Except that it hadn’t worked.

As Crow, all he had truly accomplished was to further alienate the students. Giving them hope, but setting them up to fail.

Best intentions. The paved surface to hell.

And here he was, at it again. Trying to form a new bridge between the students and local government, trapped by his feeling of responsibility.

Gerald Tsung stood, leaning against his desk. “I can assure you,” he promised Hahn, Michaelson, “the Governor will give this due attention. What she can do to strengthen your case…” The shrug was heard in his voice.

Hahn stood, shook hands with the Governor’s Aide. Michaelson stood as well.

“Thank you for arranging this meeting, Major.” Tsung offered another handshake.

Ritter Michaelson accepted it with a nod, and escorted Hahn from the Governor’s Palace without a word spoken until they reached the front steps. From the upper balustrade, they looked out over a wide avenue. People crossed between the palace and other buildings of the White Tower District. Everyone hurried, which was due more to the cold winter day than any burning desire to see bureaucracy done. Sections of the wall that cut the governing sector out of the heart of Chang-an could be glimpsed in between tall hedge trees.

Hahn glanced back, taking in the Han-inspired architecture with a satisfied look. “I think we made progress.”

“I warned you against that last bit. Legate Ruskoff is a good man.”

“Maybe,” Hahn admitted carefully. He buttoned up his jacket, slipped on a set of red-tinted aviator glasses. Leading the way down the polished stone steps, he waved for a nearby rickshaw. No civilian cars were allowed inside the walled area, only a few military and government-registered vehicles. Cabs waited for visitors outside the gated entrance. “Maybe,” he said again. Then he lapsed into a determined silence, which Michaelson had no intention of breaking into until they were back at the Conservatory.

He himself was never going to get there.

The rickshaw driver was short and stocky. He delivered the two men to the line of cabs, turned, and raced for the corner where a dark sedan waited. Hahn had not been paying attention, but Michaelson was. He climbed out of the rickshaw, tense, and was not reassured in the slightest when the sedan’s window hummed down and Jack Farrell nodded a curt greeting.

“Ditch the kid,” Farrell said. It was not a request.

The rickshaw driver was gone, having been paid his money earlier and smart enough to know when his presence was not wanted. Hahn bristled at the rude dismissal, but Michaelson laid a hand on the younger man’s arm. “It’s all right. Take a cab and I’ll meet you at the Conservatory.”

The sedan smelled of thick cigar smoke. At least it was heated. Michaelson pulled the door closed, but kept one hand on the handle.

“You’re a hard man to follow.” Farrell put the car in gear and eased away from the curb. Traffic was fairly heavy and they crawled along at the pace of a brisk walk. “Xiapu to Chang-an, all in a few short weeks.” He turned far enough to see Michaelson with his one good eye. “You just can’t keep your head down, can you?”

Michaelson considered remaining mute, then realized that it would keep him that much longer in the raider’s company.

“What do you want, Jack?”

“Time to repay some of Bannson’s goodwill,” Farrell said. “Not that you’ve got a choice. Since you’re all buddy-buddy with the authorities, you can make certain that a particular DropShip lands unmolested. Just one DropShip. That’s it.”

One DropShip. Daniel Peterson looked out from the back of Michaelson’s mind and shuddered, and refused to shut the door after him. Screams echoed up from the darker recesses of his memory. Screams of terror, and of bloodlust.

And his own screams, as he lifted the bodies of his parents back onto the bed, covered them with a heavy blanket.

“One DropShip?” His voice broke. “More Confederation forces?”

“The Second McCarron’s aren’t going to take the world by themselves, are they? This is right up your alley. You’ve even got experience.”

“I’m in no position to make that happen. And I wouldn’t. Not again.”

Farrell glanced over, taking his eye off of traffic for several long seconds. Then he whipped the wheel over and jammed the sedan into some open curbside. Loading Zone, it said. The raider certainly didn’t care. He pulled a cigar out and lit it up, taking his time about it. Violence burned not too deeply beneath his calm exterior, Michaelson knew.

“Then you get yourself into a position to make that happen. This is not a request, Daniel. It’s an order. Straight from the top.”

His teeth clenched hard enough to grind enamel. Michaelson—Michaelson!–shook his head. “I can’t get that close to the action again, Jack. Tell Bannson that. I wouldn’t be any good to you if I tried.”

The other man snorted. “You’re no good to us now. No good to anyone except maybe those kids back at the Conservatory. G’head. Let the locals find out who you are, and watch ’em pull that entire university apart brick by brick. Not even the most die-hard Capellan-lover would stand up to protect you.”

Michaelson clenched his eyes shut. He heard traffic coughing by on the street, the stream of citizens and residents who shuffled along the walk with their chatter and packages and errands to perform, and pushed them away as well. He had forfeited his rights to be a part of that world long, long ago. He couldn’t even stand for The Republic anymore. Not after Northwind, and Terra. All he had left now was himself.

And Jacob Bannson was collecting the mortgage on that, too.

“Which and when?” he asked, voice no more than a whisper.

Farrell didn’t bother to hide the smile in his voice. “July twenty-fourth. By local reckoning, that should be the lunar New Year.” The first new moon of Liao’s spring. “The ship’s an Overlord conversion, part of the regular Bannson fleet on loan to MedCross. The Astral Prize. Take good care of it.”

Michaelson grabbed at the handle, jacked it open and threw his shoulder into the door. “Yeah. I’ll take care of it,” he promised in a dead voice. He didn’t look back at Farrell, not wanting to see that gloating face. He threaded his way through the crowd, hands thrust into his jacket pockets and face pulled tight into a mask.

One DropShip. That’s where it had started. It had ended with millions dead, bodies carried in refuse haulers and shoveled into mass graves. The first war of the new century. The death of a golden era.

It had ended with the “suicide” of Daniel Peterson, and the birth of Ezekiel Crow.

Could he do it again? Was it still within him to make that call? And would it be the right choice this time?

His questions led him right back to the White Towers District. His faked military identification got him through the gate and up the long block of administration buildings. His assumed name, still on the list to see Gerald Tsung, bought him a new escort to take him into the palace halls, moving along with a flow of robed nobles with their wide-shouldered mantles and conservative politicians in their suits and long skirts.

Back into Tsung’s office, where Tsung was busy reading through every document left by Hahn Soom Gui and marking his own notes into a small noteputer.

Lieutenant Daniel Peterson stood before the Governor’s Aide, doing his best to bury both Crow and Michaelson in the back of his mind. Twenty years of doubts and recriminations sloughed away, leaving him with a certainty he hadn’t felt in far, far too long.

“I’d like you to get me an interview with Legate Ruskoff,” he said with tight, clipped words. “Today.”

“May I ask why?”

Daniel pulled himself to attention. “It may be time for me to reenlist.”