It would have taken only an instant to bring weapons on line and light up the VV1, but the driver might not be complicit. Also, she imagined that Jasek would want to squeeze Parkins himself, rooting out any further treachery in the Stormhammers.

The two of them together, Jasek and Tamara, would eventually form an unstoppable team. She knew this.

First Hill was coming up, and Tamara focused even harder on the task of maneuvering her crippled Eisenfaust. The semisteep slope was not an easy climb, forcing her to lope up in a kind of sideways step with her stronger left leg always lower on the hill. The city of Cheops was laid over three sides of a sculpted mountain. Each of the five Rises had been perfectly leveled and squared, each Hill graded exactly the same as every other. The effect was stunning: to anyone arriving at the DropPort to the south, the city looked like an ancient pyramid. Governor Paulo and Legate Lorenzo, the political and military leaders of Nusakan, had estates on Fifth Rise, at the very top. Jasek and the Stormhammer senior officers had been offered residences up there as well, but their leader had declined. The GioAvanti industrial facilities on First Rise had everything the Stormhammers required, from apartments and cafeterias to corporate offices (now in use as administrative and training facilities) to a large set of warehouses (converted into ’Mech bays and vehicle repair shops).

She angled across an empty parking lot, now the Stormhammers’ parade grounds, and straight for one of those warehouses. Giant doors already stood rolled back, and she needed to duck forward only slightly to get inside the cavernous interior. The building still showed signs of its retrofitting, with the second-story floor ripped out of the middle and a series of catwalks and chain falls dropped down from the ceiling for elevated work, but it served.

The VV1 Rangers both peeled away, finding parking slots along one wall. A technician in bright orange coveralls waving two glowing wands directed Tamara to an empty berth, helping her maneuver in the tight quarters with a series of semaphore-style signals. Finally, he crossed the wands overhead, indicating a good position.

Tamara gratefully banked her fusion reactor and instituted shutdown and security procedures for her Eisenfaust, unplugging from the control systems and peeling herself out of the cockpit command seat. Her cooling vest went into a locker built into the back of her seat. The neurohelmet on an overhead shelf. Grabbing a set of breakaway fatigues, she pulled them on over field boots, shorts, and a tube top, which was all she wore in the hot seat. She snapped the legs shut and fastened the cuffs around her ankles, then unlocked and cracked open the cockpit hatch.

The mixed scent of welding and grease assailed her. The techs were slow in bringing her a gantry, so Tamara unrolled the chain ladder from the Wolfhound’s head. Scaling it to the ground, she dropped the last meter, landing in a crouch in front of Leutnant-colonel Alexia Wolf.

“Wolf,” Tamara sighed, straightening up. Belatedly, she added, “Sir.”

Alexia’s smile was pro forma. “Welcome home, Kommandant.”

The two women eyed each other carefully. Alexia Wolf stood six centimeters shorter than Tamara, with a soft fall of brown hair and an athletic frame. She never wore makeup, which did not detract from her hard beauty and made the colonel even more intimidating. Tamara reflexively reached up to tousle her own black curls, repairing some of the damage caused by wearing her neurohelmet.

“Landgrave Kelswa sent me,” the colonel announced, shortening Jasek’s name in the most common manner but awarding him his formal title. “I am to take delivery of the data you brought back.”

“Are you?” Tamara asked. She felt as if the data wafer, her copy of the intelligence recovered on Towne, were burning in her pocket. The request cut her to the quick and struck her as inappropriate for any number of reasons, not the least of which was that Alexia Wolf was not in her chain of command. “We heard about the assaults by the Jade Falcons. I would think our data would now be of secondary importance.”

“Intel is never secondary. Information is ammunition, Kommandant.”

Tamara nodded. She recognized the saying as an old Lyran Commonwealth military adage. “Even so, I would rather deliver it in person. I have an urgent matter to discuss with Jasek—the Landgrave.”

“You can pass that through me as well,” Alexia offered. “If you want a direct meeting, request it through Colonel Petrucci.”

Tamara visibly bristled. Alexia Wolf’s promotion to commanding officer of the Tharkan Strikers, the Stormhammers’ third and least-experienced combat group, had caused a great deal of talk. On the face of it, so far as Tamara Duke was concerned, Wolf had no business in command. She wasn’t a member of the former Republic military, as was Tamara and most of the Stormhammers, nor one of the supporters who had rallied to Jasek’s call from nearby worlds of the Lyran Commonwealth.

Alexia was a freeborn descendant of Clan Wolf exiles, who had trained as a MechWarrior but failed her Trial of Position. In disgrace, she had left the Arc-Royal enclave and traveled through Lyran space to The Republic. Caught in the blackout, by fate or by fortune she had been on Skye when Jasek’s stand against Duke Gregory suddenly opened up a need for warriors.

Watching Jasek elevate the Archon’s Shield battalion over the Rangers had been hard enough on Tamara. Seeing a woman who could not cut it in a regular-line military suddenly promoted over deserving warriors due only to her exotic flavor was nearly too much to bear.

Also, Tamara didn’t like the looks that Wolf sent Jasek when she thought no one was watching.

“This is very sensitive and of the utmost importance. I’d like to see the Landgrave at once.” And let him see her.

The colonel frowned. “The Landgrave is meeting with Legate Carson Lorenzo. I am not going to interrupt them on your word, Kommandant, no matter how good it has proved in the past. You will have to tell me what this is regarding.”

Paid a respectful compliment by the woman she saw as a rival, Tamara might have relented, except that Vic Parkins chose that moment to join them. “What what is regarding?” he asked, bluntly stepping into the conversation. His sandy blond hair was ruffled from the open-air drive in the VV1 Ranger. “Towne?” No doubt he thought he should be included in any debrief meeting.

If Tamara accused him now, she turned over the entire situation to Alexia Wolf. This was hers. This was personal.

“Kommandant?” Wolf asked.

Tamara shook her head. “I can’t.”

“Then you can pass along your request for an interview through Colonel Petrucci. Your debrief will happen tomorrow. I cannot spare the time at the moment.”

Parkins dipped two fingers into his uniform’s breast pocket. “Then you might want this now,” he offered, producing a data wafer. “It’s a copy of the data we recovered. I thought the Landgrave might want to review it early.” He passed it into Alexia’s hand with a smart flourish.

Biting down on the insides of her cheeks, Tamara tasted blood. She felt a warm flush building along the back of her neck, and she balled her hands into fists. “With our compliments,” she said through clenched teeth.

“Appreciated,” the leutnant-colonel replied. Her mind was obviously already looking forward. “Well-done, Kommandant. Hauptmann.” She turned on her heel and made for the line of vehicles parked against the wall.

Parkins watched her walk away with obvious male appreciation. “What did the she-wolf want? Prospecting for the Strikers?”

Wouldn’t Parkins love that? Shift over to the green-rated unit, pick up another stripe? The man had no loyalty at all. Not to the Rangers. Not to her. Not to Jasek. She waved over two infantrymen, spotting their insignia as the Archon’s Shield. Not her unit, and not Wolf’s. Safe as could be asked.