“The solar sail is going to rip,” she said.

“How are you going to arrange matters so that the station believes you?” Marks asked.

“We are going to rip it in truth,” she told him.

Star Colonel Dorn was frowning again. “You are saying that if this plan of yours does not work, we are all going to starve in the dark.”

“No need to worry,” she told him. “If the plan fails, we will run out of air long before we starve.”

Not quite an hour later, the external line-handling team was out of Akela’s tertiary air lock and away. The team members were dressed for extravehicular activity in pressure suits and helmets, and they were busy rigging det cord along the length of Akela’s giant solar sail.

“Reel it out,” said the senior man on the line-handling team. “Slowly. And stay on the dark side of the sail. You do not want the stationers to pick you out with a telescope.”

“Do you think they have telescopes fixed on us?” asked the worker next to him, a young Warrior on his first campaign.

“Would you have a telescope,” the senior man asked, “if you were one of them?”

The first timer paused, then said, “Yes, sir.”

The senior man said, “If you assume that your enemies are stupid, you will only be wrong once. Now, comms dark, no more chatter. Rig the line, then gather in the lock and we will set it off from there. Move it, people.”

Cecy Harris watched the Clan JumpShip on her monitor screen. The vessel had not gotten any smaller while she was studying it. At the console next to her, the communications specialist said over the ship-to-ship short-range radio, “What is the nature of your emergency?”

“We ripped our solar sail,” came the hoarse voice. “Need to come in for repairs, buy a bit of power.”

“We saw your sail go,” Luc Desroches said, after picking up the console handset to make his reply. He was standing a few feet away from Cecy and her monitor, in order not to distract her. To the communications specialist, he said, “Pass the word on all frequencies: You are cleared to approach.”

“Once we have a foothold established in their air lock,” Anastasia Kerensky said to Ian Murchison, “we will see what we can do.”

The Galaxy Commander was waiting with her officers and her assault team—and her Bondsman—in the JumpShip’s enormous docking area. Docked with the space station as they were, the JumpShip no longer had its spin-induced gravity, and they were floating in a loose cluster rather than standing on the deck.

“The first wave is going to have some trouble,” Anastasia continued, as Akela’s outer lock cycled open. “It may take a while for reinforcements to arrive if things go sour in a hurry.”

“So you, of course, are going in with the first wave,” Murchison said.

“Of course, I am,” Anastasia said. “And you are coming with me.”

The air lock—with much groaning of metal against metal—cycled open on the outer side and admitted them to the station’s docking area. Anastasia and the members of her assault team looked out into a cargo port. The room was big and square and solid, with yellow-and-black guidance stripes on all its visible edges, fenders on areas likely to take blows from moving masses, and stark blue-white work lights.

Moving like underwater swimmers in the zero-gee, the assault team left the air lock and clustered again inside the bay. Anastasia herself punched the combination to close the air lock door behind them. Then she turned to address the members of the boarding party.

“Orders for this raid are to inflict minimal damage,” she said. “I want this station working, and I wa~t its people working. So, hand-to-hand, fire your weapons only if you must, and only to save your life or the life of a comrade. And if I find out that any one of you got excessively trigger-happy during the action, I will personally kill you and the comrade you were trying to save. Now move.”

Office of the Exarch

Geneva, Terra

Prefecture X

February 3134; local winter

From the Belgorod DropPort, Ezekiel Crow went next to Geneva by means of a quick suborbital shuttle-hop. When he arrived at The Republic of the Sphere’s capital city, he found the weather there cold, the nearby mountains blanketed in white. At another time, Crow might have taken advantage of the opportunity to ski the Alpine trails. He’d picked up the skill during his earlier stints in The Republic’s capital, and had enjoyed the pastime. He had other business today, and no time for pleasure.

He’d had occasional chances to go skiing now and then during his stay on Northwind, in the months before the fighting began again. The continent of New Lanark, at least, boasted plenty of mountains and more than sufficient snow. But skiing had not been one of Tara Campbell’s hobbies, and in those happier and more optimistic days he had been tailoring his free-time activities to match hers.

Well, he reflected bitterly, there was no need for him to make accommodations now.

Even if he were able to make his own version of the story stick in the court of public opinion and in the mind of the Exarch, he and the Countess of Northwind both knew the truth. Everything else that he had lost, there was still a chance that he could recover—but never Tara Campbell’s good opinion of him. Though the pang of realization was not new any longer, it struck him between the ribs like a knife blade all the same.

Crow wasted no time in Geneva, but went directly to the office of the Exarch: not Redburn’s ceremonial office, which was good mainly for video opportunities and for overawing visiting dignitaries from outside The Republic of the Sphere, but his working office, located in a different—and much less impressive—building. Damien Redburn, a vigorous man who still had much of the look of the MechWarrior he had been before devoting himself wholeheartedly to The Republic’s politics, greeted Crow warmly.

There were no backslappings or loud exclamations—both men were too dignified for that—but Redburn favored Crow with a genuine smile and a quick embrace.

“Ezekiel!” he said, stepping away and returning to his seat behind the desk. “You’ve returned to make your report on Northwind in person, I presume.”

Crow took the office’s remaining chair at a gesture from the Exarch. He kept his expression deliberately serious as he replied, “Yes, unfortunately.”

“Unfortunately?” Redburn’s eyebrows lifted. “What’s happened?”

The Exarch’s brow was furrowed with concern, but he wasn’t looking particularly surprised by the possibility of bad news.

Crow remembered that it had been Damien Redburn who first expressed private misgivings about the young Countess of Northwind. He had doubted her ability to handle her new responsibilities as Prefect of Prefecture III without some sort of backup.

“She means well,” Redburn had said at the time. “And her loyalty is unquestioned. But she doesn’t have the experience.”

And Crow—he’d been all sincerity and fairness then; he had not known Tara Campbell, and had believed that his own first life and unforgivable transgression remained safely dead and buried in the rubble of his boyhood home—had said, “What about Sadalbari? She certainly distinguished herself there.”

“No one doubts her courage, either,” Redburn said. “Still, a small-scale field operation against a rabble of pirates is not the same as the responsibility for an entire Prefecture.” He gave a worried sigh. “The problem is that after Katana Tormark’s …defection, there’s nobody else out there with an equivalent level of moral authority and popular support.”

Crow said, firmly optimistic, “I’m sure that the Countess will rise to the occasion.”