“We’ve been. But it takes time. And I don’t know how much of that we’ve got.”

“Have you considered hiring mercenaries?” he asked.

“Not really.”

Distaste must have shown in her face and voice because he looked at her curiously. “Why not?”

She was silent for a moment, marshaling her thoughts. “I’m—uncomfortable—with the idea of negotiable loyalties. I can’t imagine it for myself, and I suppose I have trouble believing that such people are trustworthy.”

“Not exactly a reasonable position, considering the history of your own regiments.”

“Touché.” She acknowledged the hit with a wry smile. The Northwind Highlanders had fought for pay on worlds all over the Sphere, making a name for themselves as tough and competent mercenaries long before they returned to defend a world of their own. “It takes a kind of honor, I suppose, to hold to the letter of a contract in spite of all opposition. But setting aside my personal prejudices—which I’d do in a heartbeat if I thought it might help me protect Northwind—won’t do me any good as long as I’ve still got to deal with the problem of money. Hiring mercenaries takes a lot of ready cash, and with the economy as shaky as it is, I don’t know if I could persuade the Council to take the plunge.”

There was another stretch of thoughtful silence. Then he said, “There is a workaround.”

“Tell me.”

“If you are willing,” he said slowly, “I can engage mercenaries using my authority and funding as a Paladin of the Sphere, and Northwind can accept their aid without having to negotiate with them—or pay them—directly.”

“Can it be done quickly? There’s no point, if it can’t be.”

“If I let the word propagate by fast DropShip, we should get a response within a month or so if we get a response at all.”

“All right, then.” She exhaled on a long sigh and tossed back the last of the whiskey in her glass. “Do it.”

Fort Barrett

Oilfields Coast

Kearny

Northwind

January 3134; dry season

In spite of the winter season, the day-to-day weather on the Oilfields Coast of Kearney was warm. The planet’s equator was so close here that there wasn’t much difference between one season and another in any case—instead of spring, summer, fall, and winter, the climate varied between wet and dry. This was the middle of the dry season, and no rain had fallen since the end of September.

The noonday sun beat down from a cloudless sky on the men and vehicles assembled near the gates of Fort Barrett. Anyone who was hot now would be hotter still when they were marching with a full pack—or strapped into the cockpit of a ’Mech.

Brigadier General Michael Griffin, who would be riding the ’Mech in question, looked at the assembled force with a critical eye. Griffin’s Koshi, repaired and rearmed after taking heavy battle damage at Red Ledge Pass, would be at the rear of the column, where the dust stirred up by its heavy footfalls would not destroy visibility for the other units. He would be shadowed, as he had been at the battle for Red Ledge Pass, by his aide-de-camp Lieutenant Owain Jones, in a BE701 Joust tank.

The rest of the force was a mixed lot, made up of units chosen for what Griffin hoped would be the optimum combination of strength and mobility: a reinforced company armed with a mix of Thunderstroke Gauss and laser rifles, plus a heavy weapons platoon of Cavalier battle armor; an additional scout/sniper platoon mounted on Shandra scout vehicles; and a pair of attached Balac Strike VTOL aircraft.

This assignment would be harder in some ways than defending the pass had been. On that occasion, necessity had chosen his forces for him—a mix of what was ready and what could be spared—and his task, while difficult to carry out, had been simple enough to understand. There had been only one road by which the enemy could come, and only one thing for Griffin to do about it: a brutal business, but not, ultimately, one that taxed the mind.

This time, though, was different. For a reconnaissance in force he needed mobility, in order to search out the enemy; but—because the most likely way of finding the enemy was by running into them—he also needed to bring along sufficient firepower to fight his way out of trouble. Too light a mix, and he would risk being chewed up before he could get word back to headquarters. Too heavy, and either the noise and dust of their advance would alert the enemy to run away, or they would encounter overwhelming numbers of the enemy and lack the speed to escape.

Griffin hoped he’d judged it right.

“Here’s the situation,” he said aloud. He had a field map of the Oilfields Coast unrolled and lit up on the front chassis of the Joust tank, currently parked near the left heel of Griffin’s BattleMech. The task force’s company and platoon leaders had gathered at the feet of the Koshi for the briefing.

“As most of you probably know,” Griffin continued, “we’ve had a sighting of Galaxy Commander Anastasia Kerensky in downtown Fort Barrett. Regimental intelligence says that Kerensky is unlikely to be onplanet without some kind of backup from the rest of the Steel Wolves—and those DropShips that landed last summer in New Lanark may have left Northwind, but they never showed back up on Tigress. Headquarters wants to know where they are, so we’re going out hunting.”

He tapped the red dot on the map that marked the location of the Kerensky sighting. “We’ll be doing an expanding square search, taking this for our center point.”

Lieutenant Jones looked at the map. “That’s a lot of territory to hunt for one person in,” he observed.

“We’re not looking for Kerensky anymore,” Griffin told him. “We’re looking for those DropShips. Which are a hell of a lot bigger and harder to hide.”

The major who commanded the reinforced company asked, “What about all the parts of the search area that are open ocean?”

“We’ll be doing periodic overflights with the attached Balacs, but our best bet is going to be the coastal flatlands south of here.” He lit up the area in question on the map. “It’s empty territory, more or less—the soil’s not fit for growing anything and the rocks don’t have any minerals in them worth digging out.”

“When we find the DropShips, what do we do then?”

“In an ideal world, we’d send headquarters a message marking their location, then hunker down somewhere outside of the blast zone and let people who have more firepower than we do take care of things from there.” Griffin turned off the map and rolled it up. “But since this world is far from ideal, we’ll probably find ourselves fighting our way out of trouble at some point before we’re done.”

He handed the map to Lieutenant Jones, then stepped over to the entry ladder of the Koshi.

“All right, people—it’s time to mount up and head out.”