Ardan looked up from his notations on the pad. "That would settle things quite nicely, I think."

"The trappers are trapped!" Hamman said. "By God, Ardan, we'd have them cold!"

Ardan nodded. A vast weight had lifted as he'd discussed his doubts with these men, and now a definite plan was forming in his mind. "I think so. I really do think so. Now the question is, can we change the strike force operational orders now, at the last minute?"

Ran Felsner was still studying the map. "It'll be no trouble to change the drop pattern. We can brief the battalion commanders, and post new objectives and rendezvous points easily enough. Admiral Bertholi won't like reassigning the DZs, but I can handle him. Victor DeVries, my Operations Chief, will give me a hard time. My biggest concern is dropping at the edge of that jungle, though. That ground could be mighty soft."

"It is," Ardan said, "in the wet season. But it's well into the dry season now. Based on the tapes I scanned, I'd say the area is more savannah and grassland than jungle. It gets lots of rain during the local winter, but in summer it's bone dry."

"I've known planetological tapes to be wrong," Hamman said

"So? You want to drop in first and check it out yourself?"

"Ha! Not likely. Just so long as it's not an actual swamp, we'll be O.K. Even DropShips could set down along the road. We'll leave that to the section tactical leaders."

Felsner nodded. "It'll be worth it for another reason, too."

"What's that?" Hamman asked.

"Well, there's bound to be one hell of a tangle, with units not getting their DZs confirmed. Hell, just finding a specific drop zone will be next to impossible because they won't have something easy to orient on from the air, like the city. And maybe some of them land in a swamp and don't come out, or hit a ridgetop hard and smear their 'Mechs across the face of a mountain. But it'll be worth it."

"I don't follow you," Hamman said.

"You're thinking of a leak," Ardan said.

Felsner nodded again. "Such things have been known to happen. Even with slow intersystem communications, even with everything secured and guarded and security-cleared half to death, leaks happen."

"Liao wasn't born yesterday," Hamman said. "Like you said, this has all the earmarks of a trap. He could have planned it all this way, or.

"Or," Felsner continued, "he's set things up this way because of information he's been picking up from...from within our own camp."

Ardan shook his head. He didn't like thinking about these possible wheels within wheels within wheels. "He could have set this up without help from his spies," he said. "I've studied Maximilian Liao for so long, it feels like I know the guy personally. I only met him once, one time when Hanse took me with the Guard to a big conference in the Lyran Commonwealth."

He paused, looking from Ran to Lees, and back again. "You know, Liao would execute any officer who changed a battle plan he'd approved—have him shot on the spot—even if the new plan worked better than the original. I don't think the man could even imagine a group of officers rewriting an entire battle plan without first getting permission from the top."

Felsner took a thoughtful bite of his neglected food, chewed slowly, swallowed. "That's what appeals to me about this. We haveto do the unexpected. If we don't, we're going to find ourselves up to our chins in Capellan BattleMechs. They knowwe're coming. We haveto come, and they'll be ready and waiting. But if we set down where they don'texpect us, well...it just might give us the edge we need."

"Well, you gentlemen had better eat up," Ardan said. He tapped the E-pad's sceen. "We have to do some talking with the battalion strike commanders, don't we?"

Hamman looked thoughtful. "We've got to get a message back to the Prince, too. At this point, even if the message were intercepted, the news wouldn't get to Stein's Folly ahead of us. And then there's also Michael.

"Michael?"

"Michael Hasek-Davion," Hamman said. "Hanse's brother-in-law."

"Oh...right" Ardan knew the Duke of New Syrtis, of course. He was ruler of the sector, and so military operations had to be cleared through him even when he had no direct jurisdiction over them. As a matter of courtesy, they would have to inform him of the changes in the operation. The man had always struck Ardan as being pretentious and officious, but formal court etiquette and proper military discipline both required that they advise the Duke of the new plan.

It took them the better part of the afternoon to discuss the proposed changes in the drop zones with their own commands. Fleet Admiral Bertholi, charged with delivering the strike force to Stein's Folly, voiced the most stubborn protests, because he would have to pass on the extensive changes and recalculations in the approach vectors and navigational sightings to every DropShip in his command. Strangely, the one man they hadto convince, Ran Felsner's Chief of Operations, General Victor DeVries, accepted the proposed change the moment they presented it

"You're right," the grizzled Davion veteran said. "I was beginning to have the same doubts myself. When four pros all trip over the same instinct, maybe it's time to pay attention, eh?"

Through DeVries' official channels, then, they assembled and transmitted the plan revisions throughout the strike force. Bertholi protested until Felsner threatened to have him replaced on the spot, then pitched in and began going over the necessary navigational changes with his approach team himself.

The new plan took shape in the bowels of the HQ combat computers and in the far more important computers in the minds of the command staff. To Lees Hamman and the Capellan March Militia would fall the task of diverting the enemy's forces into believing a major landing was developing on the plains above Steindown. Ran Felsner and his 5th Crucis Lancers would come down along the road north and east of the critical gap called Jordan's Pass, while Ardan's 17th Avalon Hussars would land further west, along the fringe of the Ordolo Basin and west of the ridge. Detached battalions from the 5th Lancers and 17th Hussars would secure the coastal towns and spaceports as far east as Harbor, while the ground armor and heavy vehicles would be offloaded at the spaceport north of Travis as soon as it was secured, to operate as a mobile reserve.

There would be other Liao strongpoints, of course. Thelan and Maris were a pair of large tropical islands (or small island continents, depending on one's point of view) lying south of the Highland Peninsula, and both had several large cities. At the antipodes was Talliferro, a small continent that had a large mining settlement and commercial spaceport. All of these would have to be secured sooner or later, but with planetary invasions, first came first. The heaviest concentration of Liao firepower would be on the Highland Peninsula, and it was there that the crucial battle would take place.

Meanwhile, Ardan, Felsner, and Hamman were received with cool courtesy at the Hasek-Davion headquarters in an imposing mansion on a wooded hill above the spaceport. They passed through an ascending hierarchy of receptionists, functionaries, under-chiefs, chiefs, and executive chiefs of staff until at last they were ushered into the Green Room, where Michael Hasek-Davion burrowed his way through a sheaf of hardcopy printouts and official-looking documents. Ardan found himself wondering if they had been heaped there merely to impress them with the Duke's importance to this sector, as there could be no other reason for that inefficient paper mountain.