2

Near Falkirk, Alkalurops

Prefecture IX, The Republic of the Sphere

3 April 3134; local spring

Grace lay beside Pirate’s battered hull. The clear sky above her had never seemed such a pure blue. A flowering sprig of Scotch broom smelled heavenly, almost overpowering the stink of burned carbon armor and the residue of exploded rockets.

She was alive! She hadn’t been splattered all over the hill by rockets or lasers. She’d escaped and would live to see tomorrow. It was a heady feeling, especially if she didn’t think too much about how she didn’t deserve it. Luck. All luck.

She looked up to see Mick’s flatbed truck bouncing from rock to rock, its engine struggling as he approached her. Mick backed up to Pirate, got out to take a good look, then gave a low whistle. “Well, that extra armor kept you alive.”

“Just barely. He’s all knocked around inside.”

“Shock. Yeah,” the short, wiry mechanic said. “We build MiningMechs to take the normal wear you jockeys put on them, not the crap a rocket does. Help me with the crane so we can lay your Pirate out. I want a look at that tank your Navajo friends caught.”

Once they had Pirate loaded, gravity and the ’Mech’s weight urged the truck to go wild, pick up momentum, and leave them all dead at the foot of the hill. Fortunately, Mick was a maestro on the brake and gears.

Chato’s weathered and lined face had a big grin on it as they drove up to the hovertank. A dozen other Navajos, dressed like him in plaid shirts and work jeans, gathered around the tank, which they had managed to right.

“Looks to be in pretty good shape,” Mick said as he and Grace joined Chato.

“They tried to burn it,” Chato said, pointing, palm open, at a still-smoldering area of the canyon floor. “This contraption was upside down, and they couldn’t get their charges to stay put. They tossed grenades into the underside. That’s a mess.”

A younger version of Chato, raven hair held back in four rather than the older man’s two braids, popped his head out of the tank. “Uncle Chato, you have to look at this. They have sensors in here I never even dreamed of.”

“And if Joseph hasn’t dreamed of them, I didn’t think a human could make them,” the Navajo said.

Mick shook his head. “It’s the engine I’ll be wanting to tear apart. Never could understand electric stuff.”

Grace and Chato squatted around the hatch as Joseph settled back into the belly of the monster. Gadgets were wrapped around the seat, leaving just enough room for one person to sit. “Will you look at this, Uncle,” the young man chattered happily. “Their infrared scope. It’s measured in kilometers, not meters. Coyote, grant me one wish: Let whatever sensor feeds that thing be working. I have to see it work.”

“So they knew we were waiting for them,” Grace said bitterly. “Knew just when to attack us.”

“So it seems,” Chato said. “We’ll need to study this war pony a lot more.”

“Lot of stuff to study,” Mick said from where he’d pried open the engine compartment.

“I’d like to see how things are in Falkirk,” Grace said.

Hours later she wondered why she’d hurried back. Her return became a town meeting right there on Main Avenue, but one she couldn’t call to order. She learned that there were no deaths among the fighters in Falkirk, thanks to old Auntie Maydell. The old lady seemed to have single-handedly, well, single-sharp-tonguedly, talked a soldier into leaving the town alone.

But there were plenty of close calls to talk about—calls that got closer the more times they were discussed. As much as Grace hated the idea, she knew she’d better call a town meeting right away, while memories of the day’s terror was still gut-puking fresh, and before the truth vanished beneath thick layers of varnish.

The meeting went long. Everybody wanted to talk, and Grace had to let them. The rules for town meetings had never included a way to shush anyone, but the yammering served to show the divide in town. There were those—few of whom had been on the hill with Grace—who figured the militia should have put up a better fight. A lot more were all for running for the hills in the event of another raid. That number now included about half the militia.

Grace took note of the quiet ones. Not surprisingly, Chato held his tongue, as did Jobe Kang. Jobe had led the dozen worker ’Mechs from the Donga River Valley. Their arrival from the west appeared to be what had turned the raiders around. The Navajo with his long braids sat next to the bald African miner. They took in the goings-on but, like Grace, said nothing.

Jim Wilson sat in silence next to his son. The boy started to stand up a few times to demand the floor, but the elder farmer kept a restraining hand on his son’s leg.

Hong Ho, owner of the town’s sole hardware outlet, kept his eyes closed in meditation, which told Grace nothing about what he was thinking. Robert Laird, the town’s grain operator and greengrocer, sat beside his Buddhist friend, keeping just as quiet, even if he did tend to fidget in his seat.

Grace mulled over the day as she let others’ words wash over her, holding on to few of them. Still, some broke into her thoughts. “Damn, I don’t want to do that again.” “We should have been able to do better.” And “What was it about those BattleMechs?”

“Where was the Legate’s BattleMech?” came often, but no one knew the answer to that.

When Grace began to feel her patience growing thin, she rose and shouted into the racket of a five-sided argument. “I don’t know about anyone else’s bladder, but mine says it’s time for a break.”

There was a stampede for the facilities. Despite her claimed need, Grace stayed in her place. As Wilson, Ho, Laird, Chato, and Jobe gathered around her table, Mick joined them.

“You got that tank into your shop?” Grace asked.

“Yep. Chato’s boy has juice flowing to its innards.”

“Is it as dangerous as it looks?” she asked.

“Worse, if you ask me. That thing can damn near see you coming before you think of going. MagScan to beat the band. Infrared to tell your temperature. Real bad stuff.”

“Not if it serves you,” Chato said simply.

“But it served us up like fish on a platter,” Wilson said. “A bunch of optimists who never fought anything worse than a cranky engine or a bad headwind.”

Folks around Grace looked at one another and nodded.

“Gracie,” Wilson said, “I never want to go through that again. Leastwise not as dumb as I was today. I know how to raise cows. I’m damn good at farming this red dirt around here. I don’t know crap about fighting ’Mechs.”

“Me neither,” echoed around the circle.

Grace took a deep breath and tried to pull from deep inside her what had been taking shape. “I’m not much in favor of running every time the Net says boo. Running for the hills and hoping there’s something to come back to is no way for real people to live,” she said, eyeing the group. Only frowns met that. “Now, if I don’t know how to do something, I usually put out a call for someone who does. Pay them either to do it for me or teach me how. Seems to me that we need someone who can teach us a thing or two about fighting.”

That brought a long pause, which Grace took to mean that the men were seriously considering her suggestion. She was glad of the help; the future of Falkirk hung on the handful around her.

“When I need something we don’t make here,” Ho said slowly, “I buy the best I can afford from where it is available.”

“I don’t like strangers showing up and pushing me around,” Wilson said. “My family was here during the old wars. People from off-planet tried to take us on, and we bloodied their noses. If I have a vote, I say we do the same. And if we don’t know how, I say hire folks to show us the way.”

“That’s the way I see it, too,” Grace said. “The raiders came. We did what we could, and that was damn poor. I say we go to the Legate and demand that he train us to do what the people of Alkalurops have always done—defend ourselves. And if the Legate is as dead as I think he is, we find someone who can,” Grace said.

“That could cost money,” Ho pointed out.

“Would you rather pay for a defense or try to bribe the raiders, ’cause next time I wouldn’t bet on Auntie Maydell talking them down. The next raiders’ll demand our money or our ’Mechs,” Grace finished. Her listeners frowned but nodded.

“Better to fight than give up, and if we fight, I mean to fight a damn sight better next time,” Wilson said. “I’ll put up ten percent of my profits from last year to pay someone to teach me how to knock the next raiders on their asses.”

“Me, too,” came from the rest in the circle. Grace sighed. Now all she had to do was get the rest of Falkirk to go along.

Outside Kilkenny, Alkalurops

13 April 3134

A nudge brought Grace awake. “You’ll want to see this,” Chato said. Reluctantly, Grace opened her eyes. Chato had volunteered to drive the jeep Jim Wilson had donated to take the local reps to the capital, at Allabad. Something to deal with the situation had to be in the works at the capital, and Falkirk was damned if those fancy pants in the big city would ignore the working stiffs who paid the taxes. Or that the large mining corporations would ignore the small mining groups that made up the other half of the planet’s gross production. So Grace went straight from a gut-wrenching town hall meeting that had adopted her plan for defense to a night ride down gravel roads that might end in a raider roadblock.

Blinking sleep away, her eyes met rosy dawn. The morning sky was all that looked good. In the field beside the road, three burned-out jeeps still sent up smoke and made the morning stink. A half-burned body manned a machine gun on one of them. At the side of the road, bodies were lined up in a careful row, a single blanket covering the faces. “I guess you were luckier than you realized,” Jobe said from the backseat.

“Looks that way,” Grace agreed.

“Should I stop?” Chato asked. Ahead, a young man was waving his arm slowly, struggling with the effort. A red bandage was wrapped around the light armor on his other arm.

“Stop,” Grace ordered. She leaned out of the rig and asked, “What happened here? Who’s in charge?”

“The raiders sidestepped the North Constabulary when they came through Kilkenny headed north, so we figured to catch ’em on their way back south, ma’am,” the young man said, leaning heavily on the hood of their jeep. “I guess you’d say I’m in charge. Lieutenant Hicks, ma’am. I hate to do this, but I got wounded to transport. I have to commandeer your rig.”

“Hicks, I’m the mayor of Falkirk, and these two men represent the Donga and White River Valleys. We’re on our way to Allabad, but we’ll be glad to carry as many of your wounded as we can.”

The young man nodded his agreement. “We’ll do it your way, ma’am. Sergeant,” he said to a man standing nearby, “get the two stretchers laid across the back. You mind if my walking wounded ride your fender?”

“How many survivors do you have?” Grace asked.

“Too few,” the weary officer answered. “I’ll walk the rest back in. You take the six that are shot up into Kilkenny. There’s a clinic this side of town.” Grace counted four soldiers aside from the lieutenant and his sergeant.

“I know it,” Grace said. “We’ll take good care of your people. Chato, let’s go.”

“I’ll get us there as fast as I can, War Chief,” Chato said.

Grace eyed the wreckage as they pulled away. No one had stripped the dead or wounded of their body armor. What type of raid was this?

Dropping the wounded off at Kilkenny still allowed Grace and the others to reach Amarillo before noon. The largest town in the Gleann Mor Valley gave them the best of news. The raiders’ JumpShip had blasted off from south of there that morning loaded with the last of them. Grace and her group saw how selective the raiders had been: Only ’Mechs ten years old or younger had been hijacked and walked aboard the JumpShip. Old ’Mechs still went about their business.

As the three hurried south, the land changed. Once they came off the caprock, fields were greener and broken with more streams. Only occasionally did they see a farmhouse shot up; rarely did a town show bullet holes. Dublin Town was a similar case. Like so many of the large towns on Alkalurops, it was sheltered in a deep canyon from the seasonal high winds. Grace was driving as they took the road down. No surprise, the IndustrialMech dealerships on the outskirts had old ’Mechs in for repairs but no new rigs. But the communication towers were still standing, as were the power lines.

The next morning, as they drove out of Dublin Town, Grace found the local Net had come back to life. The news was full of wild stories: Government House had been burned to the ground, and the Governor and Legate were dead. Grace made a quick call to her mother to tell her the trip was going fine, then turned the phone over to Jobe and Chato so they could call their wives.

As the men talked, Grace mused on what her pirate namesake would have taken in a raid. Her list included a lot of gear that was still up and working on Alkalurops. When Grace voiced her thoughts, Jobe offered, “Maybe their DropShip couldn’t carry it all.”

“Why go raiding with only a small boat for the loot?” she asked. Neither man had an answer.

Late that afternoon they drove off the plains and into the long canyon that protected Allabad from the high winds of the flat country above. The large transmission tower by the road was undisturbed. The largest city on Alkalurops didn’t look that bad, either: Allabad now filled most of the canyon with wide rows of thick adobe homes and businesses. The long, shallow lake that had first drawn people to the city had been narrowed and deepened so that new buildings could be built on the old flood plain.

Except for that, nothing much had changed since Grace’s parents had brought her here some twenty years back so Pop could get his first MiningMech—the first MiningMech in the Gleann Mor Valley. And Pop had pointed out buildings that had been pointed out to him by his own grandpa. Grace spotted the old market, its low walls stretching for several blocks north of the central plaza this side of the Alhambra River. There was the clock tower of the Guild Hall, though the hall had grown several new wings. This was what Grace loved about life on Alkalurops: It had been, was, and would be the same.

Except now raiders dropped in. They were a new experience—one she did not want to repeat.

Grace called the hostel she stayed at whenever business brought her to Allabad. She reserved a room for herself and one for Jobe and Chato to share. Then she called Angus Throckmorton, a family connection at the Miners’ Guild who went back to her grandpa’s time. She wondered if he’d remember her, but his voice was warm when he took her call. He was actually eager to meet her and her friends. “You know the inn I took your father to the last time he was here? Could you meet me there in half an hour?” Grace promised she would and he rang off.

“Where are we meeting him?” Chato asked.

“The Red Erin Inn,” she said. “I’ve been there before.”

“Sure you can find it again?” Jobe asked.

“It would be a shame if we got lost,” Chato deadpanned.

“I remember the place,” Grace shot back, then spotted the looks the two men were exchanging and realized they’d been teasing her. She settled back into the passenger seat. “We have half an hour before he can see us. We may as well take the scenic route.”

After a couple of wrong turns, the three arrived at the inn to find that Angus was there before them. Grace had hardly given his name to the tall, ponytailed barkeep before he led her across a wood-beamed great room to a dark corner where Angus waited. A big friendly bear of a man now gone to gray, he made to rise, but she quickly introduced Jobe and Chato, then settled beside him and gave him a hug.

“Lass, you’re looking more beautiful every day.”

She tried to return the compliment, but Angus had aged noticeably in the five years since she’d seen him. Up close she realized his plaid coat hung on him. His knuckles were red and swollen, his eyes sunken into dark bags. “Y-you’re—” she stammered, then caught herself. “How bad was it here?”

“A good dark one for the lady, here,” Angus called to the barkeep. Grace was happy to let Angus order for her—he knew the local brews. Jobe ordered a lighter ale, while Chato asked for coffee.

Only after the barkeep retreated did Grace repeat her question. “It’s been bad?”

“Strange it’s been, lass. Very strange.”

“The raiders hit Falkirk,” Grace told him. “Didn’t take much. The militia got knocked around some.”

“You lose anyone close to you?” Angus asked.

“A few wounded. None too bad to brag. How was it here?”

“Strange and then some,” he said, then fell silent again as their drinks came. Grace wondered if she’d have to start the conversation all over again, but Angus went on as she took her first pull on her pint. A good brew.

“The raiders came in claiming to be a regular commercial DropShip. My friends at the port tell me that ships to Alkalurops never keep to a schedule. Anyway, they set down around midnight a week ago. They tore through the place, but not so fast that the alarm wasn’t raised.”

“Where was the Legate? And the Governor?” Jobe put in.

“You tell me and we’ll both be knowing it,” Angus said, shaking his head and taking another long pull on his drink. “I’ve heard that the raiders blew them away without so much as a by-your-leave. There’s also a story that the two rushed out to the port in a car and got stomped flat. I also heard from the lass who’s the Legate’s housekeeper. She found him in bed, throat slit. I can tell you which one I’m believing—the maid, it is.”

“The raiders got to him before the alarm?” Grace said, then shook her head. “That’s not possible.”

“The poor man’s throat was slit before the raiders’ ship ever touched down, I’m thinking,” Angus said, looking around as if someone with a knife might be looking to slit his throat, too.

“What happened to the Central Constabulary?” Grace asked.

“They got smashed by the raiders as if they weren’t even there. Not much of a fight at all, at all.”

“We saw the North Cons on our way here. Not much left.”

“That would be no surprise.”

“So the raiders went through here pretty thoroughly,” Chato said. “Strange, not much sign of looting.”

“’Cause there was none of that, or very little.” Angus shook his head. “The raiders emptied the Legate’s quarters of his Ryoken II and any spare gear that was handy. They hit the ’Mech dealerships and hijacked the new equipment and such that was nearly new. Gun dealers, too. They set up a base camp at the port and warned us not to come near it. Then those raiding parties took off like the thieves they were. We’d see ’Mechs stomping back under guard of a few gun bikes and stuff.

“Some of the men hereabouts tried a night raid, turnabout being only fair. It didn’t work.” That required another pull on the pint. “Ugly thing. Lad just wounded a mite said the raiders were on them before they were halfway to the port. Damn machines landed on them, scared them witless, and shot them up as they ran. ’Mechs that fly. My grandda told me what it was like during the old wars, but he didn’t say anything about flying ’Mechs.”

“We faced a pair of those. If Jobe here hadn’t shown up, they might have jumped all over me,” Grace said, trying to make sense of what she was hearing and what she’d seen. “So they left things pretty much as they are.”

“Except for burning down Government House, you could say we got off lightly, now, couldn’t you?” Angus said to his beer as if trying to persuade himself. “Yes, I guess we did.”

“But what were the raiders trying to do?” Chato said, swirling his coffee slowly in its mug.

“Banshee take me if I can guess that,” Angus exploded. “It’s not knowing what’s going on across The Republic that can drive a man to walk out thirsty on a hot dry day.”

“Your Mick did a pretty good job of turning some of your MiningMechs into more heavily armored ’Mechs,” Jobe pointed out to Grace.

“Right, so maybe someone else is turning worker ’Mechs into fighting ’Mechs?” Grace said, then took a long pull on her beer.

“Things have been peaceful for a long time. Not a lot of BattleMechs around,” Chato said, as if he’d mined the sentences one word at a time.

“And if you wanted to grow an army in a hurry and cheap…” Grace let the words hang there.

“Steal ’Mechs from an out-of-the-way planet,” Jobe said.

“But don’t do too much damage. Let folks get back on their feet quickly, maybe even order new ’Mechs,” Angus added, emptying his beer. “I need another drink on that thought. Liam, me boy, where are you hiding, and me with a throat all dusty.”

The barkeep, no more a boy than Grace was a lass, hustled over. “You drinking your dinner again, Angus, or do you want something to put in that thin gut of yours?”

“Refills for all, and now that you remind me, some of that delicious lamb stew for us that you sometimes have hereabouts.”

“Only every night,” the barkeep muttered as he turned away.

“So you don’t think this raid was a onetime thing?” Grace said, getting them back to the thoughts pounding in her brain.

“Even if this hard bunch doesn’t come back, with us deaf and dumb as a post, other hard men will be looking around for things to grab,” Angus said. “And even if we don’t get back on our feet, if the whole Sphere goes to hell, what are leavings now will be a prince’s ransom next year. The year after that, they may be stealing food out of our mouths. Ah, the bad old days are nothing to remember, lass. Not a life to live again, not at all, at all.”

“And us with no Legate or Knights to call upon,” Grace said, letting Angus’ brogue slip off her own tongue.

“Aye, lassie, and us with only our own hands.” A brimming pint clanked onto the table, so Angus naturally took a long swig to wash those thoughts away.

Grace noticed that Jobe was going slow on his first pint and settled for a sip of her own. “With Government House in ashes, and the Governor and Legate dead, what are we doing for a government?” she asked.

“The bureaucrats are back in business at a hotel down the street from the ruins. A bunch of big-town mayors are gathering tomorrow at the Guild Hall to see what they can make of matters,” Angus said as the lamb stew arrived. “Mind you, small towns like Falkirk don’t count with them, but no rule says who gets a say, either. Word is, they mean to elect a new Governor. Pro tem, or some such.”

Grace put her beer down and attacked her stew. Angus could drown his troubles if he wanted. It looked as though tomorrow she and her friends would have work to do.

Allabad, Alkalurops

15 April 3134

The plaque on the Guild Hall’s bell tower claimed that the thick adobe walls had stood for eight hundred years, keeping out tornadoes and torrential floods from upstream hurricanes. It did not say how often the roof tiles had been replaced. On this day roof and walls kept out the heat of the day. The latest attacks, unlike the old, had not shattered the stained-glass windows. The new louver system followed the sun, letting in enough light for business without overheating the hall. This morning’s heat came from men and women talking, talking, and talking some more.

Grace, Chato, and Jobe arrived early, but not early enough to get seats around the tables that had been pushed together to make one long one. They scrounged up a table of their own and added it at one end, forcing other early arrivals to move. As more people filed in, more tables had to be added. Those already seated frowned as they had to keep making room, but they didn’t muster a protest. In the end, the table was a big square, accommodating twice as many people as originally intended.

To Grace’s left, the three mayors from Little London, Lothran and Banya—the three largest towns outside Allabad—looked none too happy. In the old days, before Devlin Stone required a planet to have one central seat of government headed by a Governor, Alkalurops had gotten along with a Council of Elders drawn from towns and major guilds. Now that the Governor was dead, it seemed that folks wanted to go back to the old ways, and even the mayors of the three largest cities did not dare go against them.

Garry McGuire, a short man with a confident air who was the mayor of Little London, applied a solid-looking gavel to a wooden plaque. This relic from the days of Elders and meetings had been momentarily removed from the display case that had held it for the last fifty years. The hall fell silent.

Dev Coughlin, dapper in Terran fashions six years out of date even before the HPG went down, and mayor of Lothran, rose to his feet from his seat between Grace and Garry. “I rise from among you to nominate Garry McGuire as Governor Pro Tem of our planet, until such time as The Republic appoints a replacement for the fondly remembered late Kristen LeSat.”

The hall rumbled with talk. Garry McGuire gaveled them to order as the mayor of Banya half rose from the seat on his left to shout, “I second Garry McGuire’s name and call for a vote.”

“Guess we know what they were doing last night,” Grace whispered to Chato, but Jobe was standing.

His deep bass voice carried easily through the babble. “I rise from among you to place in nomination the name of Grace O’Malley, mayor of Falkirk, for Governor.”

Before Grace could react, Jobe was back in his seat, his face a wide grin of white teeth against ebony skin. Chato shot to his feet. “I second Grace O’Malley’s name.”

“He can’t do that,” Dev Coughlin shouted.

“Yes, he can,” Grace shouted back. She was none too sure she wanted to be nominated, but Chato and Jobe were recognized heads of their respective areas—as empowered as any mayor to sit and act in this council.

“And I stand to nominate Billy O’Leary,” came from down the table. That started a nomination frenzy that lasted the better part of half an hour and ended only when most everyone had either nominated someone, seconded someone, or been placed in nomination.

When there was no one left to nominate and the entire hall was chattering among themselves, Grace stood up. She’d never thought much of her flaming red hair, but it often drew people’s attention. It did today as the hall fell moderately quiet.

“We seem to have no lack of nominees. What we do lack are procedures for electing a Governor, or Prime Elder, or whatever it is we intend to do. I ask one question. Do we allow a simple plurality to decide the vote, or should we require a majority?”

It took a few seconds for the full impact of her words to sink in. With so many candidates, someone with only five or six votes might have more than the rest. Those pushing for a quick vote shut up, and the hall fell silent.

“Will the fine lady—from Falkirk, is it?—yield the floor she has so admirably brought to silence?” Dev Coughlin asked.

“For a question only.” Grace had once found a book on the rules of order for official meetings. It had been helpful—as something to pound on the table to quiet Falkirk town meetings even if she couldn’t follow its rules. Maybe today she could.

“I recognize that everyone is important to our planet’s economy,” Dev said, “but how can the vote of a mayor from a small town like Falkirk have the same weight as that of someone representing a city a hundred times larger? Shouldn’t we apportion votes on a one man, one-vote basis?” Dev smiled at his two friends, who nodded their agreement.

“No,” Grace snapped. “Not even if you modify your proposal to be one man or woman, one vote.” Dev had the good humor to flinch at his gaffe. Grace went on. “We have not had a full census in fifty years, since Stone decided we’d have the Governor he appointed. Without a certified census, we can’t tell who represents how many. Does that answer your question?”

Dev’s smile faded under her temper. “No, it does not. We have to represent the people who sent us. We all know that I stand for two or three hundred times as many people as you do. We can’t do a simple one mayor, one vote. It’s not fair.”

“That’s not a question, Dev,” someone shouted from halfway down the table. “Quit arguing with the woman or Gus and me’ll throw you out.” The murmur in the hall was going Grace’s way—there were a lot more small towns than large ones. That had been one of the main problems of the old Council of Elders, according to what Grace’s grandpa had told her. Stone resolved the problem before Alkalurops ever did.

“May I rise for a question, ma’am?”

This time the speaker was from down the table. A gray-haired man in a Terran business suit stood up. “Sir, I don’t know how to recognize you,” Grace said, intent on not yielding the floor quite so quickly this time.

“I am Theobald Chizhenzki, Local Manager for Kimberly-Somtog Minerals and Metallurgy. My associate here”—he indicated a thin, balding man beside him—“is Thomas Pennypage, General Manager for Howard-Kennicutt Extraction Operations. We were sent here by the Industrial Trade Group. The ITG employs over four percent of your planet’s workforce, either full-time, contract or floating temps. A good estimate of people who live off the stones we pay in salary is twenty-five percent of everyone here. Even you independent miners benefit from the spare parts we warehouse here because we want them when we need them. How large do you think the selection would be at your local ’Mech or truck dealership if we didn’t buy half of what they import each year?”

“I hear a speech coming on,” came from someone at the foot of the table. “If I don’t hear a real question soon, I’m going to show you what us independent miners can do on our own.”

“Let the man ask a question,” Grace said. Like every independent miner, Grace had her own opinion about how much the majors helped or hindered the little guy. Still, Alkalurops was in enough trouble without alienating a big chunk of its economy.

“My question is this,” Chizhenzki said. “Things have changed a lot since the last time Alkalurops set up its own government. I’m not against trying anything. God knows when we’ll hear from The Republic again. But shouldn’t businesses that employ more men and women than any entity you represent also be included in this council?”

As he finished, the room broke into an uproar.

A short, round man in a waist-length jacket bearing the emblem of the Bakers’ Guild was on his feet shouting along with half a dozen other Guild Masters, across the table from the mining reps. On the fifth try, Grace made out his words. “We represent Alkalurops businesspeople and workers, not—” Grace provided “someone off-planet.” The new deposits opened up in the west had all ended up in the hands of conglomerates, which a lot of the old families attributed to having a Governor appointed from off-planet. Then again, maybe the new deposits did need the concentrated extraction techniques available only to the big companies. That was a good argument for several cold winter nights.

Garry McGuire leaned past Dev to say, “You’ll want to yield the floor just now, Gracie. Looks to me like we’ve got a long talk about who fits in this room and how we’re going to do our business before we get back to voting.”

Grace didn’t want to establish any precedent, but at least on this one point, she was prepared to let Garry carry the fire. “You take it. But I want the floor back before we move to any boss-type votes around here.”

“You’ll get it,” Garry said. Grace didn’t like the look he gave Dev, but when Garry started hammering away with his gavel, the noise in the room did go down to a dull roar.

Garry stood, which brought the racket down a few more decibels. “The kind lady from up north has agreed to yield the floor while we get around to organizing ourselves. From the looks of things, we really don’t know who should be included in our discussions and how we should operate. Kind of hard to put somebody in charge when we don’t know what he’s in charge of or supposed to do,” he said, grinning at a couple of his associates. They dutifully laughed as if he was a vid comic and that got the room laughing with him.

Grace didn’t hear anything to laugh about for the rest of the day. The only relief came from the front of the hall, where a couple of the sidewalk hawkers from the square brought their food carts inside and set up shop. Grace was the only one in her trio with stones, so she went for drinks and found a lot of other folks doing the same.

“You did a real fine job there. What’s your name again, young lady?” an elderly woman asked. Grace told her, and found herself sharing her thoughts with the woman. Then a couple of men joined in. In whispers they reached a fairly quick conclusion on how they’d run things. Grace delivered drinks to Jobe and Chato, filled them in on her conversations, and left them at the table to keep an eye on that circus while she circulated around the hall, feeling people out, taking her own reading of what these people wanted. The gathering wasn’t that different from a town meeting, just bigger, noisier and under someone else’s control. An hour’s lunch lasted three. Grace had no complaint; she was one of the last back, just ahead of Garry, Dev, and the two mining managers. As the sun fell below the rim of the canyon, Garry gaveled the meeting into an early recess, and Grace found herself juggling multiple dinner meetings.

Over suppers, consensus built among the small towns that everyone should vote, even the representatives of off-planet corporations. But every member of the council had to have the same single vote, and decisions should be by at least seventy-five percent of the vote.

It was well past midnight before Grace got to sleep, but she felt good. Alkalurops had some mighty fine inhabitants.

The next morning Grace, Jobe and Chato were approaching the Guild Hall when the roar of a DropShip coming in shook the quiet day. Grace wasn’t the only one who did a frantic Net check. The ship docking was the regular one the raider had pretended to be. It was late but real. At her elbow, Jobe frowned. “You’d think the raiders would have stripped the port bare. Used landing radars and radios have to be easy to sell. Sloppy, if you ask me.”

“Well, unless a lot of people rethought what we talked about last night, we ought to get a lot done today,” Grace said, opening the Guild Hall door for the men.

But when enough people are gathered together, nothing comes quickly. Saying “everyone votes” didn’t seem to cover all the possibilities. Hank Pintagras, mayor of Calgeron, was first on his feet that morning. “Do the Guild representatives in Allabad speak for all the Guilds?” he asked in a high, shrill voice. “Or do we require the Guilds to establish an election process so each Guild can make sure the speaker represents them?”

Grace tried to suppress a groan. The master of Calgeron’s ’Mech Sales and Service Guild was notorious for disagreeing with anyone and everyone at the drop of a welding torch. For the next hour the discussion rambled, with Allabad’s Master Baker unwilling to grant anything at all to the “sticks.” Grace leaned back and studied the ceiling.

“We can’t let this bunch stampede in circles,” Chato said. “I’ll keep an eye on the table yammering. Could you get me a cup of tea, Grace, and talk to folks? Patch up what we did last night.” Grace went, but how often on the drive home from a meeting had she thought of a good reason not to vote the way she had.

She was buying a mug of tea for Chato while Jobe bought himself a cup of coffee, so they were in a good position to see the man who walked into the Guild Hall at ten sharp.

He was taller than most, and his expensive-looking dark suit accentuated the lines of his thin frame. White hair combed straight back gave him a regal bearing, heightened by his aquiline nose. His feet didn’t so much walk as move him smoothly along. Grace saw that she wasn’t the only one whose eyes were drawn to the stranger as his head moved slowly from side to side, taking in everything, missing nothing, acknowledging no one.

“I think our schedule for today just changed,” Grace whispered to Jobe.

“I don’t like the looks of that man,” he answered.

“Neither do I, but he looks like a player.”

“But for whom? Whatever he wants, we will not be able to ignore him.” Jobe followed Grace back to their seats.

The stranger walked straight to the mining company managers; they exchanged formal introductions. The hall had been floating on a bubble of talk that almost drowned out the person who had the floor. Now it settled slowly into silence as more and more heads turned toward the new arrival. The speaker who had been shouting to be heard suddenly realized he was bellowing into a silent hall. “That pretty much says it all,” he muttered lamely, and sank into his chair.

Garry McGuire nodded, then turned to the standing man. “I don’t think we know you.”

“I suspected as much. However, I am prepared to correct that oversight.” The stranger seemed to toy with words the way a cat might toy with a cornered mouse.

“Would you please introduce yourself?” Garry asked.

“It would be my pleasure. I would also like to present a solution to the problems that appear to plague you, if I may?” The words hardly sounded like a question, but Garry nodded and the man continued. “I am Alfred Santorini, at your service,” he said with a tiny nod. “I see this planet also has been hit by raiders.”

“Also?” Grace repeated, a comment echoed around the hall.

“Yes, you are not alone in these desperate times,” Santorini went on. “Since The Republic of the Sphere has doubly failed in its duty to provide for common communications and the public defense, violent elements have risen up and moved against many planets. Some planets are lucky enough to have powerful patrons to protect them from these latter-day wolves. Others have been stripped down to the dirt by repeated bloody raids. From what I saw on my drive from the spaceport, you got off relatively lightly. Was this your first experience with the new vandals?”

“Yes, it was,” Garry answered. “Would it be too much for me to ask what brought you to Alkalurops?”

“No, not at all,” Santorini said. “May I take a seat?” A woman sitting near him yielded her chair. Santorini allowed her to position it before he settled on it with regal flair. Never having seen a king, Grace could only guess at the effect and note the goose bumps that went up her spine. There was a sense of power about this man. What she could not decide was whether it was for good or ill.

“I am in the employ of Lenzo Computing Industries of Nusakan. I expect we are familiar to you. No doubt many of you use our hardware and software in your homes and businesses. With the growing unpleasantness wracking The Republic, my corporation is looking for a new home for its central office. Such a move will impact several hundred thousand of our employees, and will provide jobs for millions more on the planet we choose for our headquarters.” He smiled at Garry. Grace could almost hear the mayor of Little London calculating the incentives his town could offer Santorini and dreaming of a name change—Greater London!

Oh, crap.

It took Grace about five seconds to do the math. Alkalurops was at just about full employment. Of course, full employment usually allowed for either parent to concentrate on raising the kids or for both parents to alternate work time and volunteer projects. You needed a lot less government and a lot fewer taxes when folks pitched in without being told. Pirate had dug many a kilometer of roadside drainage ditch or cleaned them out after a bad flood. Wilson had a grader that divided its time between the roads on his farm and the public ones.

The only way Alkalurops could absorb millions more workers was to either let in immigrants or dig them out of their own population. That meant two workers from each family, which would probably be necessary for a family to survive. What with all the new mouths to feed and house and provide cars for, the price of everything was going to skyrocket.

“Isn’t progress a wonderful thing to observe in action?” Jobe said, rolling his eyes. Around her, Grace could see people working it out for themselves. Some saw profits and smiled. Others, like her, counted the cost and scowled.

Santorini paused for a moment to sip from a cup of water at his elbow. A perfect pause for all concerned. As he put the cup down, he cleared his throat. When he continued, his voice was pitched to fill every corner of the hall. Even the food hawkers fell silent.

“At the moment, however, I believe the matter most urgent for your attention is the special relationship between me—or rather my corporation—and a group of freedom fighters.”

He let the words hang in the air for a moment. “Those with business connections on Skye know that its transfer from the Lyran Commonwealth to The Republic left many unsatisfied.” That was news to Grace, and she did have business connections on Skye. She glanced at Gordon Frazier from Kilkenny and a few other friends. Their faces were pretty well frozen in neutral. Maybe a slight furrow of the brow hinted that this was not going down well.

“Into the silence of the HPG links, Landgrave Jasek Kelswa-Steiner has raised his flag to correct that wrong by The Republic. People from Skye and all over The Republic have flocked to his standard, that of the ancient Stormhammer, and Nusakan has provided him a base for his operations. Not by chance, his presence has given us the kind of shield that other, less guarded worlds have come to envy. If I choose Alkalurops as the new base for LCI, be assured that the Landgrave will fully protect you from further depredations.”

“Assuming we don’t get hit by whoever is trying to hit the Landgrave,” Grace said into the silence.

“The Stormhammers are most competent at protecting their interests,” Santorini snapped.

“Where have we heard that before?” came from somewhere down the table.

Grace had no intention of letting this get away from her. She stood and spoke. “And what is the price of this protection? Is the Landgrave willing to do this out of the kindness of his heart? Is this company you work for”—Grace emphasized this point, one that she felt Santorini had skimmed over—“so important to the Landgrave that he protects it purely for the natural benefits, or is there more to the relationship?”

The off-worlder dismissed her concern with a wave of his hand. “I’m sure something can be worked out to everyone’s convenience.”

“What will it cost to have the Stormhammers protect us?” Grace demanded. “In plain language, please.”

Now Santorini stood up, unwinding himself from his chair like a man bothered by a gnat. “What has your own poor protection just cost you? Is there a single good ’Mech left on any lot in town?” As he shot his glance around the table, Grace heard the Sales and Service Guild master mumble a quick negative.

“How many of you lost IndustrialMechs off your fields, out of your businesses, your mines?” Many nods around the table. “Are they easily replaced?” The head-shakes were near frantic.

“Defense against the raiders and scavengers roaming space is not cheap. The Stormhammers ask for a donation of thirty percent of your net off-world trade. For that, they give you the security that is essential if you are to have any trade at all.”

“Thirty percent?!” came out in one breath around the table.

“You bought into the fairy tale that The Republic could keep you safe for a pittance: one Governor, one Legate, and a few trembling Constabulary jokes. What has it gotten you? Cleaned out, that’s what. You want safety, but it is not free. Do you want to be alive and in business next year? The year after? Or do you want to be a pile of bones, picked clean by any roving band that happens by? The choice is yours. Now, if you don’t mind, I have business with the Industrial Trade Group.”

Santorini and the mining company managers stood, nodded curtly to the room, and left, the heels of their shoes beating a confident cadence on the tiles.

“You certainly queered that deal, woman,” Dev snapped. “Now he’ll probably jack the price up to forty percent.”

Garry hammered the gavel, and the room stayed quiet. “Grace O’Malley, are you prepared to speak for the small-holders and small towns?” the mayor of Little London demanded.

Grace glanced around the table. Some nodded, while others seemed less willing to let her talk for them. No surprise there. “I’ll start talking and see how long it is before someone sees the need to correct me.” At the top of their lungs, no doubt.

“You have a counterproposal to Mr. Santorini’s offer?”

Grace rested her hands on the table and leaned into the room as she might against the wind of a spring hurricane. “For eight hundred years we’ve walked this planet. There’s aren’t a lot of us,” she said, standing tall. “You all know why. The air stinks, or so off-worlders tell us. It’s too hot and dry, they tell us, except when a hurricane’s blowing or a thunderstorm is dropping hail and maybe a tornado.” That brought a familiar chuckle from around the table.

“But it’s our land. The land our parents mined or farmed before us. This is the land we raise our kids on as we choose. Now this guy comes in here and offers to buy us out and load us up with a lot of strangers. He promises a wonderful business boom, but, oh, by the way, you’ll have to pay for some goons to protect you from some other goons.

“Damn it, we’ve faced attackers before. Our great-great-greats stood up to them and drove them off—and people learned that attacking Alkalurops was not a good idea. Even the drunk-on-heaven Jihad freaks didn’t come here.”

She turned slowly, letting her eyes make contact with the people scattered around the tables. “We may not have much, but we protect it. We protect it. Not some hireling. Not somebody with a bone to pick with someone else who just might come over here to pick that bone—and end up picking our bones.

“Alkalurops takes care of its own. We don’t ask anyone to take care of us, and we sure don’t take care of anyone else. I say take this off-world proposal and stuff it up his off-world ass.” The room erupted in cheers, just as Grace had hoped it would. She stood there, enjoying for a moment the rush that came from knowing she was doing right and a slew of people agreed with her. It was a good five minutes before Garry even tried to hammer the room to silence. But as he did hammer, she waved down the ruckus, and the room went back to quiet.

“I guess that shows a pretty solid majority supporting you,” Garry said. “Can I ask a few questions about your proposal?”

“Yes,” Grace said.

“Make damn sure they’re questions,” came from down the table, “or we may just march up there and give her that gavel.” That got the hall rumbling. Grace waved them to quiet, and most did.

“Thank you, Grace,” Garry said, sounding as though he meant it. “My question is, how do we defend ourselves? Our Legate’s dead. Most ranking Constabulary officers didn’t survive the raid.”

“We got our butts kicked,” came from the foot of the table.

“Not to put too fine a point on it,” Garry said, “but we did get our butts kicked. I haven’t heard—how did the militia do around Falkirk? Did you call it out?”

“I led it,” Grace said, “and we got our butts kicked.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. I thought that with you saying we should defend ourselves, you might have been more successful.”

“No, Garry,” Grace admitted. “If there hadn’t been a hill to our rear, we’d have been massacred like everyone else. We were lucky.”

“So, are you planning on all of us getting lucky like you next time?” Dev shot at her.

Garry shushed his friend, but then looked at Grace. “He does have a point. How are we supposed to defend ourselves?”

Grace took a moment to organize her thoughts, but the experience of talking Falkirk’s town meeting through this had been solid preparation. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but when I need something I don’t have—equipment, skills, whatever—I hire it. We haven’t needed fighting skills, so we don’t have any. There are those who do. I say we hire them. Hire them to teach us how to take care of ourselves, and to fight side by side with us.”

“You think you can do that?” asked Garry. A sincere question this time.

“I was on my way to the merc camps on Galatea when I stopped in here. Falkirk is for sending a team to Galatea. Have them look over the mercenary units there and hire a cadre to train us and fight alongside us.”

“I don’t know if that’s the way the mercs work,” Garry said.

“Maybe they didn’t before, but then, we didn’t used to have raiders dropping in. Times are changing. I’ll find mercs who are ready to change with the times and train us to protect ourselves.”

“Aren’t BattleMechs different from our IndustrialMechs?” came from the Guild Master for ’Mech Sales and Service.

“Yes. We captured a hovertank at Falkirk,” Grace began.

“You captured a hovertank,” ran through the hall. At her side even Garry muttered it.

“Yes, the Navajo set traps,” she said, indicating Chato beside her, “and caught a hovertank. The thing had armor tougher than anything we have, and it had sensors that go way beyond what any of us had ever seen. Nobody said taking care of ourselves was simple or easy. But we’ve been doing it for hundreds of years. Let’s not stop now.”

Garry nodded, then spoke into the quiet. “Not to sound unwilling, but I have to ask you the same question you asked Mr. Santorini. What will this cost us?”

“And to quote him, this doesn’t come cheap. The major land owners around Falkirk promised to ante up ten percent of last year’s profits.”

And so began the hard part. Negotiations took the rest of the day and most of the night, but the next morning, when Grace, Chato and Jobe checked out of the hostel and drove out to the spaceport, she felt good. Not everyone had anted up, but a lot of money would be coming in.

As they turned toward the port after the long climb up West Canyon Road, Jim Wilson buzzed her on the Net. “Can you meet me at that hamburger joint along Spaceport Road?” he requested.

“You didn’t think I was going to let one of my trucks sit in the parking lot for the months you were gone?” he said as Jobe parked the rig next to where Wilson stood with his son.

“I couldn’t see you paying the bill for that,” Grace shot back as she got out. “I figured I’d see you before I left.”

“And you were going off-planet with just the change in your pocket?” Wilson said, raising an eyebrow. “How are you set for cash?”

Grace wasn’t broke, but she had been wondering how her credit would hold up on a long trip, what with the HPG breakdown.

“I should be able to get by,” she told him.

“Good, then maybe you won’t have to use this,” he said, producing a smart card. “This is paid in advance and issued by the First Bank of Galatea. My old man set up a couple of these on planets we did business with. I don’t think he trusted the HPG. Me, I figured he was just old-fashioned. This ought to cover the personal bills for all three of you.”

“I can’t take that,” Grace said.

“I hope you don’t say that to everything I brought,” Wilson said, “’cause not all of it’s mine. Here’s a gift from the folks along the Donga River.” He pulled out a small bag and tossed it to Jobe, who emptied it into his hand. A small fortune in cut diamonds poured out.

“Good lord,” Grace said.

“Very good,” Jobe said. “I will thank my senior wife for doing as she promised she would.”

“Huh?” Grace got out.

“Ghome said she would get donations so we could pay soldiers to defend us, soldiers to protect us.” Jobe smiled. “She told me that before I left. I told her it would not be necessary. We warriors could stand against mere raiders. You can see what she thinks of me.”

“Sound more like she wants you home,” Grace said.

“That would not be Ghome. Maybe Bhana, my second wife, but not Ghome.”

“What do you have from White River?” Chato asked. A second sack spilled jade, turquoise and emeralds. “Good; very good. My sister did not let us be shamed among the others.”

“Was I the only one who didn’t plan on buying mercs until I got my butt kicked?” Grace asked the sky.

“Include me in that fine company,” Wilson said.

“It’s been a long time,” Jobe said, “since you Irish, you Scots, went roaming on Terra, but still you walk as if nothing can defeat you. Some of us remember what it was like to be among your defeated. Now we fight side by side, but sometimes it is better to remember that you can lose. Is that not so, Chato?”

“We still sing the old songs around the winter campfires. You stay inside and watch your vids too much.”

Wilson shook his head. “Well, as much as I hate to admit it, there’s also Navajo and Donga River jewelry in the truck, enough to fill a strongbox. I’ve collected money from folks around Falkirk—enough to help with the first few months of the contract. I’m buying a major chunk of the hydrocarbons in the cargo of this DropShip. Even if the credit system is bonkers, you won’t be without some serious cash once this cargo is sold on Galatea.”

“Thanks for the help.”

“I’ve been following the goings-on at the Guild Hall for the last two days. I’d say I had the easy job. Take care out there among all those off-worlders.”

“Strange how that works, Jim,” said Grace. “You go to some other planet and it’s full of off-worlders.”

“Chato, Jobe, Grace, you all take care,” Wilson said, offering his hand. His son stood beside him, a newer copy of what life was like on Alkalurops.

This is worth fighting for, Grace told herself. I will find a way to defend what is ours.