He keyed on the ’Mech’s radio to the all-frequencies setting, and began to speak.
“Anastasia Kerensky! This is Ezekiel Crow, Paladin of the Sphere, and I challenge you to finish the combat between us that began last year on the Plains of Tara.”
There, he thought. Kerensky’s arrogance would not allow her to let his challenge go unmet.
He had tricked her into defeat last year outside Tara, drawing down the lightning and frying her ’Mech’s electronic systems with the resulting burst of EMP. If he could defeat her again now, he could—not restore his former good name, it was too late for that, even if he succeeded in taking out the heart of the Steel Wolves with one decisive stroke—but he could at least put the Exarch and The Republic sufficiently in his debt that he would be permitted a dignified withdrawal from public life.
And if he lost—well, that would also put an end to his problems.
The all-frequencies signal sounded again, but it was not Anastasia Kerensky’s voice that he heard reply. It was Tara Campbell’s.
“Ezekiel Crow, you damnable traitor—if you want to fight Anastasia Kerensky, you’ll have to go through me first. This battle is mine!”
Before he could gather his thoughts and speak, he heard Anastasia Kerensky’s laughter. Was the woman mad?
“Countess, Paladin,” Kerensky said, still chuckling, “you will have to settle this one between yourselves. The winner leads the Highlanders—and then we fight.”
32
Countryside Near Belgorod
Terra
Prefecture X
April 3134; local spring
Tara Campbell walked across the open field to her Hatchetman. The spring air was crisp, the rain shower of the previous afternoon long gone, and the morning sun was bright across fields of silvery frost. The frost would be melting soon, and the ground underfoot would turn again to mud in the midday heat.
The distant lines of the Steel Wolves did not concern her now. She had argued the reasons behind her acceptance of Kerensky’s challenge with Jonah Levin and Damien Redburn, and had won the argument. Both the Paladin and the Exarch had chided her for rashness, but they were practical men as well. The struggle for Terra would come down in the end to a struggle between two armies, no matter whether the confrontation was arranged or left to the chances of war. Anastasia Kerensky had already sent out elements of her command to attack and pin down Terra’s regular defense forces at their bases elsewhere, but she herself and the greater part of the Steel Wolves were here.
Better for the world’s noncombatants, Tara had insisted, if most of the fighting took place on the open ground of old Russia, and not in Geneva’s tranquil streets. Redburn and Levin had, reluctantly, agreed—and nothing now nothing stood in the way of a final reckoning with the Steel Wolves for the injuries done to Northwind.
Nothing except Ezekiel Crow.
Anastasia Kerensky had found Tara’s anger at the traitor’s challenge a matter for amusement. She had laughed—and, laughing, had declined to fight anyone at all until one or the other was dead.
That was one more thing, Tara thought, to add to her quarrel with the leader of the Steel Wolves. The struggle for the future of The Republic was going to have to wait, purely because Anastasia had thought it would be funny to watch the Countess of Northwind in a duel to the death with Ezekiel Crow.
I didn’t want to have to kill him, she thought. Scratch that—I do want to kill him. Something very good was starting up between us, and that son-of-a-bitch threw it all away two decades before we ever met. But I know better than to think that killing him is a good thing—and I resent like hell having him and Kerensky box me into doing it anyway.
She put the anger and resentment out of her mind as best she could, and concentrated on the task at hand: the necessity, since it could not be helped, of defeating and killing Ezekiel Crow.
Crow, in his faster, lighter Blade.
His heat efficiency was as good as hers. His weapons were almost the same as hers. He lacked the crushing, slashing hatchet that made her ’Mech devastating in hand-to-hand and close-quarters fighting, and that had allowed her to cut through the Steel Wolves’ lines during the defense of Northwind’s capital city. He’d have to be a fool to get within half a kilometer of her.
He wouldn’t have to. He’d just run in, fire, and run away. Again and again, until he’d hit—or created—a vulnerable point on her ’Mech. He could keep dancing around her all day—until her heat built up, her weapons broke down, and she would be left crippled on the field. Then he would be the hero of The Republic after he took on Anastasia Kerensky. The news media had a short memory, and present victory would wipe out past disgrace.
Or maybe Crow would have been too weakened by the single combat to lead an army effectively—especially an army he’d betrayed and abandoned to the same enemy once before—and Anastasia would triumph.
I could be handing Terra over to the Steel Wolves right now.
She stopped herself. It didn’t pay to think that way, not so close to combat, with everything already fixed and decided. Later, if she lived, she would have plenty of time to think about how she could have done things better.
Her aide-de-camp, Captain Bishop, was waiting by the foot of the Countess’s Hatchetman ’Mech. It would be warm inside the Hatchetman, and would get warmer as the day progressed. Tara removed her quilted jacket and warm-up pants, stripping down to the shorts and T-shirt she wore underneath. Goosebumps sprang up on her arms and legs as the chilly air hit her bare skin.
Captain Bishop took the discarded garments from Tara and folded them over her arm. “Nice day for a ’Mech fight,” she said. “I’ll stand by in my Pack Hunter in case anything goes wrong.”
“Just stay with the troops,” Tara said. “They’ll want to see you.”
“You’ve got it,” Bishop said. “Take care of that bastard Crow, and they’ll chase the Steel Wolves from here to Tigress for you if you let them.”
“Pushing them back to their DropShips and away from Terra will be enough for one day. But Crow has to come first.”
Tara climbed the access ladder into the cockpit of her ’Mech. Once inside, she put on and connected the neurohelmet that allowed her to interface with and control the ’Mech, and the cooling vest that kept her from succumbing to the debilitating heat of the cockpit’s interior during a battle. With her mind still mostly on the twin problems of Anastasia Kerensky and Ezekiel Crow, she ran through the Hatchetman’s primary and secondary security sequences, and brought the ’Mech’s power plant to life.
“Testing, command circuit,” she said over the cockpit’s internal comms. “One, two, three, three, two, one. How copy, over.”
“Copy all, test sat,” Bishop said over the earphones. “I’m mounting up now.”
“Keep your honor, that’s all I ask.”
“That’s all I’ve ever tried to do, ma’am,” Bishop said. “And you try to keep your head. We’re going to need you later.”
Tara Campbell set the Hatchetman into motion, walking it out of the camp, heading west. She felt the earth tremble under the Hatchetman’s feet with every step she took. The quickly thawing ice crystals in the previously frozen earth left voids in the soil where water gathered, and the ground she walked over had the consistency of thick chocolate pudding.