Ran himself had remained behind to parry any possible official or bureaucratic delays Hasek-Davion might create because he was displeased. The Capellan March Militia were still ostensibly under the Duke's command even though they had been temporarily reassigned to Lees Hamman by Prince Davion himself. Though powerless to stop the invasion, the Duke of New Syrtis could find myriad ways to hamper the assembly and loading of his own troops. An order to loyal unit commanders simply to slow down the boarding process or to lose the clearance orders for a vital shipment of munitions could delay the unit's departure for days, even weeks.

Felsner's solution was equally simple, though risky. He made sure that Michael would not interfere with the new plan for the counterinvasion by solemnly informing the Duke that after all and after careful consideration, the Davion commanders had decided to stick with the old plan.

Ardan considered this strategy dangerous as well as dishonest, knowing that Hasek-Davion would be furious and humiliated when he finally learned that they had lied to him. Having an influential and powerful nobleman like the Duke of New Syrtis for an enemy was not going to be amusing. It was these wheels within wheels within wheels, rather than the prospect of battle, that was keeping Ardan awake at night.

But he was too busy to worry for long. Once his own unit was scheduled for loading, he found himself in a running, three-sided battle with the Dragon's Field Technical Officer and the Chief of Procurement.

A JM6 JagerMechin Company C, 1st Batallion of the 17th Avalon Hussars, died right on the landing field in the shadow of the UnionDropShip it was preparing to board. An old, old fault in a leg servounit finally shorted an actuator circuit board too often patched instead of replaced.

The leg locked, freezing the 'Mech in place and blocking access to the DropShip's number one hold.

Though replacing a circuit board is not particularly difficult, the repair meant removing the JagerMech'sleg at the knee, a procedure that required a field repair gantry or a full maintenance facility, at least. The 17th's field gantries were already broken down and stored, and Procurement refused to provide a new circuit board unless the crippled 'Mech could be brought to the maintenance center some two hundred meters across the field. A request for a deployed field gantry was refused: why should that gear be broken out when maintenance blocks were open just across the field?

Unfortunately, the base Field Technical Services Division could spare no transports for the three hours' work needed to lower the 'Mech onto a flatbed crawler and carry it across to Maintenance. Proper authorization to redetail a transport and crew had to come from the base commandant, and he was at an official briefing with His Grace the Duke and would not be available until that evening—or possibly tomorrow. So sorry, they said, but we are really very busy and could you call back later? Or you might check with the Logistical Staff at Pallos, eighty klicks from here. They might have a transport, and if you could get authorization...

Meanwhile, the other three 'Mechs of the JagerMech'slance were scheduled to board through the blocked hatch, and the entire loading schedule was falling behind. After two hours of fruitless tail-chasing, Ardan arrived at the only possible solution. He had the two heaviest of the waiting 'Mechs drag the crippled, sixty-five-ton JM6 across the field to the maintenance center and leave it there, laid carefully and squarely across the accessway leading to the building's underground VIP garage.

If the major in charge of the Technical Services Division wanted to get home for supper that evening, the 'Mech would have to be repaired that afternoon, transport or no transport.

It was, and loading proceeded almost on schedule.

As boost time approached, the scene became even more chaotic and hectic. The port facilities of Dragon's Field were a hive of activity focused on the squat shapes of the DropShips— Unionsand Overlords,mostly—resting in their blast pits surrounded by the lacelike traceries of loading gantries and crane supports. Somehow, hundreds of tons of food, water, munitions, and spare parts had to be directed from storehouses around the planet to the proper ship at the proper time.

The physics of mass and mass distribution were unforgiving of the schedules and problems of ship supply officers. If each ton of supplies was not positioned precisely, the ship would not respond as expected when the captain later tried to cut in a control jet to vector clear of incoming missiles or to maneuver through a turbulent atmosphere. Worse, if those tons of supplies were not stored in the proper order, ground troops queuing up to draw ammo might be told that their supplies lay somewhere on the far side of 400 tons of dried meat and a case of JagerMechleg actuator circuits.

Finally, after three days of grueling work, the last 'Mech was somehow winched into its transport niche and locked down, the last liter of reaction mass had been pumped into tanks and the hollow, partitioned spaces between bulkheads and decks, and the last squad of infantry had filed aboard and found the narrow, padded ledges that would be their homes for the next several days. Lees had departed the day before with the Capellan March Militia. With the threat of official delay from the Duke's office removed, Ran boosted to rejoin his unit hours later.

Ardan was left to send the final messages required by protocol and formal etiquette—one to Michael Hasek-Davion stating that the original battle plan had, after all and after much careful consideration, been changed; and another that went by diplomatic paths to Hanse Davion himself, explaining the change and describing the friction generated between the strike force command staff and the Duke of New Syrtis. Ardan had composed this last with some measure of relief. Let Hanse deal with his brother-in-law, he thought. From now on, I'll just have to worry about Liao BattleMechs!

Messages transmitted, Ardan stepped aboard the UnionClass DropShip Exeter and stared for a last time across the nearly deserted plain that was Dragon's Field's largest port facility. Most of the ships had already boosted, and the only humans visible were isolated groups clustered here and there trying to assess the blast damage caused by the departing DropShips. Trash and debris—paper by the ton, discarded equipment cases and cargo crates, the scattered refuse of ten thousand men, the skeletal frameworks of partly dismantled cranes and gantries—littered the field, creating a haunting image of loneliness and desolation.

Dragon's Field was the inner world of an M0 dwarf. The laws of Kearny-Fuchida drive dictated that the star's two jump points would be seven-tenths of an astronomical unit out, the zenith point above the star's north pole, the nadir point above its south pole. At a constant 1 G boost, with time out for a mid-course flip, the trip from world to jump point would take thirty hours.

With an effort, Ardan shook the lingering depression from his thoughts, turned, and boarded the Exeter .Twenty minutes later, the DropShip rose into the sky atop a flaring pillar of fusion-heated plasma.

11

The Exeter 'spilot made his final approach to the gathered fleet with care. The station plasma streams that balanced the JumpShips against the incessant tug of the red star 105 million kilometers below would kill if they swept across the unshielded hull of a DropShip at close range, and the Exeter'sown bursts of high-speed plasma from her maneuvering thrusters would shred the delicate black fabric of a jump sail if her course came too close to one. The DropShip's target was the elongated form of the StarLordClass starship Sword of Davion,needle-sleek when seen from afar, a bewildering complexity of angles, bulges, turrets, antennae, guy struts, and braces when seen up close. Brackets aft of the JumpShip's cargo holds provided mounts for five UnionClass DropShips. A sixth bracket ring and open grapples invited the Exeter into a berth alongside the others. There was a tense moment of delicate maneuver, the firing and capture of a magnetic cable across the tens of meters that separated DropShip from starship. The electrical charge accumulated in the Exeter 'shull by her own plasma streams was drained away into the JumpShip's after transformers, and then the Exeter was drawn slowly into the reach of the Sword of Davion'sgrapples.