Crow also had an office assigned to him, not in the two-century-old New Barracks, but in the massive and much older structure known as the Fort. He had considered telling his visitor to meet him there, but in the end had decided that—since he would not be acting as a representative of Northwind—the Fort would be too official a location.
His quarters weren’t much better as far as seeming official went, but he didn’t want to handle the negotiations over drinks in a bar, either. People did that when they possessed money without possessing authority, or when they had things that they wanted to hide. He was a legitimate guest on Northwind, and a Paladin of the Sphere. He had nothing to hide.
The communications console gave the double beep that meant the building’s front-door security was on the line. He picked up the handset.
“Crow here.”
“Security here, sir. We have a Jack Farrell here at the information desk who says that he’s expected.”
“He’s here on business,” Crow said. “Send him on up.”
“Yes, sir.”
A couple of minutes passed—time enough to cover a hallway and an elevator and another hallway at a walking pace—and the doorbell buzzed. Crow opened the door, and saw that it was indeed One-Eyed Jack Farrell (as the merc was known to members of his profession) waiting on the threshold.
“Come in,” said Crow.
Farrell entered. The man was well-groomed and well-dressed but—to a trained eye—not nearly as respectable as his clothes would suggest. The black eye patch was a giveaway; even if the damage had been too severe for a prosthetic, the man could have gotten a cosmetic implant. That he preferred not to, Crow thought, argued that the eye patch must be a combination of advertisement and signature.
Though Crow had never met Farrell before in the flesh, the merc’s name and reputation were known throughout the Inner Sphere. One-Eyed Jack had the name of a tough and ruthless fighter, but—on the positive side—neither Farrell nor the units under his command had ever backed out of a lawful contract, nor were they prone to looting and rapine. When Crow had last heard of them, Farrell and his mercs had been in Jacob Bannson’s employ; but that had been before the HPG net went down, when Bannson was still trying to extend his business empire into all the farthest corners of The Republic of the Sphere.
Crow led the way to the living and work space. The chair and the couch and the low table between them were general issue, not as comfortable or as attractive as the deep, leather-covered guest chairs and the generously proportioned sofa in the Prefect’s quarters. Crow took the chair, leaving Farrell to the end of the couch.
“My compliments on your security,” Farrell said. “My name got checked against the invite list once at the main Fort entrance and once at the gate of the New Barracks before I ever got to the people downstairs here.”
“The Highlanders are good. And they’re careful.”
“But they have a problem they can’t handle,” Farrell said, “or I wouldn’t be here. I heard that you were hiring for some local work—and as it happens, my wayward children and I are currently between engagements and close enough to be available.”
“How close, exactly?”
“The entire force can be here inside twelve days.”
“That’s …prompt,” said Crow. His dubiousness must have shown on his face, because Farrell—as eager, perhaps, to obtain a contract as Northwind, through Crow, was to offer one—hastened to explain.
“They’re currently holding at the jump point. Pure coincidence—I came to Northwind to check on the news from around The Republic and get a line on where we might find work next, and the first thing I heard when I hit the bulletin boards was that you were in the market.”
“Yes.” Crow was careful not to appear eager. Nothing was more likely to sabotage a deal in the making than seeming to want it too much. “We’re considering it.”
“So.” Farrell leaned back in the couch. “What’s going on that’s too much for the locals?”
“They’re overextended,” Crow told him. “Not through their own fault; they’ve been tasked with defending other worlds in Prefecture III as well as Northwind.”
Farrell made a tsk-tsk noise. “Somebody was being ambitious.”
“The Senate and the Exarch didn’t anticipate that this planet would become a target as well when they gave the Prefect her orders. She lost a significant portion of her on-planet effectives during this past summer’s campaign, and the recruitment and training of replacements will take some months. If she is not to strip other worlds of their protection, then she must hire you—or someone like you—to fill the gap.”
“We’re talking garrison duty, then.”
“Essentially. Good pay for—if you’re lucky—very little work.”
“It’s one way to rest up,” Farrell said. “Is Northwind good for the money?”
“The Republic of the Sphere, through me, is good for the money. Is that enough for you?”
One-Eyed Jack Farrell grinned. “Paladin Crow, you’ve hired yourself some mercs.”
21
DropPort
Tara
Northwind
January 3134; local winter
Twelve days after his conversation with One-Eyed Jack Farrell, Ezekiel Crow watched Farrell’s mercenaries disembark from their DropShip at the Tara port. He had an excellent view of the proceedings, standing as he did beside Tara Campbell in the VIP observation lounge of the DropPort’s main concourse—a luxurious private room, all deep carpet and glass windows snugged up under the concourse’s overarching dome. In times past, when the volume of traffic in and out of the DropPort had meant DropShips arriving and leaving several times a day, the lounge had been a gathering place for passengers who considered themselves too well-off or too important to mingle with the crowds in the general waiting area. Today, as on most days since the collapse of the HPG network, it had been empty until the Countess and the Paladin arrived.
Outside the windows, the sky over the DropPort was an intense winter blue. In the dazzle of noonday sunlight the main cargo hatch of the grounded DropShip gaped open into an impenetrable black shadow.
The mercenary infantry left the ship first, marching in formation down the ramp of the cargo hatch. Crow knew that this was standard procedure—it was the fastest way to move men and women in large groups. Allowing the mercenaries to go one by one down the passenger ramp would take hours, and would create a disorderly mess that would take more hours to sort out. All the same, the steady flow of distant figures, anonymous in their dark fatigues, oppressed him.
It wasn’t as if he didn’t know why. Liao had started out this way—the landing of a small force, meant only to restore order, or so at least they claimed—and it had ended with blood in the streets and Chang-An burning. Had there been a point all those years ago, he wondered now, when one person with the gift of foresight could have put out a hand and said, “Stop!” and prevented everything?
“You’re brooding,” said Tara Campbell. The Countess of Northwind was wearing a winter uniform, made of wool against the cold wind that blew outside, and her short, spike-cut hair gleamed bright gold in the light through the windows. She had a tendency to twist and pull at bits of that hair whenever she was feeling uncertain; it occurred to Crow that he hadn’t seen her doing so for quite a while. She was growing into her position as Prefect, then, which was good—the Senate and the Exarch had worried, at first, that her unexpected elevation to the suddenly empty post would overwhelm her. “I’m supposed to be the one with doubts about all this, not you.”
“Memories,” said Crow.
She knew enough of his past, he thought, that she would understand what he meant. He had told her last year about finding his parents dead and everything lost in the bloodbath that had become known as the Betrayal of Liao. It was rare for him to speak of the past, even obliquely, but Tara Campbell had a way of drawing confidences from him.