He could still stop it, Crow thought; he could . . . but other words also echoed in his mind, words not spoken but printed in cold black type on a sheet of good white paper:
Anastasia Kerensky wants Northwind. See that she gets what she wants.
The letter contained no threat; whoever had written it hadn’t seen the need. The information alone was enough to convey the desired message:
Keep Anastasia Kerensky from taking Northwind, and all of this becomes known.
When he reached the Armory he found it brightly lit despite the late hour, its windows and skylights glowing yellow against the dark. The whole building was full of furious activity, roused to action by the word from the port. Crow made for the ’Mech hangars, mostly empty until recent months, now filled with modified Industrial and Forestry and MiningMechs. There were only three real BattleMechs in the lot—Captain Bishop’s Pack Hunter, the Countess’s Hatchetman, and Crow’s own Blade. Not much, against the forces the Wolves would bring to bear.
The mercenaries would have more, he thought, and called the roll of them in his mind: a Spider, a Firestarter, a Mad Cat III, and Farrell’s own Jupiter.
Those would be enough, if they were used.
His Blade waited in its hangar. To the guard outside, he said: “Paladin Crow, on the Prefect’s business. I’m taking the ’Mech.”
The Blade was probably his fastest way to the mercenaries, no matter what he decided to say when he got there. Ordinary vehicles—even tanks and armored cars—might be stopped and questioned, blocked and delayed. But nobody would force a ’Mech to halt; and even if somebody were foolish enough to try, Crow’s Blade would be recognized, and people would assume he was on business too important to be stopped.
He climbed into the cockpit and dogged the hatch shut behind him. While the ’Mech’s fusion engines and musculature were warming up, he quickly stripped down to his shorts, donned the cooling vest and neurohelmet, and slipped into the command chair. As soon as he’d gone through the primary and secondary security protocols needed to gain full access to the ’Mech’s controls and capabilities, he switched the viewscreen over to IR mode. He’d need the infrared for taking the Blade through the city streets in the dark, and the cockpit’s polarizing windows would mitigate the risk of getting blinded by flares and searchlights.
Another touch of the controls awakened the Blade’s fusion engine to full life. Crow brought the ’Mech out of the hangar, taking it past the New Barracks and past the Fort, into the streets of Tara. Soon the Blade was striding down the main road leading out of the city into the countryside beyond. Farrell’s mercenary units had not yet been dispersed to garrison duty, but were still in their holding encampment; at the Blade’s cruising speed of seventy-six kilometers per hour, it would not take Crow long to reach them.
Then he would have to decide what he was going to do.
Giving over Tara—the city and Countess blurred together in his mind, until he wasn’t certain which would be the more poignant loss—giving over Tara to the Steel Wolves would mean betrayal and bloody slaughter.
It’s not as if you aren’t used to it already, said the voice of reason, cold as always in the back of his head. Anastasia Kerensky wants Northwind, and the person who sent you that packet of damnation wants for you to give it to her—or have Paladin Ezekiel Crow unmasked to The Republic of the Sphere as the Betrayer of Liao.
How is that going to be different, he asked the voice of reason, from having him branded as the Betrayer of Northwind? Either way it brings me down. Is that the true goal—are Anastasia Kerensky and Countess Tara Campbell both nothing but pawns in somebody else’s game to checkmate me?
The idea was not impossible. He’d said enough and done enough over the years that anyone involved in the upper levels of The Republic’s politics could guess that he aimed high. And no one could rise to join the ranks of the Paladins, from whom the next Exarch would be chosen, without making enemies.
The line of thought brought a surge of irritation along with it. Later, he told himself, later he could sort out who had the whip hand over him, and why. But not now, not when the Steel Wolves were landing at the port and—Farrell’s mercenaries are at your disposal—what Paladin Ezekiel Crow said and did in the next few hours would decide the course of the battle to come.
Anastasia Kerensky wants Northwind. See that she gets what she wants.
There was something not quite right about that. Why should Anastasia Kerensky want Northwind, other than for the usual motives ascribed to the Clans: glory and reputation and a famous name? Why should she make a try—twice—for Northwind, instead of concentrating her attentions on places like Small World and Addicks? The Countess of Northwind had gotten it right, months ago when The Republic of the Sphere first sent him to Prefecture III: Northwind was the gateway to Terra.
Kerensky doesn’t want Northwind, he thought. Kerensky wants Terra, just as the Clans have always wanted it. Seizing control of humanity’s home planet would allow her to fulfill what the Clans believed to be their manifest destiny, and it would make her—what was the word they used?—ilKhan. Northwind was just the springboard.
The idea made sense, and chilled him even in the heat of the Blade’s cockpit. After Anastasia Kerensky had finished with Northwind, when the Highlanders’ homeworld was no longer a threat at her back, then she would strike at Terra.
He’d reached the gates of the mercenary encampment while pursuing these thoughts, and was stopped by soldiers on gate guard with Gauss rifles, backed up by an SM1 Tank Destroyer.
“Halt and identify yourself, MechWarrior!”
A ceremonial threat, given muscle by the SM1. Crow replied over the Blade’s external speaker: “Paladin Ezekiel Crow. I need to speak with your commanding officer. At once.”
From the Blade’s cockpit, he saw the gate guards put their heads together for a quick consultation. He didn’t wait, but began unstrapping from the control seat and getting ready to climb down. The gate guards would have recognized Crow’s name by now as that of the person who held the mercenaries’ current contract. If Farrell were not already waiting by the time Crow reached the ground, he would be arriving in haste soon after.
In fact, Farrell showed up at the gate as Crow was stepping off the bottom rung of the access ladder. “Paladin Crow,” he said. “To what do I owe this unexpected visit?”
“The Steel Wolves have landed at Tara DropPort.”
“Huh.” Farrell didn’t look particularly surprised. “You’re the one that’s giving the orders, Paladin. What’s the word?”
Crow, looking at Farrell, realized that the man didn’t care what answer he got. At Crow’s order, he would fight for the Northwinders, or against them, with equal skill and determination. His loyalty—if such was the word—was not to the cause, but to the contract, and to the man holding it.
The moment between Farrell’s question and Crow’s reply stretched out into infinity, with time within it for a host of considerations.
If I stay here and fight, he thought, it’ll mean the end of my career. I might as well be dead for any use I’ll be to The Republic after what’s in that envelope gets published.
As for the Countess of Northwind—Crow realized with a pang of regret that whatever future they might have shared was lost to him, no matter what happened. Tara Campbell would never forgive the Betrayer of Liao.
On the other hand, the cold voice of reason pointed out, even without the aid of Jack Farrell’s mercenaries, she would be able to hold out against the Steel Wolves for some time before having to admit defeat. Not forever—but long enough for Crow to reach Terra.
From Terra, he would have access to the resources that would let him deal with the threat of exposure as Daniel Peterson, Betrayer of Liao. The name was the connection, the only loose thread that could be pulled. If he could discredit or eliminate the source of the name, the rest would be nothing but rumor.
More than that, however—on Terra, he could protect The Republic of the Sp
here and Devlin Stone’s peace against the threat of invasion by the Steel Wolves. Such protection was the Exarch’s responsibility, some people might say, but a crisis was no time for false modesty. If Damien Redburn was good at his job, Ezekiel Crow knew that he would be better.
“Take your forces,” he said to Farrell. “Deploy them to block the roads out of the city. Don’t give the Highlanders a chance to break off from combat and retreat.”
“Do you want us to fight them,” Farrell asked “or just to get in their way?”
“If you have to—fight.”
PART THREE
Burning
February 3134
35
DropShip Quicksilver
Tara DropPort
Northwind
February 3134; local winter
By the time Ezekiel Crow had brought his Blade from the mercenaries’ encampment back to the city, the hour was well past midnight. The city lay in eerie quiet around him. The Wolves would have disembarked from their DropShips by now, and the port complex itself had undoubtedly fallen; now they would be moving cautiously forward, testing the defenses that Prefect Tara Campbell would have begun setting up as soon as the DropPort sounded the alarm. The Highlanders, for their part, were waiting for Farrell’s mercenaries to move into position before starting their counterattack. They had a long wait ahead of them, Crow thought, and disappointment at the end of it.
He took his Blade through the streets leading to the DropPort. He had nothing else with him of his own except his MechWarrior’s gear and the uniform—now stowed in the cockpit locker—which he had been wearing when he left the New Barracks for the Armory. The wallet containing his keys and ID and financial-access cards had still been in the pocket of his uniform trousers when the initial alarm sounded, which in retrospect was a good thing. He would not have liked to attempt a journey from Northwind to Terra backed by nothing but his personal charisma.
He would rather not have been making the journey at all. Running away, leaving a city to its fate . . . I’m making a career of this, he thought.
He shook his head. He was a Paladin of the Sphere. His loyalty was not to one world any longer, but to all of them, and to Terra above the rest. He had to go where he could to deal with the forces that threatened to stain his reputation, and where he could most effectively counter the threat of Anastasia Kerensky and her Steel Wolves.
Near morning, he reached the last checkpoint before the port: a barrier of wood and barbed wire, manned by combat troops in powered armor with a revetted gun emplacement and a comm set. Crow switched on the Blade’s external speakers.
“Paladin Crow, on Republic business,” he said to the troopers.
He’d been able, by means of judicious detours, to avoid alerting any of the secondary checkpoints further in. This one, marking as it did a point in the Highlanders’ outer defensive perimeter, could not as easily be circumvented, and he had already made up his mind not to try. The troopers here might send word back that Paladin Ezekiel Crow had passed through the lines in the direction of the port—but, with luck, not until it was too late for anyone to stop him.
The guards saluted him with their Gauss rifles and stepped back, raising the barrier. His Blade could have stepped over it without any difficulty, but to do so would have raised the alarm. Better to follow protocol, and buy himself time with polite behavior.
He continued on toward the DropPort. When the sound of gunfire marked the direction in which the Steel Wolves were making their first attempt at the Highlanders’ defenses, he swung wide to avoid that sector, coming at the landing field from another angle. Behind him, on the skyline of the city, a column of black smoke rose straight up in the still air, making an ugly streak against the dawn-fresh sky.
The Steel Wolves held the port, but had not, apparently, expected a lone ’Mech to enter it unsupported. He suspected that they had spotted him early on, and were waiting to see what he would do.
“Any unit, any unit,” came a call over the intra- ’Mech circuit. The speaker was using one of the Highlander frequencies. “Any unit, request support at grid one-five-three.”
Crow reached up and switched off the internal speaker. One-five-three, he thought. The smoke on the skyline would be coming from somewhere near there. One-five-three was in the north-west quadrant, near the suburb of Fairfield, where the Highlanders and the Wolves faced one another across the Tyson and Varney ’Mech factory. He had chosen his route out of the city well.
There were two civilian DropShips grounded at the port. The Wolves had left them alone so far—Anastasia Kerensky was after bigger game. And while she might not approve of a DropShip leaving Northwind at the moment, the odds were that she wouldn’t make more than a cursory effort to stop it. With communication these days increasingly dependent upon ships coming and going between planets, nobody wanted to get a reputation for the bad treatment of independent ships and crews.
Whether or not a single MechWarrior making contact with a civilian DropShip would strike the Wolves as a threat serious enough to need stopping . . . that was the question.
The nearest civilian DropShip had the name Quicksilver emblazoned on its hull, underneath the image of a winged sandal. The metal surface glittered in the first rays of the early morning sun. The vessel’s cargo bay doors stood open, as if the Wolves’ descent had caught Quicksilver in the act of offloading or taking on cargo, and her captain had opted to defuse hostility by remaining open and defenseless.
Ezekiel Crow walked the Blade up to Quicksilver’s cargo bay, where a voice hailed him over the ship’s loudspeaker.
“Blade MechWarrior, this is Quicksilver. Identify yourself and state your business.”
“I am a Paladin of the Sphere,” Crow replied over the ’Mech’s external speakers. “My name is Ezekiel Crow. And in the name of The Republic, I require the use of this ship.”
“You are asking me to lift off from a war zone. Will The Republic compensate me for any loss or damage that might result?”
“You have my word,” Crow said. By now the irony of such a statement coming out of his mouth scarcely choked him at all.
“And I am a loyal citizen of The Republic. Bring the ’Mech into the bay.”
A crewman was waiting inside the dark cargo bay. Using lighted wands, he directed the Blade forward toward a cargo cradle. Crow walked his ’Mech the length of the bay to face the cradle, then turned and backed into it. He felt the ’Mech’s balance shift as it came to rest against the bulkhead, then relaxed, sighed, and took the Blade into hot-shutdown mode. The arms and legs froze in position and the reactor sighed to minimum power drain, with gyros on standby.
He would do a full, proper shutdown later, after they were in space. But for now, time wasn’t his friend. The Steel Wolves had undoubtedly spotted him by now, and—if they were feeling particularly bloody-minded, or if they didn’t want the word to get out—a Condor tank backed by Elemental infantry could already be on the way, aiming to cripple Quicksilver before it could lift. Then there would be unpleasant questions to answer.
He disconnected and shed the cooling vest and the neurohelmet, and stood, stretching as much as possible in the cramped cockpit. His back ached. Was it possible he had been that tense? Did betraying another world not come easily?
Rather than answer his own questions—he’d have plenty of time for that level of introspection on the long flight back to Terra—Crow pushed open the access hatch and climbed out of the ’Mech. He’d stripped down to shorts and T-shirt to pilot the ’Mech; as soon as the cold winter-morning air struck his mostly bare skin, he started to shiver.
“Where is the captain?” he asked the crewman who had guided him to his spot, even as a crew of cargo hands began work on adding extra strapdowns and attachment points to the cargo cradle in order to jury-rig proper transport for the ’Mech. Their tools clanged as the bolts went in and the lines tightened. “I need to make arrangements with him for lifting off as soon as possible.”
“Th
is way, sir,” the crewman responded. He turned and walked toward a hatch. Crow followed.
With the crewman leading, they stepped through an airtight door. Inside the ship the air was warmer, though still chilly to Crow’s overheated skin. They went down a long passageway, climbed a ladder, then took a lift up to the maneuvering and control portions of the ship.
“The captain is on the bridge?” Crow asked as they walked.
“No, sir,” the crewman responded. “While you were berthing the ’Mech, he asked me to bring you to the first-class passenger lounge. He said he’d be waiting for you there.”
I don’t have the time for social pleasantries, Crow thought impatiently. The tea and biscuits can wait until later.
The passageways were nicer here—wood-grained coverings on the bulkheads, carpet over the deck-plates, brass fittings on everything—as befitted a passenger area. The crewman stopped at a door, knocked, and stood aside.
“Through here,” he said.
Crow went through the door and into a large compartment containing a polished wooden table, dark green bulkheads with framed pictures hanging from them, and a silver tea service on a sideboard. The DropShip’s Captain was indeed seated at the head of the table—and an officer of the Steel Wolves was standing behind him with a slug-pistol in his hand.
Two more Clan Wolf troopers moved from their places beside the door to stand next to and behind Crow, each one taking hold of one of his arms.
“Good morning, Paladin,” the officer said. “How good of you to join us. Galaxy Commander Kerensky has asked me to greet you.”
“Good morning, Star Captain,” Crow replied. “Give the Galaxy Commander my compliments on her economy of effort—I assume she sent teams to all the civilian ships on the field?—and please inform her that I am on business for The Republic of the Sphere, and shall not be impeded.”
Truth and Shadows Page 14
