“Yes,” Tara replied on external circuit.
The trooper saluted.
She keyed the mike on the ’Mech common channel, and spoke.
“Steel Wolf, there is no dishonor in surrendering. Your ’Mech is immobilized, and my troops are wiring it for demolition even as we speak. It’s up to you if you’re inside when we blow it up.”
A pause, and then the reply, “You would not.”
“You had your chance,” Tara said.
She addressed the engineers over her external speakers, but made sure that the intra-’Mech link was also open and live.
“I can’t do a thing with him,” Tara said to the engineers, over both circuits. “Destroy the ’Mech. It’s no use to us, it’s damaged already.”
“No, wait!” came the voice of the Steel Wolf. “Will my friend in the ForestryMech and I be harmed if we surrender?”
“I guarantee that you will be treated with all honor,” Tara said.
The rear hatch of the MiningMech opened. A young man emerged, his skimpy MechWarrior shorts and vest soaked with perspiration. The rain caught him and rendered him shivering.
“Take him to the rear. Take them both to the rear,” Tara said. “Before they get hypothermia and die on us.”
She checked her cockpit dials again. The heat was lower. The autoshutdown routine had worked and she could move again. The third ’Mech had gone …that way. She prepared to follow.
Before she could make a move, a Fox armored car bearing Northwind insignia approached. A short-range signal crackled over the Hatchetman’s inside speakers.
“Prefect—the Paladin needs you, now.”
“I’m on my way,” she replied.
She followed the Fox all the way back to the hill where Ezekiel Crow’s Blade was standing and looking out over the field—a mass of rain-sodden ground, half-obscured by mist and drifting smoke, covered with crumpled machinery and the bodies of Wolves and Highlanders alike.
“My lady,” he said over the command circuit as she approached. “Galaxy Commander Kerensky’s ’Mech is disabled and the Wolves are running. I believe the day is ours.”
50
White Horse Bar
City of Tara, Northwind
June, 3133; local summer
Drinks were on the house in the White Horse Bar—drinks were on the house in every bar in Tara, if you wore a Regimental uniform—and the tri-vid behind the counter was tuned to a news channel showing pictures of the Steel Wolves DropShips lifting from the salt flats beyond the Bloodstones. Will Elliot, who had found himself promoted to Corporal in the aftermath of the battles for Red Ledge Pass and the Plains of Tara, was happy to watch the tri-vid and nurse the same beer he’d purchased at the start of the evening. Jock Gordon and Lexa McIntosh, to either side of him at the counter, were both well on the way to becoming completely and happily drunk, and somebody was going to have to stay sober enough to see them back to barracks before morning.
Lexa raised her glass to the image of the departing DropShips. “Good riddance to bad rubbish, and don’t come back!”
“We had them on the run,” Jock said. “Once the aerospace fighters showed up from Halidon, we had them on the run. I still say that we shouldn’t have let them go.”
“The Countess didn’t want to let them go,” Lexa said. She emptied off her drink and gestured at the bartender for another of the same. “She wanted to chase them until they dropped and then cut them up into pieces. That’s what everybody says.”
“Everybody says a lot of things,” said Will. He found it easy to believe that the Countess hadn’t wanted to give up the pursuit—he and Lexa had gotten a good view from their foxhole of her three-on-one melee with the Steel Wolf IndustrialMechs, and the spectacle had left no doubt in his mind that Prefect Tara Campbell could be a brawler when she had to be, but he didn’t think she was the type to become vengeful in victory.
Listen to yourself, he thought. Thinking you know what the Prefect thinks, just because you fought in the same battle as she did. You don’t know anything about her worries, any more than she knows about yours.
He had to admit that he would have been feeling a good deal more vengeful himself toward Anastasia Kerensky and the Steel Wolves if things had turned out only a little worse. Liddisdale had been one of the mountain towns in the path of the enemy’s advance, and the house Will grew up in had sheltered a Highlander missile battery for a few hours, until one of the Steel Wolves’ MiningMechs had taken both house and defenders apart.
Will had heard the news from his mother. Jean Elliot had taken shelter with Old Angus and Robbie Macallan when the fighting started, and was staying in their mountain cabin until Will’s sister in Kildare could make it across the mountains. He hadn’t yet gone back to Liddisdale to look at the wreckage for himself, and wasn’t sure that he wanted to.
The tri-vid news channel changed its picture from shots of departing DropShips to an image of the Fort, followed by a close-up of a dark-haired man in plain clothing. The identification block at the bottom of the tri-vid told the viewers that they were looking at a live image of Paladin Ezekiel Crow.
Will regarded the Paladin’s projected features with mild curiosity. So this was a Paladin of the Sphere—not much to look at, considering that in popular stories all the Paladins were six feet tall and practically glowed with virtue. Ezekiel Crow was just another tired-looking survivor of the Wolves’ invasion, as far as Will could tell.
“Is it true, my lord,” said the voice of an off-camera news reporter, “that you told the Prefect to let the Steel Wolves go?”
Next to Will, Jock Gordon laughed. “Sounds like somebody else was wondering the same things we were.”
“You think you’re bright enough to wonder something new and different?” said Lexa. “Shut up and listen to the man.”
“It’s true that I advised the Prefect to that end,” Crow was saying to the news reporter. “The Steel Wolves may have abandoned their allegiance to The Republic of the Sphere, but they are not yet such bitter enemies that Northwind may not need them some day as friends, and they know well enough who won this fight. Destroying them would only have given you an enemy who would hate you for generations. Better to let them go, with honor, in the hope of more peaceful days to come.”
“How about the Prefect, my lord? Did she see things the same way, or is it true—as people are saying—that you used your authority to overrule her decision?”
Ezekiel Crow smiled. “I don’t think the people of Northwind know their own Countess very well, if they’re willing to believe that anybody—even a Paladin—could make Tara Campbell do something that she truly didn’t want to do.”
The news reporter’s reply was lost to history, at least as far as Will Elliot was concerned, when Lexa McIntosh gave an approving and earsplitting whoop.
“That’s our Countess!” Lexa shouted. “Here’s to her!”
She drained her drink and sent the empty glass crashing to the floor. In the next breath, Jock Gordon followed her example, and within an instant the White Horse Bar was full of the noise of shouted toasts and breaking glass. Will hesitated only a moment longer, then threw down his own empty glass to mingle with the shards of all the others.
On the tri-vid, unheeded, the news channel went back to images of the Steel Wolf DropShips lifting, one by one.