“High time,” said Jones. “Shall I put the troops on alert?”

“Continue reconnaissance here on the ground, but have them ready. There’s no guarantee the Wolf won’t come after Balac Two and bring his buddies with him.”

Time passed. Griffin sweated, from tension as much as from the heat of the ’Mech’s cockpit. The only thing moving within his field of vision that wasn’t the Highlanders themselves was something four-legged and reptilian throwing up a flurry of sand off next to the road. Griffin, native to the Kearney coastline, recognized the signs of a scaley-bogle going after slower-moving prey.

Good for him, Griffin thought. He’s going to eat tonight.

The radio crackled again. “Command, this is Balac One.”

Balac One was the VTOL taking the seaward leg today, while Balac Two did the landward search. “Go ahead, Balac One.”

“I have Balfour-Douglas Petrochemicals Offshore Drilling Station Number Forty-seven on the horizon.”

“Any sight of the DropShips, Balac One?”

“Negative, sir. No DropShips in sight.”

“Give Balfour-Douglas a flyover, see if you can raise them. Maybe they’ve noticed something that we haven’t.”

“Yes, sir. Heading toward Balfour-Douglas now—wait a minute. Sir, I have Balac Two and the Wolf both on visual, heading this way.”

Quickly, Griffin opened a second circuit. “Balac Two, this is Command. Have you been spotted?”

“Negative. Looks like our buddy’s in a hurry to get home.”

Griffin frowned. The Wolf was heading out to sea, toward Balac One and away from the landward-searching Balac Two. Not the direction he’d have expected for a VTOL returning to base, not unless—“Damn,” he said under his breath, and keyed both of the secure circuits back open.

“Balac One, Balac Two—he’ll be heading for the VTOL pad on that Balfour-Douglas rig. Shadow him—don’t let him spot you—see what’s up out there and report back to me.”

Anastasia Kerensky’s on-planet field headquarters, close enough to be vulnerable to a quick strike out of Fort Barrett—General Griffin was already juggling troop numbers and battle scenarios in his head as he made ready to pass the word along to his aide.

We haven’t yet found the DropShips, he thought happily, but maybe we’ve found the next best thing.

Balfour-Douglas Petrochemicals Offshore Drilling Station #47

Oilfields Coast

Northwind

February 3134; dry season

Ian Murchison stood looking out across the water toward the Kearney coast. It wasn’t his usual hour for spending time on #47’s observation deck—bright noon, with sunlight dazzling off blue water and a breeze blowing off the land, and the scavenging sea-birds wheeling and calling overhead—but this was not, even in his current circumstances, one of his usual days.

The strangeness had begun with a summons from Galaxy Commander Anastasia Kerensky, bringing him post-haste from sickbay up to her quarters, where the body of Star Colonel Nicholas Darwin lay sprawled across the wide bed in a welter of blood. Anastasia Kerensky stood nearby, a silent presence in black leather.

Murchison checked the body for breathing and pulse, and found neither. Darwin’s throat had been cut brutally and efficiently, with his arms trapped in his clothing to give him no chance for resistance. “He’s past anything I can do for him.”

Anastasia said, “That was the general idea.”

“What happened?”

“You were right.”

He suppressed the urge to say that he was sorry. The Galaxy Commander had the look, at the moment, of someone who would kill the first person who expressed sympathy. Instead, he asked, “What do you need me to do, then?”

“Help me get him outside and up to the observation deck. I want to make it crystal-clear what happens to people who think they can sell out the Steel Wolves.”

Why me? Murchison wanted to ask, but he knew better.

He had already figured out that his relationship with Anastasia Kerensky, as her personal Bondsman, possessed levels of complexity that—as one not raised in the Clan culture—he could not truly understand. This was apparently one of those levels. Beyond that, however, he had pointed Anastasia’s suspicions in Nicholas Darwin’s way to start with; and he could not help but feel that the act made him, in some way, complicit in Darwin’s death. It was fitting, therefore, that he be involved in the sticky aftermath.

He considered the technical aspects of the problem. At least no one was trying to hide the body… “The easiest way is probably to roll him up in the bedsheets and carry him out between us. Those sheets are going to be a write-off anyhow. And the mattress.”

“There are other beds to sleep in,” she said curtly. “Wrap him up.”

Together, they heaved the body and the sheets off the bed and rolled them up into an ugly bloodstained sausage of flesh and blood-soaked fabric. Murchison had pulled on a pair of latex examining gloves by habit when he first approached Darwin’s body—he carried them in his belt pouch along with shears and a screwdriver, much as Kerensky and her Wolves habitually carried knives—but Anastasia worked barehanded. It made sense, he thought; there was already blood on her hands.

He took one end of the finished bundle, and Anastasia the other. In death, Darwin made a limp, ungainly weight. They didn’t need to go far to get to the observation deck—down the corridor, down the cross-corridor, into the elevator, up and out—but it was too great a distance to cover unnoticed. They only encountered one person along the way, another from the general forgettable mass of Steel Wolf Warriors, who said nothing while watching them, avid-eyed—but by the time they emerged with their burden onto the observation platform, a small crowd already stood waiting.

Anastasia Kerensky was full of a magnificent disregard. Murchison, for his part, was grateful that nobody expected a Bondsman to explain anything. She let her end of the Darwin-bundle fall to the platform’s surface with a muffled thud, and he lowered his a bit more gently.

“Rope,” she said. “Or chain, it doesn’t matter.”

Murchison didn’t ask questions. He went in search of rope and left Anastasia standing over Nicholas Darwin’s sheet-wrapped body, with the wind off the land whipping her red-black hair back from her face like a bloodstained sable banner. More Warriors had gathered on the observation platform. Gossip moved as fast with the Steel Wolves as it did with anyone else, and by now every soul on the rig probably knew that something had happened.

Nobody said anything to Murchison. He was the Galaxy Commander’s Bondsman, after all, and what he did was her business and not theirs.

He found the rope—a coil of nylon line hanging from a hook next to one of the emergency lifesaving stations—and brought it back to Anastasia. As he came up to her, she bent down, grabbed the edge of the sheet in both hands and jerked. Darwin’s body rolled out onto the deck.

“Tie it around his feet,” she said.

Her voice wasn’t particularly loud, but it rang out in the silence like a bell. The Steel Wolves on the observation deck weren’t watching or listening to anything else but her, and she was paying them no attention at all. Murchison squatted down next to the body and worked with the nylon line until he had a snug loop fitted around Darwin’s ankles. He stood up again and waited, holding the coil of line in his hand.

Anastasia said, “Make the other end fast to the rail.”

Her voice never changed, her face remained an impassive mask, and there was blood drying red and sticky on her hands. Murchison was torn between cold-to-the-bone fear of her very presence and a reluctant admiration. God only knew, he thought, what her Wolves felt at the sight of her.