Being a miner, she knew plenty of folks who'd paid dearly for not following their plans.

Despite it all, Grace slowly walked around her map. Done, she called Victoria to climb the steeple stairs and go over the map with her. Grace had a new plan to talk through.

L. J. scowled at the map in front of him. With the Net down and his client unwilling to bring it up for a "minor" thing like the decisive battle for Gleann Mor Valley and maybe this whole stinking planet, L. J.

was reduced to pushing pieces of paper around a paper map and hoping the real fighting men and machines were somewhere near where his map table showed them to be.

Once upon a time, say three hundred years back, this planet had a Global Positioning System. But the satellites had worn out, and no one had replaced them. So now Roughriders had to read geodetic ground markers to find out where they were, and report their location over the radio. Even his artillery was reduced to line of sight unless he wanted to waste what little ammo he had.G.o.d! And I've wanted to command a battalion since I was a kid!

L. J. worried his lower lip as he studied his western flank. He'd finally ordered the platoon guarding his left to advance and make contact with the missing Black and Reds. They'd found them . . . or what was left of them.

The good news was that the opposition was running. They'd left anything they couldn't grab, even some of their dead. The bad news was what he'd learned from the damaged 'Mechs left behind. Their armor was good. Their SRMs, from the damage done, were very good. L. J. rubbed his chin. Why had they taken off? He'd only sent a platoon. They could have smashed it. But when the platoon happened on the ambush, the enemy was long gone, not even dust on the horizon of this usually dusty planet.

No, Grace's troops had found something they considered important enough to make them abandon their own dead. L. J. shook his head. Whoever had taken out the Black and Reds could have charged straight for Allabad. Threaten Allabad, and Santorini would have been screaming for the Roughriders to protect his delicate hide.

L. J. flipped through the file he had of the mercs Grace had signed up. Woman, woman, woman . . .

Hold it. He'd seen that woman before. That was Betty Rose, the maid he'd tried to hire!Betsy Ross, huh? Wonder what her real name is. He glanced down the file on her. Too d.a.m.n short. He didn't need Intelligence to tell him this was a false resume.

He shuffled the file again. Boy: tank driver . . . No tanks so far. "What have we here?" he said. "Benjork Lone Cat. Bet you'd enjoy taking Field Marshal Fetterman's thugs down." L. J. froze. He checked the platoon's report. Yep, there it was. The big, hulkingAtlas was missing. "Not something I want to meet, not with just my littleKoshi ." But if they captured the Field Marshal, they captured theAtlas .

d.a.m.n; what I'd give for some decent pictures of my left flank.L. J. shook his head. Fighting with no bandwidth was like fighting in one of those ancient wars with the first tanks or knights on horses. "I don't know s.h.i.t," he whispered.

The satellite had just made a pa.s.s over the valley. The Chief and the Network Services team had cobbled together a way to take very low-resolution pictures off the overhead coverage. He studied what he had. A major enemy force moving fast up the west road. That road led straight to Falkirk. It also met with a side road that could take you to Kilkenny. That town had a fertilizer plant turning out rockets. If he kept the pressure up, he could be there by late tomorrow. The valley narrowed there. He'd strung his forces across two thirds of the valley for most of the push from Amarillo. Kilkenny looked like a place to concentrate. "Mallary, do you have a moment?" he called.

"Be there in a minute," she said, then arrived sooner. "Casualty reports, sir."

"Bad?"

"No. Not if we had the spare parts to fix what's broken."

"Deaths?" L. J. asked, suspecting he knew the answer.

"Not a one again today, sir. Two more 'Mechs lost their footpads. Two more tanks are hung up waiting for spare treads. We've got three types of tracks on our rigs, sir, and six types of fans. We've grounded one of each and are parting them out to keep the others running."

"But no deaths. Grace has managed to inflict, what, twenty percent casualties and still not kill anyone?"

Mallary provided the exact level of his reduced strength. "Twenty-three percent, sir."

"She's tr.i.m.m.i.n.g us, but not making anyone mad."

"Maybe the civilian doesn't have a taste for the jugular."

L. J. shook his head. "No, I've fought that woman. She'd have gladly killed me when I was chasing her up that hill. And she has to have people who've lost loved ones to the d.a.m.n B and Rs."

"They kill Black and Reds, sir. Come out looking for them."

"But never came out looking for us. They fight us, careful not to hurt anyone, then run. Give up ground."

L. J. tapped the map. "They run out of ground at Falkirk."

"So," he said, making a decision. "Let's concentrate the battalion at Kilkenny. We can blow that plant and get used to fighting together before we hit Falkirk."

Mallary eyed the map of the town, measuring the distance between the four scattered companies, and nodded. "We can be there by late tomorrow. a.s.suming this Grace you're always talking about doesn't decide it's time to fight more and run less."

"Issue the orders."

"You are changing the orders," Ben said as soon as Grace showed him her map laid out in the church steeple.

"I think this is a better plan," Grace said. Victoria didn't offer an opinion.

"But you have attritioned him only fifteen, twenty percent."

"We think we're over the twenty percent mark," Grace said, feeling like a schoolgirl who'd done the wrong homework and now had to convince the teacher it was a better idea than the original a.s.signment.

Ben eyed the map table, unblinking, for a long moment. "You a.s.sume he will concentrate here," he said, putting a finger on Kilkenny.

"Yes."

"And if he does not?"

"We go back to Plan A."

"Order, counterorder, disorder," Ben said.

"That's what I told her when she first showed it to me," Victoria said.

"And Grace answered you how?" Ben asked his fellow MechWarrior. Grace answered instead.

"He knows we have to fight at Falkirk. He's watched us fall back from every other roadblock. He'll expect us to fall back at Kilkenny. We can use that expectation against him."

"So this is the dream that drives you," Ben said.

Grace took a deep breath. "Yes, this is the dream that drives me."

"I will have to tell Danny that we go into battle obedient to your dream. He said he was afraid of mine.

We shall see how confident he is in yours."

Grace just shrugged.

"Well," Ben said, looking up from the map. "I have a man downstairs you must meet. He strode into battle commanding anAtlas . Powerful machine. Could have-should have-slaughtered our ambush all by itself."

"Why didn't he?" Victoria asked.

"This Field Marshal of Special Police thought that listening to one lecture by a MechWarrior would tell him all he needed to know to drive a BattleMech. He left yellow sticky notes on the switches he had to activate when he spun up his 'Mech in the morning."

"Sticky notes?" Grace said, having a very hard time believing it. "I tried them once to keep track of this or that on a busy day. I'd post them up on the inside of Pirate's c.o.c.kpit. The pounding and vibrations around made them fall off."

"They fell off his board, too. He had all his switches in all the wrong places. He couldn't have hurt a flea except by stepping on it, and he got so confused when we attacked him that he was moving his hands instead of his feet."

Grace barely suppressed a laugh as she followed Ben down the stairs from the steeple map room. In the vestibule, Lieutenant Hicks stood with his sergeant. Between them was a small man with sweat pouring off his bald head.

Betsy Ross was just coming through the side door. She took one look at the man and actually growled.

The man saw her and stumbled back as far as the chain between his handcuffs and the sergeant would let him.

"We meet again," Betsy said, advancing on the Field Marshal. She didn't sound pleased to see him.

"Down, girl," Ben said, putting out an arm to restrain her. "I want him to tell Grace what he did with his loan payment book. The one for theAtlas we now own." Ben eyed the man, then Betsy. "Then, if Grace doesn't have any further use for him, you can have him."

"Please," the former maid said to Grace. "This sc.u.m has nothing of interest to you."

"Yes I do. I do," the man begged. "I told him, and he said you'd want to hear this," he said, nodding to Ben then pleaded with Grace. "Let me talk."

"Talk," Grace ordered.

"Yes," Betsy said, pulling a knife from the lieutenant's belt and playing it lightly across the captive's face.

"Talk."

L. J. climbed the steps to the steeple of the Congregational Church. As promised, it gave him the best view of Kilkenny and its environs. To the southeast several large grain elevators blocked his view, but his main interest was to the north.

To his surprise, he found a table and chair already there. Mallary was right behind him, leading the Chief and the specialist who nursed the jury-rigged long-range radio. The radio operator hooked a wire to both of the bells as the Chief spread a map over the table.

"Fits. Think someone had a map up here yesterday?" he said.

"I never said Grace was dumb," L. J. muttered as he glanced down. In front of the church stood his command van. Two maintenance types were going over it, hisKoshi and Mallary'sArbalest . The two 'Mechs were fast and together provided a balanced force. At the moment they were the main protection the advance headquarters company had.

The Chief put weighted markers on the map-the wind up here was strong, hot and dusty. "C Company moved through town as ordered and set up a perimeter at the dry riverbed about three klicks north of town."

"They're taking fire, sir," the radio operator reported. "Nothing they can't handle. Mostly rifle s.h.i.t."

"Repeat only what you're told, Specialist," the Chief said.

"That's what he said, Chief."

"Then clean up Captain Graf's language for him."

"Yes, sir."

"D Company should be pulling into town about now, sir," the Chief said. "We'll have them dismount and police the place, burn the fertilizer plant, and serve as our reserve."

L. J. looked down the main road he'd just come up and saw a line of tanks and trucks with 'Mechs along their flanks. "Pa.s.s the word to Captain Chang. Tonight he's our reserve, but first he has to clean this place out."

"Yes, sir," the radio operator said, and pa.s.sed along his orders.

L. J. was looking to the east, so he missed the incoming missile until it exploded close enough to make him duck to the floor. Silly reaction when you're twenty meters in the air.

He turned to see a second missile arcing in from the west. It fell short-or at least it impacted a block short of the church. Another one was already in the air and aimed more to the south. It exploded just ahead of C Company's lead gun truck.

"Give me the radio," L. J. said, and took the phone from the specialist. "Chang, you there?"

"Still here, sir," came with a dry laugh.

"Slight change in plans. Hook a hard left and go see what's happening on the west side of town. I've got a low hill blocking my view, but there's another rocket heading in. Be advised, we don't know what the west flank has, but somebody on our left took out the Black and Reds."

"I'll give them the regiment's thanks, sir. But if they've only faced that c.r.a.p, they don't know what a real fight is."

"Knock 'em down, dust 'em off, and bring 'em in," L. J. said, even as the column that was C Company did a left wheel, spread out, and took off. Two more rockets and the fire died away. That could be all that the west had to offer. Then again, L. J. would wait to see what Chang reported.

"Where are A and B?" L. J. asked.

"A is just pulling into town on River Road, sir," Chief reported. "B's a bit behind them. It was held up by an ambush earlier today. Captain St. George left them to clean it up, and pushed on with A."

L. J. nodded. Art knew he wanted the battalion here, so he was making sure at least one of his two companies was.

It didn't take binoculars to spot A Company. Their 'Mechs strode into town from the southeast, walking past the grain elevator. A missile came in from a hill to the east, lazy and slow. If the battalion had had any area antimissile defense, shooting this one down would have been duck soup.

But Santorini hadn't funded them for that.

"It's going to miss," Mallary said. L. J. nodded. The missile was well short of the road. If anything, it was going to hit the grain elevator. Huge complex, must be a block long.

Something niggled at the back of his brain. Grain silos. They exploded if people weren't careful about the dust in them. "Oh my G.o.d. Everyone down!" L. J. shouted, and pushed Mallary to the floor just as the elevator blew with a force that probably exceeded anything the planet had seen. He landed atop Mallary as the steeple tried to launch itself into orbit. Failing that, it swayed back and forth beneath them.

When the swinging slowed, L. J. rolled off Mallary. He tried to get up, but either his legs were still shaking or the tower was. It took him a moment to work his way up to his knees. "You okay?" he asked Mallary.

She took his offered hand. "Wasn't quite what I'd fantasized, but for a first time, you weren't too bad."

She managed a grin as she got to her knees.

"It was good for me, too," he told her, risking putting his weight on a broken railing to pull himself up.

Mallary put her hand on the table leg in front of her, then thought differently and took his offered hand to stand up.

The operator had grabbed for his radio when L. J. shouted the warning. He was still holding on to it, but the table had been upended, and the left side had come down hard on his groin.

The Chief pulled the table away, then knelt down. "You okay?"

"I'm fine, sir," the man said, but there was blood on his lips. "Hurts a bit."

"We need a medic up here," L. J. shouted to his command van.