“Ian Murchison, ma’am. Medic for Balfour-Douglas Petrochemicals.”

“Interesting,” said Tara Campbell. “And how did the Galaxy Commander come to add a Balfour-Douglas medic to her collection?”

“The same way that I plan to add Northwind,” Anastasia Kerensky said. “Ian Murchison is my Bondsman, taken in battle.”

“Going back to the old ways, are you?” Once again, the Countess’s gaze shifted to meet Murchison’s. “I’m sorry I can’t do anything for you directly, Ian Murchison. Deal honorably with the Galaxy Commander—and if she fails to deal honorably with you in return, I’ll add that to the score I have with her when the time comes to settle all our debts.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Murchison said—but Anastasia was already speaking, overriding his voice with a hot edge of temper in her own.

“I will deal honorably with my Bondsman because he is my Bondsman, Countess, not because of any fear I have of you! And I tell you again, stop wasting my time. Do you wish to surrender?”

“Hardly, Galaxy Commander. Do you?”

“You know full well that I do not. What is your purpose, then?”

Tara Campbell said, “I’m offering you a deal. You and yours can depart from here without pursuit, and we’ll call this round a draw—there’ll be no retaliatory attacks on Clan Wolf enclaves or Clan-influenced worlds, and no sanctions in the Senate, and the Steel Wolves can go on wreaking havoc anywhere they like so long as it isn’t Northwind.”

“Do you think that I am a fool?” Anastasia was still angry; Ian Murchison could see the hot color in her cheeks. He wondered if Tara Campbell had deliberately insulted her, or if the slap at her honor had been made in the heat of the moment, after the Countess had seen a fellow-Highlander wearing a Bondsman’s cord. “If I win here, I have all that, and without leaving an enemy at my back. No—but because I am a generous and civilized person, I have a counteroffer. Stand down, disarm your forces, and surrender Northwind to me, and you can keep your rank as Countess and your castle in the mountains, so long as you go to it and stay there and never bother me again.”

“No.”

“You are outnumbered and unprepared to resist. One more time: will you surrender?”

“You already have my answer.”

“Then I tell you, Countess,” said Anastasia Kerensky, “I will conquer your planet, and I will kill you, and I will take your pretty stone castle and I will make it into the stronghold of Clan Wolf on Northwind, and the day will come when no one will remember that a woman named Tara Campbell ever set foot in that place. Do you understand me now?”

The Countess of Northwind was pale as white marble, even in the tri-vid display, and her eyes were like cold blue fire. “You can try, Galaxy Commander—you can try.” She made a quick slicing gesture with one hand, directed at someone off-display. “Tara Campbell, out.”

46

Landing Zone; Jack Farrell’s Mercenary Encampment

Plains North of Tara; Plains Outside Tara

Northwind

February 3134; local winter

“Offload! Offload! Move it, people!”

“Soon’s everyone’s out, push the bird off the edge of the runway. We have another coming in, three minutes, guys. Move!”

The sky was clear, and the landing field between the Rockspires and the capital city of Tara was crowded. Soldiers, all of General Griffin’s troops, were forming up in ranks, units regrouping, ready to march.

The airport itself looked trampled and trammeled, in all parts and all ways. The troops had even stripped the newsstands of hot dogs, bottled water, and popular magazines. In front was chaos, only organized if one was able to recognize a certain by-the-numbers chaos that a well-trained military can sustain for as long as necessary to get the job done.

Squads were out requisitioning everything that could roll on wheels and carry troopers or equipment for a push toward the city. Others were securing checkpoints and communications gear. Above everything, the voices of sergeants with lungs of brass and vocal cords of leather pounded out orders—go here, do that, get ready, stand by, check your gear, move out! Move, move, move! You aren’t getting paid by the hour!

General Griffin with his ’Mech—one of three they had, the other two being unarmed ConstructionMechs that the newly arrived forces had requisitioned on the spot—was helping to pull newly arrived aircraft off the field and out of the way, so that the ones still incoming could land. Nothing else besides the ’Mechs had the speed or the power to do the job, and Griffin as the commanding general had nothing else to do, and no decisions to make at this point.

His battle plan, like all battle plans, resembled nothing so much as a spring-wound toy. Griffin had set it into motion, and now he could only watch as the plan lurched forward on its own. Maybe later—since no plan lasts beyond first contact with the enemy—he would need to choose again between possible courses of action. But until that time came, he could work with his hands like a stevedore.

“General,” came the voice over the ’Mech’s cockpit speakers. “First battalion is formed. Request permission—”

“Permission granted,” Griffin said, without pausing in his efforts to pull a transport out of the way, off the tarmac, while another, still-laden transport was coming in behind him. “Carry out your orders.”

“Sir.”

The afternoon progressed. Local weather reports were calling the weather fair and mild for February, although Griffin knew that many of his Kearney-acclimated troopers would be feeling the effects of the cold. He, at least, wouldn’t have to worry as long as he was working inside his ’Mech. At last the final aircraft was down.

“What now?” his aide asked him.

“Set demolition charges,” Griffin replied. “No retreat. No spoils for the Wolves if they win. We’re going east at speed. Inform me of first contact. Nothing else matters.”

He was already taking the Koshi eastward at a fast lope, near enough to red-line to be worrisome if he were the kind to worry. He’d have a chance to let the ’Mech cool down once he reached the head of the column. Until then, his place was up front, and the sooner he got there, the better.

“Nothing past here but scouts and skirmishers,” the colonel in charge said, when Griffin reached the moving collection of odds and ends at the pointy end of the stick.

The first troops in line had been packed into buses commandeered from the airport for the purpose, and were traveling behind a dump truck with a long-range heavy laser strapped into place on the truck bed with chains and heavy ropes. The colonel himself rode in the front passenger seat of a limousine hovercar requisitioned off the lot at the airport rental company. The hoverlimo’s capacious rear seating area had been given over to a complete field communications setup, technician included.

“We’ll be at Tara around dusk,” Griffin said. “We’re moving fast. Punch a hole through to the Countess, consolidate forces. Then we’ll see what she wants to do.”

“You have an opinion on that?” the colonel asked.

“Fight them.”

“You’re not going to get much argument there.”

“Report coming in,” said the communications specialist. “Scouts have reached the edges of Tara. Reporting city held against them.”

“Wolves?” Griffin asked. “On this side?”

“The scouts don’t think so. But whoever it is, they’ve got a Jupiter.”

“Just what I needed to make my day complete,” Griffin said. “Carry on.”

The relief column continued to the east.

“You want us to do what?”

“You heard me,” Jack Farrell said to his second-in-command.

When the mercenary force’s farthest-out pickets had brought in reports of a large force approaching Tara from the west, Farrell had reacted by summoning his officers to a council of war. They had gathered at the ad hoc command post he’d set up earlier by the foot of his Jupiter ’Mech, and he had presented them with his decision. The logic of it was taking a while to sink in.