“Yes,” Bannson said. “The next world a Clan Warrior like Anastasia Kerensky is going to think about, after securing Northwind, is Terra. And the Countess of Northwind, Republic loyalist that she is, will almost certainly follow and attempt to stop her. I’m going to Terra, Mr. Farrell—a matter of looking after my investments—and I’d like you and your people to go there also. I won’t ask if you know the pirate jump points—”

“Never heard of ’em,” said Farrell, with a straight face.

“But a commander who did know of them would be well-advised to get himself into position there and wait for my signal to land and hit his target.”

“Where and who?”

“Does it matter?”

“If I’m getting paid for it—nope.”

“Good enough,” said Bannson. “When I decide on the answer, you’ll be the first to know.”

Farrell gave him a slow grin. “Who’ll be the second?”

“The person I tell you to attack.”

Belgorod and Vicinity

Terra

Prefecture X

March 3134; local winter

The Northwind Highlanders had landed their DropShips at Belgorod DropPort, and the DropShips had spilled out their cargo of soldiers and equipment onto the expanse of rolling fields outside the city. A garrison suburb of tents and vehicles grew up on the frozen ground as if by spontaneous generation, and there the soldiers of the Highlander Regiments drilled, and tended their gear, and waited.

The hour was late afternoon, and the sun was already sinking toward the western horizon. The work of the day was done, and Sergeants Will Elliot, Jock Gordon, and Lexa McIntosh sat drinking mugs of strong black tea in the large, open-sided tent currently serving as the Sergeants’ Mess. The smells of mutton stew simmering on the stove, and of baking bread, drifted past on the breeze from the field kitchen not far away. For a little while, at least, they and their troopers would have a chance at better food than ship’s cooking or battle rations.

Will Elliot was still not happy. He turned his heavy ceramic mug around in his hands, added more sugar, stirred, and turned the mug around again. Then he shoved it away. Finally, he said, “I don’t like this place.”

“It could be worse,” said Lexa. “At least we have cold-weather uniforms again.”

Jock for his part gave Will a curious look. “I thought you were the one who was used to snow. Guiding winter tourists in the mountains and all.”

“I am,” said Will. “That’s the problem.” He frowned out through the open front of the mess tent at the slate gray sky. “This is March. Eventually, it’s going to be April. And do you know what happens in April?”

Lexa said, “The snow melts?”

“That’s right.”

“You make it sound like a bad thing.”

“The snow melts,” said Will. “And the ground thaws.”

“Thaws?”

“All the water down in the dirt that turned to ice during the winter turns back to water down in the dirt again,” Will explained patiently, reminding himself as he did so that Lexa had grown up in the blistering-hot Kearney outback. She hadn’t even seen snow until she joined the regiment and found herself fighting in it. “Sometimes the frozen layer goes down for two or three meters. Then all the water that used to be snow soaks into the ground and joins up with the melted ice that’s already there. Which gives you—”

Farm-raised Jock Gordon knew the answer to that one, at least: “Mud.”

“Mud,” confirmed Will.

Lexa looked down at her feet, then out at the field of tanks and men and ’Mechs, with a dawning comprehension. “Damn.”

“And there aren’t enough hovercrafts to carry all of us,” Will said. “Just marching out of here is going to be nasty, if we have to wait long enough. As for combat—trust me when I say that you’ll be better off tying your bootlaces together, slinging them around your neck, and fighting barefoot. That way you’ll still have a pair of boots left at the end of the day.”

There was a gloomy, extended silence. Finally, Lexa said, “Maybe we won’t have to fight.”

“Do you really think that?” Will asked.

Lexa shook her head. “No. Just because we got lucky and beat the Wolf-Bitch to Terra doesn’t mean that she isn’t coming.”

“Maybe she won’t show up until after the ground’s dried out again,” Jock said.

“Forget it,” Lexa told him. “Nobody ever gets that lucky. Will’s right. We’re going to end up fighting for honor, glory, and the dream of Devlin Stone in mud that comes up to our armpits.”

“Your armpits, maybe,” said Jock.

“Don’t laugh,” she told him. “You’ll just stick up higher and make a bigger target.”

Jock said, “Why are we camped out here in the middle of nowhere, anyway? What’s going on?”

“Who knows?” Will said. “What I heard was that the Exarch summoned the Countess straight to Geneva as soon as he found out that our ships were in-system. And we’re damned lucky they let us set down here instead of making us stay penned up on the DropShips somewhere in orbit.”

“Makes me feel all unloved and untrusted, it does,” said Lexa.

“Aye,” said Jock. “We’re the ones who did the bleeding and the dying back on Northwind, and we’re the ones who’ve come here to do it all over again.”

“So you’d think we’d at least get a hug and a smile,” Lexa said, “instead of being treated like everybody expects us to steal all of their silver spoons.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” Will advised her. “We’re not doing this for anybody’s gratitude—”

“Damn good thing, since we’re seeing so little of it.”

“We’re doing it because this is what we do.” He paused. “And while you’re at it—pray for a late spring.”

Office of the Exarch

Geneva, Terra

Prefecture X

March 3134; local winter

Tara Campbell took the shuttle-hop from Belgorod DropPort as soon as the ships from Northwind touched down, only taking enough time to put on her dress uniform in place of the fatigues she had worn on shipboard. She spent the brief journey from Belgorod to Geneva in a state of tightly restrained impatience that only her years of diplomatic training enabled her to hide.

She had found the reception of her message from space, sent while en route from the Terran jump point, to be galling beyond belief. The Exarch had all but denied her the permission to land her forces. If she hadn’t demanded to know outright whether the Terran defense forces were planning to treat her as an enemy or as a friend, she suspected that she might actually have been denied permission.

It was bad enough that the Exarch and the Knights of the Sphere, with the Senate’s agreement and backing, had required the Highlanders to make their camp out on the godforsaken plains of old Russia, and not at one of Terra’s regular military bases. It was bad enough that she herself had been issued a peremptory summons to a conference with the Exarch, as if she were a truant schoolgirl called into the headmaster’s office for a reprimand. But the worst thing… she’d believed during the journey from Northwind that the worst possible thing that could happen would be arriving too late, so that she found Geneva and Paris and London dealt with as the city of Tara had been dealt with, and Anastasia Kerensky in charge of it all.

She’d been wrong. This was worse: Arriving ahead of the bad news and having to fight to be believed.

Tara caught herself. That was nothing but her own ego talking. An upset and embarrassed Prefect—or even a Countess—was nothing at all by comparison with what the Steel Wolves had already done on Northwind, and what they stood poised to do all over again right here if nobody tried to stop them.