampment

The Plains Outside Tara

Northwind

February 3134; local winter

Ezekiel Crow left the New Barracks at a run, heading for the hangars outside the Armory where the ’Mechs were stored. The Countess of Northwind’s words rang in his head:

Take command of Farrell’s mercenaries. If we can hit the Wolves from two directions at once before they get too deep into the city, we’ve got a good chance at pushing them back onto their ships.

The Countess was right, he thought. Bringing the mercenaries into action was the solution to the current problem. The regimental forces in and around Tara would not be enough by themselves to meet the attack. Anastasia Kerensky would have brought more Wolves to the battle this time than she had before—all of the ones who hadn’t gone home to Tigress, augmented by those who had left Tigress over the past months for an unknown destination. The Highlanders needed the mercenaries to make up their missing numbers, if the streets of Tara were not going to become another Chang-An.

He could still stop it, Crow thought; he could… but other words also echoed in his mind, words not spoken but printed in cold black type on a sheet of good white paper:

The letter contained no threat; whoever had written it hadn’t seen the need. The information alone was enough to convey the desired message:

When he reached the Armory he found it brightly lit despite the late hour, its windows and skylights glowing yellow against the dark. The whole building was full of furious activity, roused to action by the word from the port. Crow made for the ’Mech hangars, mostly empty until recent months, now filled with modified Industrial and Forestry and MiningMechs. There were only three real BattleMechs in the lot—Captain Bishop’s Pack Hunter, the Countess’s Hatchetman, and Crow’s own Blade. Not much, against the forces the Wolves would bring to bear.

The mercenaries would have more, he thought, and called the roll of them in his mind: a Spider, a Firestarter, a Mad Cat III, and Farrell’s own Jupiter.

Those would be enough, if they were used.

His Blade waited in its hangar. To the guard outside, he said: “Paladin Crow, on the Prefect’s business. I’m taking the ’Mech.”

The Blade was probably his fastest way to the mercenaries, no matter what he decided to say when he got there. Ordinary vehicles—even tanks and armored cars—might be stopped and questioned, blocked and delayed. But nobody would force a ’Mech to halt; and even if somebody were foolish enough to try, Crow’s Blade would be recognized, and people would assume he was on business too important to be stopped.

He climbed into the cockpit and dogged the hatch shut behind him. While the ’Mech’s fusion engines and musculature were warming up, he quickly stripped down to his shorts, donned the cooling vest and neurohelmet, and slipped into the command chair. As soon as he’d gone through the primary and secondary security protocols needed to gain full access to the ’Mech’s controls and capabilities, he switched the viewscreen over to IR mode. He’d need the infrared for taking the Blade through the city streets in the dark, and the cockpit’s polarizing windows would mitigate the risk of getting blinded by flares and searchlights.

Another touch of the controls awakened the Blade’s fusion engine to full life. Crow brought the ’Mech out of the hangar, taking it past the New Barracks and past the Fort, into the streets of Tara. Soon the Blade was striding down the main road leading out of the city into the countryside beyond. Farrell’s mercenary units had not yet been dispersed to garrison duty, but were still in their holding encampment; at the Blade’s cruising speed of seventy-six kilometers per hour, it would not take Crow long to reach them.

Then he would have to decide what he was going to do.

Giving over Tara—the city and Countess blurred together in his mind, until he wasn’t certain which would be the more poignant loss—giving over Tara to the Steel Wolves would mean betrayal and bloody slaughter.

It’s not as if you aren’t used to it already, said the voice of reason, cold as always in the back of his head. Anastasia Kerensky wants Northwind, and the person who sent you that packet of damnation wants for you to give it to her—or have Paladin Ezekiel Crow unmasked to The Republic of the Sphere as the Betrayer of Liao.

How is that going to be different, he asked the voice of reason, from having him branded as the Betrayer of Northwind? Either way it brings me down. Is that the true goal—are Anastasia Kerensky and Countess Tara Campbell both nothing but pawns in somebody else’s game to checkmate me?

The idea was not impossible. He’d said enough and done enough over the years that anyone involved in the upper levels of The Republic’s politics could guess that he aimed high. And no one could rise to join the ranks of the Paladins, from whom the next Exarch would be chosen, without making enemies.

The line of thought brought a surge of irritation along with it. Later, he told himself, later he could sort out who had the whip hand over him, and why. But not now, not when the Steel Wolves were landing at the port and– Farrell’s mercenaries are at your disposal–what Paladin Ezekiel Crow said and did in the next few hours would decide the course of the battle to come.

There was something not quite right about that. Why should Anastasia Kerensky want Northwind, other than for the usual motives ascribed to the Clans: glory and reputation and a famous name? Why should she make a try—twice—for Northwind, instead of concentrating her attentions on places like Small World and Addicks? The Countess of Northwind had gotten it right, months ago when The Republic of the Sphere first sent him to Prefecture III: Northwind was the gateway to Terra.