He began mentally packing his go-bag for the purpose—making sure to include plenty of pads and bandages and other trauma gear—as he asked Anastasia, “We’re going to purchase energy from the station?”

“No,” she said. “We are going to take it from them, as befits the Wolves.”

Tara DropPort

Northwind

Prefecture III

February 3134; local winter

The Northwind Highlanders’ DropShip Montrose waited on the ground at Tara DropPort with its cargo hold gaping open. The other two DropShips on the field, Morrigan and Esperance, had already sealed up and declared themselves ready to lift, and only Montrose remained to take on its cargo of soldiers and equipment. Military DropShips were capacious vessels, and Montrose would be lifting at max capacity. That meant row on row of buses and trucks full of Highlanders and their personal effects—one canvas duffel bag per each—idling on the tarmac until word came to get out and form up.

Will Elliot formed his platoon into ranks and gave them a good inspection. Then he moved off to one side to stand with his friends and fellow Sergeants Jock Gordon and Lexa McIntosh in the lee of the nearest truck. The trio talked idly amongst themselves while keeping an eye on their troopers and listening for the order to embark.

Beyond the DropPort, the Tara skyline looked ragged and unfamiliar in the aftermath of battle. What the days of house-to-house city fighting had not destroyed, the Steel Wolves had razed in obedience to Anastasia Kerensky’s order to burn everything before taking ship for Terra. Most of the famous landmark buildings were blown up and gone, although the haze of yellowish gray pollution left behind after their collapse still discolored the air above the city. The port buildings themselves—the hangars and the parking bays and the great domed central concourse—were all gone as well, turned into rubble on the first day of city fighting.

Lexa McIntosh—short, skinny, and gypsy dark—surveyed the damage done to the city with a jaundiced eye. “You know,” she said thoughtfully, “it’s a damned shame Anastasia Kerensky wasn’t riding along with that tank column.”

Big Jock Gordon nodded. “Aye.”

“No argument from me on that one,” agreed Will.

Neither man needed to ask Lexa which tank column she’d been referring to. All three of them had been part of the action when the Northwind Highlanders, acting on Countess Tara Campbell’s orders, had blown up Castle Northwind in its isolated valley, then dropped part of a mountainside onto the only road out.

The Steel Wolf tank column sent to capture the castle had found itself trapped. They’d fought hard, but the Highlanders waiting for them in the valley had fought harder.

The tank column’s fate had not saved Northwind from the Steel Wolves, or the city of Tara from devastation, but it had felt good, which was one more thing that Will hadn’t told his mother and sister because he wasn’t sure that they would understand.

Lexa was still frowning. “Tell me again,” she said, “why we’re leaving a mess like this behind for somebody else to take care of?”

“Anastasia thinks we’re beaten,” Jock said. “We’re going to show her that we’re not.”

“That’s only part of it,” said Will.

“What do you mean?” Lexa asked. She and Jock both looked at him expectantly, waiting for the explanation.

Even back during their days in boot camp, Will had always been a pace or two ahead of his friends when it came to matters of soldiering and strategy. While Jock Gordon was steady and solid, no one would ever mistake him for the fastest thinker in the regiment. As for Lexa, she was quick-witted enough, but she’d never quite lost the hotheaded streak that had landed her in the regiment in the first place, when a perceptive judge in the Kearney outback had given her a choice between time in jail and time in the service. From the beginning, Will had been the responsible one, trained up in it from his civilian days as a wilderness guide.

Nevertheless, the three of them made a good team, and Will was glad that Jock and Lexa had made Sergeant not long after he had himself. Now he said to his friends, “We’re going to Terra so that we can make sure this won’t happen all over again—”

“The bitch has a head start,” said Lexa darkly. “High road or low road, she’ll get there before we do.”

“Or so that we can at least stop it before it gets this bad,” Will finished. “Besides—”

His voice trailed off for a moment, as he went over what he knew about the Clans. He was uncomfortably aware that most of his knowledge came from sources he wouldn’t trust to get Northwind right either—things like popular tri-vid programs and illustrated articles in the newspaper supplements, and one long-ago secondary school history unit on the Battle of Tukayyid that had stopped the Clans from overrunning the Inner Sphere. With his mind already on the mountain trails, he’d never listened all that much in class. Instead, he’d done just enough of the assigned work to get by. He found himself wishing now that he’d paid better attention.

“Besides,” he repeated, “I don’t think Anastasia Kerensky wants to burn Terra. I think she wants to own it.”

Jock’s brow furrowed. “What for?”

Again, Will had to pause and order his thoughts before summoning what he hoped were the right words. “It’s—the Clans believe that they’re supposed to take over Terra for its own good. It’s what they think they were made for, after the Star League fell apart and Aleksandr Kerensky led them away.”

“Kerensky?” Jock asked.

“Aye,” Will said. “The Wolf-Bitch has a famous name. Anyhow, the Clans have always been hot to reclaim Terra, and whichever one of them actually goes ahead and does it gets to wear a fancy hat—”

“You’re joking,” Lexa said.

“About the hat?” said Will. “I think so. But some of the stories… anyway, the Clan leader who does the job gets to call himself by a special title—ilkhan or something like that—and go down in their stories and their history books as a great leader.”

Lexa snorted. “I think our Countess is going to have something to say about that first.”

“Aye,” he said. Off on the far side of the landing field, a Klaxon sounded the signal to embark. Time to get back to his troopers and start marching them aboard Montrose for the trip to Terra. “And so will we.”

DropShip Fenrir, JumpShip Akela

Saffel Space Station Three, Saffel System

Prefecture II

February 3134

In the officers’ conference room aboard Fenrir, with her Northwinder Bondsman a silent background presence, Galaxy Commander Anastasia Kerensky went over the battle plan with her assembled Star Colonels.

“I want the people in charge of the station to think that we are harmless,” she told them, “and that we have come to them for fuel because we are the victims of an emergency.”

“When they see that we are Clan,” Star Colonel Dorn said, “they may not be willing to believe us.” Dorn was a big, blocky man, who might have been a genius had he been endowed with intelligence to match his muscles. “Even if we lie and say that we are Sea Fox traders, and not Steel Wolves.”

“We will not lie,” Anastasia said. “Not about who we are, and not about having an emergency.”

Dorn frowned. “You are planning in advance to have an emergency?”

“Of course,” she said. “Under the circumstances, it is the only way.”

Star Colonel Marks, whose dislike for her, Anastasia felt certain, was much stronger than Colonel Dorn’s, asked suspiciously, “What kind of emergency do you intend for us to have?”