Despite the shock, the young mercenary immediately identified the man by the scarlet sash on his white robe. What in the seven hells is a ComStar Precentor doing here?Stunned; Phelan gaped at the white-haired old man, then recovered his poise. "Peace of Blake be with you, Precentor ..."

The Precentor adjusted the patch over his right eye, then squinted at the mercenary with his good one. "Yes, I can see it. You are a Kell."

Something in the way the Precentor spoke made Phelan uncomfortable. "You know my father?"

The Precentor hesitated for a moment, and Phelan sensed him swallowing whatever his first response would have been. "Know him? No, not really. In my capacity as Precentor Martial, I have studied him and I have grown to respect him greatly. I even met him long ago, but I doubt he would remember me or the meeting."

Phelan started to ask the ComStar official if he could get word of his survival back to his parents, but the Khan's entry into the room stopped him. Smiling politely, the Khan opened his arms to welcome his guests. "Allow me to perform formal introductions. Phelan Kell, this is Anastasius Focht, the Precentor Martial of your ComStar. Precentor, this is Phelan Kell."

The young mercenary acknowledged Focht with a nod of his head, then looked expectantly at the Khan. The Khan met Phelan's gaze. "And permit me to introduce myself. I am Ulric, Khan of the Wolves. You were taken by an advanced raiding party sent out by my clan, and brought here to my JumpShip, the Dire Wolf."

The news that he was on a JumpShip shocked the Kell Hound even more than his previous attempts at estimating the size of what he'd believed to be a DropShip. JumpShip! That's impossible! JumpShips are nothing more than a bridge module mounted on the body of a Kearny-Fuchida drive. Maybe they have a shuttle docking bay, and theCu has those agrodecks, but that's it. A JumpShip with decks and facilities for lots of people. Oh, Phelan, this is decidedly worse than a little blizzard-stalking on Tharkad.

Phelan recovered himself quickly and wanted to offer the Khan his hand, but sensed that Ulric would have rejected the gesture more as a matter of form than from any distrust or dislike. "Sir, if I might, would it be possible for me to communicate a message to my family that I am still alive? No, please, it need not contain any military intelligence—my interrogation and that first battle were enough to tell me you are invading the Periphery and consolidating it. I just don't want my parents to suffer."

Ulric shook his head, but Focht answered the question. "I regret, Herr Kell, that even with the Khan's permission, I could not transmit such a message. The Primus sent me as an envoy to these remarkable people. My mission is diplomatic in nature, and I cannot ferry messages back and forth, regardless of their content." The Precentor smiled and halfturned to the Khan. "The Khan has shown me battle-tapes of your encounter with their raiding party. As you have seen, their military technology and skill are impressive."

Focht's words smothered the hope in Phelan's heart. Bile burned in his throat as he nodded agreement with the Precentor's comment. "Impressive, indeed." His head came up. "I've never know of another organization in which a soldier would put himself on report for assault."

Ulric frowned. "If you damaged another's property, you would tell the owner, quineg?"

Half-hearing the question, Kell nodded. "Yes, but... Wait a minute, property!"

The calm on Ulric's face did not suggest that anything was out of the ordinary. "In capturing you, Vlad earned a claim on you. I exercised my prerogative as Khan." The growing look of horror on Phelan's face didn't alter Ulric's explanation in the least. He grabbed Phelan's right wrist and brought the corded bracelet into view. "Simply speaking, Phelan Kell, you belong to me."

15

Orbital Space, Thule, Rasalhague Province

Free Rasalhague Republic

7 March 3050

Tyra Miraborg glanced at the auxiliary monitor on her cockpit control monitor. It showed a small icon representing her Shilonefighter dead-center on the screen and slowly rotated a vector-graphic sphere around the craft. Three small triangles with identification tags appeared near her ship to mark the position of her wingman and the other two pilots in her flight. Further on along her line of flight, a large orb remained tantalizingly distant.

She smiled, barely feeling the added pressure of the neurohelmet's padding against the corners of her mouth. We'll be home soon enough. Back aboard theBragi and off to another system. I should have known that joining an honor guard company would mean spending most of my time doing ceremonial things, but I didn't expect extended tours of duty guarding the Defense Minister as he toured the systems the Periphery pirates had attacked.

Anika Janssen's voice called to her through the speakers built into the helmet. "I've got nothing unusual, Kapten."

Tyra turned her head to the right and saw Anika's Shilonepull parallel to her own fighter craft. The wing shape of the craft made it one of the few AeroSpace Fighters suited to both atmospheric and deep-space combat. Shilonepilots, as a class, referred to their craft as "boomerangs."

"That, darlin'," one of Tyra's first flight instructors had told her, "is because Shilonepilots always come back after a mission."

Sure, and ComStar never loses a message.Tyra keyed her radio. "Roger that, Valkyrie Two. I'm clear. What about you, Ljungquist?"

"Clear as the day after a weekend off," laughed Sven Ljungquist. "Valkyrie Four reports no trouble. He's been watching our six. No one has crept up on us."

"Roger, three." Tyra touched a finger to the DropShip icon on her auxiliary screen. In an instant, the DropShip replaced her ship in the center of the screen, depositing the icons marking her flight down at eight o'clock on its scanner sphere. In addition to painting her screen with the Bragi'ssensor data, the computer opened a direct line to the flight's home ship. "Valkyrie Flight reporting all clear."

"Roger, Valkyrie Leader. You should be home in time for supper." The male flight controller lowered his voice. "The food's not going to be anything like the meal I had two nights ago in Sovol, Tyra. You should have accepted my invitation."

Anika cut into the line before Tyra could answer. "Lqjtnant Tviet, would you mind sticking to business? We are in a hostile theatre of operations."

Tyra heard Tviet's acknowledgement of Anika's rebuke and the radio went dead. She thanked Anika silently, but the all-too-familiar feelings of regret and anger began to boil up within her again. She fought to keep her mind from wandering off on these unhappy tangents. You made your decision and that is that. You decided to decline Phelan's offer and sign on with this company because that made the most sense. You couldn't stay on Gunzburg, that's for certain.

A red light flared on her radio control panel, and she punched it automatically. As though reading Tyra's mind, Anika spoke with her friend over the private frequency they shared. "Tyra, you can't keep kicking yourself, because it's not your fault. What happens, happens."

Tyra nodded and glanced over at Anika's Shilone."I know you're right, Nik. There's nothing I could have done about Phelan's death, even if I hadsigned on with the Kell Hounds. Phelan's unit didn't have aerospace cover, so I wouldn't even have been there."