“Beg to differ,” Jack said. “We talked with Crow, all right, and we’ve got a contract.”

Bishop began to feel a sinking sensation in her stomach. “What exactly does the contract say?”

“Well, parts of it are private.”

“I believe it’s our business as well… but never mind. Mostly I’m concerned about the fact that you’re ignoring orders from the Paladin. You’re supposed to be leading an attack, not sitting under a tree playing with yourself.”

Jack chuckled. “But we are fulfilling our contract. Our orders are to sit here, although trees aren’t specifically mentioned.”

The uneasy sensation in Bishop’s stomach turned without warning into a sickening drop, as though the ground she stood on had fallen away, leaving only the gaping pit beneath. This was worse than mercenaries acting… well, like mercenaries. This was—“The Paladin ordered that?”

“Yep.”

She kept her face unmoved and her voice down in its normal register, even though the effort it took was hard enough to hurt. “I’d like to talk with him.”

“Can’t do that, either,” Jack informed her. “He went through the lines up to the DropPort this morning. DropShip took off half an hour, forty-five minutes later. He’s gone. Leaving us to honor our contract.”

“I can check on that, you know,” Captain Bishop said.

“I know.”

“And what, specifically, is your relationship to the Highlanders supposed to be?”

“Specifically,” Jack said, “we’re supposed to make sure you don’t retreat out of the city to the west. We’re to hold you while the Wolves hammer you. Nothing personal, I promise.”

“The Paladin is gone,” Captain Bishop said. Has deserted us, she wanted to say; has turned traitor and handed us over to our enemies—but there was no point in speaking of treason to mercenaries. “Let’s work out a new deal.”

Jack shook his head. “He’s gone, but the contract’s still in force. How would it look if we started ignoring contracts? We’d never get hired by anyone again. Tell you what, though, you’re a good kid. You’ve got a spark to you. And you have a ’Mech. How’d you like to join up with us? Nothing wrong with being on the winning side. Good pay and good chow, too.”

“I’m honored,” Bishop said, letting the tone of her voice explain that she was actually nothing of the kind. “But I don’t think I’ll take your offer. How about we cut for it? You get the high card, you stay here. I get the high card, you come with me.”

“I don’t think much of that,” Jack said. “It’s one thing in a friendly game. It’s another thing when a contract’s on the line. But like I said, I like you. Get back in your ’Mech, and you have safe passage back to your own lines.”

Captain Bishop bit her lip against a reply. The offer was a generous one by mercenary standards, and if Farrell didn’t realize how much of an insult it was by her own, now was not the time to teach him. She stalked back to her Pack Hunter in stiff-shouldered silence.

“Don’t forget what I said,” Farrell stood and called after her. She paused with her foot on the bottom rung of the ’Mech’s access ladder and looked back at him as he continued. “We can always use sharp kids.

“At least, we shouldn’t be fighting each other,” he added. “I could use a few more like you.”

Then he sat again, and redealt his cards.

Captain Bishop ascended the ladder to the Pack Hunter’s cockpit and spun the hatch closed. As quickly as she could, she put back on the cooling vest and neurohelmet and ran through the primary and secondary security sequences. She had to get back to the city as fast as she could and break the bad news to the Countess.

She pushed her Pack Hunter up into the upper range of its speed, keeping it near a hundred kilometers per hour as she took it in great loping strides toward the northeast, where the Highlander line was being pressed. She hadn’t used much ammo so far this morning, and her temperature level was fine. She turned to the battle circuit, looking for a place where the timely arrival of a Mech might make a difference.

The amount of radio traffic near the waterworks sounded like things were getting hot down there. She altered her course more to the east, then keyed up a call to the Countess.

“My lady, I have news that’s best delivered face-to-face. Where shall we meet?”

No answer came back over the link.

42

Fort Barrett

Kearney

Northwind

February 3134; dry season

General Griffin paced through his temporary headquarters at Fort Barrett, his aide, Lieutenant Owain Jones, by his side.

“I liked fighting on other people’s worlds more than I’m enjoying fighting on this one,” Griffin said. “And when it’s all over, I’m going to declare it a priority to make damned sure we have enough heavy-lift capacity to carry our ’Mechs and armor around without DropShips.”

“That’s a great project for next year,” Jones said. “As it is, we’ve got everything that’ll fly all the way to Tara with a soldier on board commandeered. The troops are embarking right now, and Fort Barrett’s commander is complaining that we’re stripping the continent of defenses.”

“If he keeps on complaining,” Griffin said, “you can tell him from me that if we don’t take everything we can from Kearney, we won’t have a world to defend, let alone a continent.”

Griffin came to his quarters—a cot walled off with temporary dividers behind a set of file cabinets, since Fort Barrett’s visiting officers’ quarters was currently as overcrowded as everything else—and pulled his own combat pack out from under the cot.

“Where do you have my ’Mech?” he asked Jones.

“Leaving from south of Benderville by heavy-lift VTOL,” Jones said. “It should get to the landing zone before you do. And I took the liberty of dispatching a holding force to Castle Northwind. They’re already airborne.”

“Good job. But that’ll signal the Wolves that we’re on the move, so we have to get the rest of this show on the road too. We don’t have enough airfields between Tara and the mountains to land everyone, and I don’t want to scatter my forces. We’ll deal with it as it happens. Give the order to saddle up and ride.”

43

Tyson and Varney ’Mech Factory

Northwest Sector

Tara

Northwind

February 3134; local winter

Prefect Tara Campbell and her Hatchetman were prowling the grounds of the Tyson and Varney ’Mech Factory industrial park, hunting ’Mechs.

The Steel Wolves had almost as few of them as the Highlanders did, she was sure of it. Ever since Devlin Stone’s reforms had taken most of the individually or family owned ’Mechs out of the picture, full-scale BattleMechs had been uncommon and difficult to obtain. Battlefield seizure was always a workable method—she’d gotten a report of one Wolf ’Mech captured only this morning. The explosives that took it out of action had damaged it too badly for the Highlanders to get any immediate use out of it, but perhaps something could be done with it later.

If, she thought, there was a later.

She jump-jetted over a building—the Tyson and Varney Workers’ Assembly Hall—looking around at the top of her trajectory to see with her own eyes what the map display represented. There. The Steel Wolves had a group of three Fox armored cars in position behind the T&V Spring Bearing Plant. Their missiles would be of limited use here inside a built-up area, but if the fighting ever moved to the open ground outside the city, she’d prefer not to face the speedy little vehicles.

She touched down briefly on the street, then made another jump, this time to the top of the Spring Bearing Plant. A downward swipe of the Hatchetman’s ax, and an eight-meter hole opened up in the roof. She felt a momentary remorse for the destruction she’d just caused, but didn’t let the feeling slow her down. Tyson and Varney could always rebuild their factory later if the Highlanders won this fight; but if the Steel Wolves took over Northwind, the workers at T&V would be building IndustrialMod BattleMechs for Anastasia Kerensky if they were lucky enough to be working at all.