“It’s a free country… or was,” Grace said, and flashed him a sad smile that made him want to fight to the death for Alkalurops’ freedom. “And your Sergeant Major won’t have any trouble keeping you in sight,” she finished.

“You’ll have to excuse him. He’s the nervous type,” L. J. said, taking a seat. Grace offered him half her corn, and he took it. “I’d prefer to have my forty mercs back.”

“Only twenty were really yours, and I’d gladly have you march all that’s yours into your DropShip. Lot of sadness in life, isn’t there? For now, they’re safe in my personal custody.”

“In Falkirk where the gray ’Mech MODs drill?”

“Actually, not there, but I’m glad you noticed our little demonstration. Ben told me you should know that what you saw was only one echelon. There’s more,” she told him. All sincerity.

“Or there might not be,” L. J. said. “Part of the fog of what I won’t call war. You know you’re in a deadly game.”

She looked away. “Last night a couple in Allabad were walking home from supper. Black and Reds stopped them. Beat the man to a pulp and gang-raped the woman.” She watched him from the corner of her eye as she threw a few kernels to the goose.

“I’m sorry,” L. J. said.

“Two days ago people started getting offers from the Black and Reds to buy their businesses, their homes, for maybe a penny on the stone of what they’re worth.”

“I thought they were jacking up the prices?”

“That’s the tax scam your client used to scoop up most of the big wealth here. No, this is little scum grabbing crumbs. Their offer is one you can’t refuse. Some did and got hauled off to jail. The lucky ones got beaten. Others ‘died trying to escape’.” Grace paused, then tossed all the corn to the geese. That set off a racket as they fought for it.

“Angus Throckmorton has been a friend of my family since my grandpa ran the mine. He’s a lawyer,” she said softly, gazing into some middle distance that might be less painful than where she spoke from. “Angus believed in the law and lived by it. Like lunch with your sergeant, there are Some Things That Aren’t Done. He wrote up a request for habeas corpus and went to court. Black and Reds stopped him at the door, demanded to know why he was there. When he told them, they beat him. Beat him and kicked him down the courthouse steps.”

Grace faced L. J. He met her eyes and tried not to show a caring his contract did not allow him to act on. “When I was a kid and bored while Da and Angus were in court, I counted those steps. Forty-nine. They kicked him down forty-nine steps and left him. An old lady took him to the hospital. He died there today.”

“I’m sorry,” L. J. said, hearing how hollow his words were. “I hadn’t heard.”

She shook her head. “No surprise. There’s not a lot making the news these days. But there are other ways of spreading the word. I could send you copies of what I get.”

“I don’t think my client would be happy about that.”

“And we know what happens when your client isn’t happy. Loren, your client is a bloody murderer. Does your Colonel know what’s going on here?”

“I doubt it. However, he signed the contract, and it will be in force for another four months.” The duration of his contract was classified. Still, he gave it. Maybe the clash could be held off until he could march his mercs back aboard ship.

“In four months there won’t be a planet left,” Grace said. “Ben warned me that we’d reach this point—me wanting you to leave, you held here by your honor.”

“Honor is all a merc really has.”

“But you’re backing up a thief and cold-blooded murderer!”

“If a client can’t count on a merc to fulfill his contract, what do I have to sell?”

She stood, sending the geese scattering. The sunlight lit her hair afire. L. J. doubted he’d ever meet a more beautiful woman. He tried to measure the strange currents millions of years of evolution had woven into him that made this woman so attract him. She desperately needed his help, and that drew him to her. But there was also a power about her that challenged him to match hers with his own. Seductive stuff. But he commanded a battalion of mercs, and evolution was small stuff against the honor of the regiment.

“When next we meet, we will be enemies on the battlefield,” Grace told him formally.

“We’ve been there before,” he pointed out.

“Yes, but this time, only one of us will survive the fight.” There was an absoluteness in her words that brooked no argument.

“Whatever the outcome, it will be a loss for both of us.”

“You could be right,” she said, and turned away from him.

L. J. scanned the street. No sniper. An old woman selling flowers shook her head at him. He walked for the square, but Topkick met him halfway. “From your face, I’d say the talk didn’t go all that well,” the Sergeant Major said as L. J. settled in the jeep.

“Now it starts, Sergeant Major. Send the word out to the NCOs through your private channels that the gloves will be coming off the locals in the next couple of days. Forget the candy ass and the white gloves. From here forward, it gets real.”

“Kind of figured it that way, sir. Don’t worry, Major, the battalion’s solid. The Colonel will be proud of us.”

“Didn’t doubt the battalion was solid, Sergeant Major. Just wish we stood with a more solid cause at our side.”

The Sergeant Major had no answer for that. They drove back to the post in silence.

Allabad, Alkalurops

Prefecture IX, The Republic of the Sphere

16 August 3134; local summer

L. J. did not like being out of the local news loop—not the way things were going down the tubes. His time in Allabad had been short and sterile, leaving him no contacts he could trust. There had been a chambermaid with raven hair and olive skin who worked at the LCI Manor House. She could drop a ton of interesting local tidbits in the time she took to change linens.

L. J. found her Net address and sent off a chatty note about how his present hotel had a definite lack of staff and he might be looking for a maid. He ended with a “How are things going for you?” which he hoped might get her talking.

The next morning, things began to get interesting.

L. J. was enjoying his second cup of coffee when his ’puter beeped in four-part harmony with Mallary’s, Art’s and Eddie’s. L. J. slapped his first and found himself looking at Lieutenant Brajinski, presently occupying Kerry, a small town between Allabad and Little London. “Sir, four of our MechWarriors woke up this morning to find daggers in their pillows and notes saying ‘MechWarriors, go home while you still can.’”

The dagger the lieutenant waved looked more like a restaurant steak knife, but “dagger” certainly sounded more dramatic. L. J. raised an eyebrow to his staff. “You’re billeted in a former hotel?” Eddie said, checking his ’puter for the answer.

“Yes, sir.”

“Still using the hotel’s support staff?” L. J. asked.

“Yes, sir. They’ve been very grateful for the work, sir. No problem at all. Frees our troops from—” The young lieutenant trailed off. “I see your point, sir. I will let them go.”

“And see if those knives are similar to those in any local eateries,” Mallary said.

“If I locate the people who did this?” the lieutenant asked.

“Let me know what you’ve found out,” L. J. said firmly. “Take no action until I order it. Understood?”

“Yes, sir. Clearly, sir.” The screen went blank.

“So it starts,” L. J. said to his team. “Raise the alert level, XO. Mallary, have your intelligence staff try to get me some solid analysis on what’s going on here. Since the news went all nice and fluffy I don’t know shit about what’s happening.”

“I’ll try, sir, but we aren’t getting much hard data.”