“You have done me no direct injury, Galaxy Commander. I have no Grievance.” She was in motion again, stalking around the perimeter of the map table, ending—deliberately—just outside comfortable speaking distance with Radick. “You, on the other hand, have something that I want.”

She took another two steps, which brought her well inside speaking distance. “And I believe that I am better suited than you to possess it.”

Radick stood his ground. “How so?”

She pivoted and threw out an arm in a deliberately theatrical gesture, pointing to the map.

“Look at this!” Her voice was pitched to carry; she was talking now to all the Star Colonels as well as the Galaxy Commander. “Small World! Of what use to us is a place whose very name proclaims its insignificance?”

“If the Star Colonel had ever planned a long-term campaign, instead of fighting in the campaigns of others,” Radick said, “she would perhaps understand the need for incorporating more worlds into our power base.”

Anastasia sneered. “We are Wolves; we are our own power base. And what will the rulers of the Inner Sphere say of us when they look at this campaign?”

She paused and let the silence drag out, waiting for the intake of breath and slight shift in expression that told her Radick was about to speak. Then she spoke first, forestalling him: “I will tell you what they will say. They will say, ‘The Steel Wolves are no real threat to us. They choose easy targets these days because their leader, Kal Radick, is a cautious man.’”

There, she thought. I have said it. He will hear the word: Coward.

She saw the ugly flare of anger in his eyes before he suppressed it, and knew that she had him. She pushed on.

“I say again, Galaxy Commander, I am bidding myself against you in a Trial of Possession, your rank and position to be the stakes. Augmented or unaugmented, your choice.”

Radick looked down at her, letting their position emphasize his extra inches of height. “Unaugmented, Star Colonel. Name a time and a place where we can come together, and let this meeting return to its scheduled business.”

“The time is now, and the place is here.” She turned to Star Colonel Marks, who happened to be the nearest of the assembled Warriors. “Clear the floor and make a ring. The Galaxy Commander and I are going to fight.”

Steel Wolf Headquarters

The Four Cities, Tigress

May, 3133; local summer

Anastasia stood a little way away from Kal Radick as the chairs were moved and stacked, and the big map table, its tri-vee display extinguished, was shoved up against the room’s far back wall. Once the floor was cleared, the senior officers present formed the ring. The other officers and MechWarriors crowded close behind them as eager spectators—some even climbed up onto the table for a better view. There were more people present than Anastasia remembered; word of the proposed Trial must have spread while she and Kal Radick were talking.

The last chair was moved, and the circle closed. Without bothering to see if Radick followed, Anastasia stepped inside.

She heard his footstep on the tile floor behind her. He had not hesitated. Once she had reached the center of the circle, she turned to face him. He was standing closer to her than she had thought, and he was smiling.

He pulled off his uniform tunic and tossed it aside, out of the ring. He moved with a carelessness that implied contempt for his opponent, as if he didn’t care whether she attacked or not. Any assault would be brushed aside.

“So, Anastasia,” he said. “You look thoughtful. Are you not so eager to fight me, after all?”

“As eager as you are,” Anastasia said. “And more.”

She knew that Radick’s careless pose was a deliberate misdirection. She could see how his feet were planted, how he was keeping his center of gravity low, how he was making sure that she stayed inside his field of view—the forward hundred twenty degrees that defined human eyesight.

Anastasia took a step forward. Her own mass was centered and her breathing was steady and slow. “Are you ready?”

“I am,” Radick said. “If you win, my rank and position are yours. If you lose—would you prefer that I kill you, or let you live? If I leave your face unmarked, you may be able to work your way home to Arc-Royal on your back.”

She had been expecting a deliberate insult, an attempt to throw her mind and emotions off balance before the start of battle, and Radick’s choice of slurs was as unimaginative as she had suspected it would be. She set aside the anger that rose up in her just the same, and let it fade from her consciousness like everything else in the room except the circle in which she stood.

“You are all talk, Kal Radick,” she said, and deliberately turned her back on the Galaxy Commander.

In the same moment that she turned, she began a subvocal count. And one and two and—

She leapt up, spinning, and felt, as she had expected, the breeze of a blow aimed at her back, a punch at full extension that might have snapped her spine. It struck only empty air.

Anastasia landed on her feet behind and to one side of Kal Radick, and continued her spin without pause. She brought her right leg up and forward, driving a snap-kick into his back on the level of his left kidney. Radick staggered forward, but kept his footing.

Damn, she thought. That kick came in too light.

Radick had already been moving forward in the same direction as her strike. Now he was touched—hurt, perhaps—but not crippled.

“Very—good,” he gasped.

He turned, pivoting on the balls of his feet, then lowered his hands and made a grab for the heel of Anastasia’s still-raised foot. Catching it, he pulled backward and up. Anastasia lost her balance and fell.

She let herself go with the fall, tucking into a roll instead of landing on her back with stunning force, and came up on her feet and in guard position: feet wide, knees flexed, hands palm up at waist height.

“And you are not good enough,” she said. “Not to command the Wolves.”

Radick did not answer—not with words. He turned sideways to her and brought up his left foot to knee level, and she prepared herself to meet an incoming side kick. Instead, he leapt and lunged, his right hand aimed like a spear at her solar plexus. A hard enough blow there, in the nerve bundle below her breastbone, and nothing else would matter. Her own body would betray her.

An outside block with her right hand turned the blow. But Radick must have anticipated that defense, because her hand touched only air, and in the next fractional instant Radick’s left hand punched in hard on her biceps, sending an electric wave of pain down to the tips of her fingers.

A gasp—of surprise? of admiration?—came from one of the spectators, somewhere outside the ring. Kal Radick had known what his opponent would do, and had aimed to strike her muscle while it was contracted and at its most vulnerable. Anastasia’s right hand would be useless for a while, and if Radick had ruptured the muscle her whole arm would be useless for the rest of the fight and for some time thereafter.

Anastasia reacted without thinking. Her left hand swept up and in, and she struck down onto Radick’s collarbone with the knife-edge of the hand. She felt two bones break under the impact—the medial carpal bone in her own left hand, and Kal Radick’s clavicle. Now each of them was down an arm—with his broken collarbone, Radick’s left hand hung as useless as Anastasia’s right arm.

“We shall see who commands the Wolves,” Radick said.

He raised his right knee as if trying to jab it into her belly, then snapped forward with his foot. The vicious kick might have crippled her if it had struck her kneecap, where it had been clearly aimed.