“Quite frankly,” she said, “I have had better offers.” Tassa cast a single, appraising glance back at him. “In all respects.”

Achernar Militia Command Post

Achernar

The hard pounding on his BOQ door roused Raul from his silent contemplation. He had never turned on the lights after Jessica’s departure, feeling more comfortable sitting alone in the dark. His room still smelled of the wasted liquor, smoky and sharp, and his face remembered the stinging slap of his ex-fiancée’s hand.

Another round of knocking. It sounded like someone might be kicking the door on the other side.

He considered not answering it, considered sitting quietly in the dark until the person simply went away, but then a third, more commanding, series of poundings drew him reluctantly off the kitchen chair and around to the door. Whoever it was, they could be made to go away. Just then Raul didn’t care if the Steel Wolves were at the edge of the base, ready to overrun the capital. He wasn’t going out to answer an alert—he’d be of no use to anybody right now if he tried, and McDaniels wasn’t going to haul him over to the O-club either. He wasn’t going out, period.

He yanked open the door, and Tassa Kay stepped up to plant a long kiss over his mouth.

Like their moment on the Sonora Plateau, he didn’t expect it. Unlike then, he didn’t respond, and that threw a momentary hitch into her approach. Tassa stepped back, sized him up and down, and then said, “So you going to invite a girl in?”

Raul almost told her no. Then he inhaled the taste of her off his lips, and felt a spread of warmth along the back of his neck. Did he really want to sit in the dark for the rest of the night? Tassa’s mercurial moods might never bring her back to his door again if he turned away now. And he wasn’t up to forcing another woman to walk away on him. One had been enough.

He didn’t answer her directly. Didn’t need to. Raul simply shoved the door open wide and then backed to one side, allowing Tassa to slip past and into his room.

Then he kicked the door shut behind them both.

Achernar Militia Command

Achernar

7 March 3133

Memories of the previous night invaded Raul’s morning thoughts, teasing him awake with whispers of flesh and the promise of long, passionate kisses.

He remembered deep green pools of life swimming under his own gaze, acres of tanned skin and a few thin scars he did not remember on Jessica’s body. Not blond hair hanging down into his face. Coltish red hair, long and damp. The scent of lavender soap and honest sweat, and the cool, sharp touch of a steel-bound crystal pressed against his chest.

As long as it takes…

Hearing the husky whisper in his mind and placing it with a face, a body, Raul opened his eyes. He stared at the ceiling of his quarters, still dim in the early morning light. An arm, draped casually across his chest, pressed down with unfamiliar weight. He turned his head far enough to find Tassa Kay, sleeping on her front, head turned toward him. Her eyes remained closed and her breathing deep and even, yet somehow Raul knew that she was awake as well. He suddenly knew a lot more than that.

“You’re Clan,” he said softly, though not quite whispering.

Tassa’s eyelids rolled back like gunports opening. Bright, intelligent eyes stared back at Raul without a trace of guilt. “I did not know you could tell… this way.”

Hearing her confirm it, Raul blinked rapidly as he cleared sleep from his eyes and the haze of time from his memories. “No. I mean, it’s been a lot of little things. Adding up over the days. But you’re Clan. Trueborn?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Raul wasn’t certain why that should make a difference, that Tassa had been born from iron womb technology. Maybe she seemed a touch more alien because of it. He stared back up at the ceiling, trying to sort through his thoughts.

“You don’t speak like a Clanner.” Then, “Not always,” he amended. “You use contractions. And you don’t follow strict bidding practices in combat.”

“A wise warrior once commented that slavish adherence to tradition is the sign of a weak mind. I’d like to think that I’m a bit like her.”

“‘As long as it takes,’” he quoted her. “You came here to wait for the Steel Wolves.” He remembered another of her evasive answers. “What did you come here looking for, Tassa Kay?” His vidphone chirped for attention, but he ignored it. “Is that even your name?”

“It is name enough,” she said with formal cadence, letting her eyes drift back to half-mast. “And I came here looking for battle, which is its own reason for existing. I wanted to test the Steel Wolves, and test myself against them, and that is all the answer you are going to get, Raul Ortega. It should be enough.”

It should be. As much as anything else was an answer for him these days, living from day to day with little else on his mind except where the next attack would come from and how soon would it take to get his BattleMech fixed up afterward. The vidphone chirped again. Raul glanced toward it, then shrugged. Tassa might have refused to answer questions, but she had never outright lied to him.

He just needed to ask better questions.

Throwing the covers aside, Raul padded over to the wall-mounted conference phone and turned the camera off. Then he stabbed at the connection. The screen scrambled to life, showing a middle-aged man in a business suit and a silver goatee. In the lower left-hand corner the antenna-and-globe sigil for Stryker Productions Limited, the local ComStar affiliate, revolved on a vertical axis. Not the early-morning call Raul would expect. Right then, he wasn’t certain what to expect anymore.

“Yes?”

“Mr. Raul Ortega?” the man asked. Raul nodded, then remembered he had turned off the camera. He repeated his earlier question. “Mr. Ortega, my name is Hanson Doles. This is a courtesy call to let you know that you have a message addressed to general delivery at our HPG station.”

Raul was at once intrigued and cautious. With the failure of the HPG network, any message was golden. A personal message? It bordered on the unbelievable. Raul’s security-trained mind didn’t trust it. “Is it verifaxed?” he asked.

“It is not.”

“Then why not send it by conventional transmission? I’ll pay for the charge.”

Hanson Doles rubbed one hand over his goatee. “I can only repeat, sir, that you have a message waiting here at the station. Conventional transmissions are… I guess you might call them suspect at the moment.”

Raul stiffened. Erik Sandoval had troops stationed near—or inside—the HPG station. But if that was the problem, and Doles was trying to circumvent any monitoring, then he was taking a risk merely contacting Raul. “Who is it from?” he asked, still not willing to let it go. It wouldn’t be the last time he asked one question too many.

Doles frowned, his wide face taking on extra years. He shifted in his seat, but his duty to deliver outweighed any discomfort. “Lady Janella Lakewood, Knight of the Sphere.” And then, obviously having said enough in his own opinion, Hanson Doles cut the transmission from his end.

Tassa was sitting up in his bed, sheet draped over one shoulder and her necklace charm dangling down over her exposed breast. “You are becoming more popular by the day, it seems.”

Jessica was gone. River’s End lost to Sandoval. Star Colonel Torrent might attack again at any time, and Raul had a Clan warrior lounging in his bed. He felt pulled in five different directions. No. Pushed. Pushed from five different directions, each one of them trying to force him in a direction he wasn’t certain he wanted to go. Tassa was here, she was waiting and he definitely had to have a talk with her, but Raul suddenly felt a need to step away and think. Me time, as Jessica would have said.