“I am,” she says precisely, meeting Harcourt’s, “just as pleased as I would be if Ms. President’s dog had made me a present. Asimov would, however, be too polite dump it on my desk.”

Unexpectedly, Harcourt’s face splits in a grin, pipe still tight between his teeth. “Colonel,” he says, “I am sorry I underestimated you. Unfortunately, there is no one else with either the authority or the means to handle this problem. Civil institutions remain in suspension.”

“Unfortunately,” she says, “you’re right. Tacoma.”

“Ma’am?”

“When you get me the list of troops, pick out twenty-five by lot. We’ll cut them down to fifteen in a second round. Tell Major Grueneman to see that the indoor firing range in the gym is set up, and make sure we’ve got lighting there. Better get started now.”

“Ma’am.” Tacoma salutes and squeezes his large frame around Kirsten and the Judge, making for the door. Kirsten moves over by one seat, offering her chair to Harcourt.

“I take it there’s something else I can do for you, Judge?”

“Not you, Colonel. Rivers,” he says, addressing Wanblee Wapka. He takes a long draw on his pipe, and smoke streams out his nostrils. “Can your settlement accommodate a new widow and her orphan daughter?”

Wanblee Wapka contemplates Harcourt’s face for a long moment, his eyes blankly amiable. Then the laugh lines around them fold into wrinkles, and he says, “Fenton, you do know how to ask a leading question, don’t you? ‘Poor little match girl out in the snow.’ You’re referring to Ms. Buxton, I take it?”

Another puff and river of smoke. “I am.”

“Have you consulted the lady about these arrangements?”

“I will inform her of the possibility when I have your answer.”

“You have it, then. Tell her to be ready.”

“Mrs. Rivers?”

“Themunga wouldn’t turn away W. T. Sherman himself if he showed up on her doorstep hurt or hungry.”

“No,” Dakota says wryly. “She’d nurse him back to health, then take his hair.”

Maggie catches a small, alarmed glance as Kirsten’s eyes shift from Koda to her father and back, and she allows herself to wonder how the Rivers matriarch will take to a white daughter-in-law. Not easily, by all indications. But she says only, “Any other business?”

There is none, and as the rest file out her door, she sets grimly to making arrangements for a triple execution. Not for the first time, she wishes for a good stiff drink.

Damn Hart.

Damn Harcourt.

Damn the three bastards who made it all necessary.

Most of all, damn Peter Westerhouse and his droids.

*

The wolf cub wriggles in her hands as Dakota lifts him gently away from his mother and places him at the back of the crate that will carry them to their new home. Kirsten kneels alongside, holding his attention with a finger drawn along the wire mesh, so that all his small body wags, and he stands on his hind legs, nipping at the elusive prey and yapping sharply. The sound brings his mother out of her run, straight into the carrier with him. Kirsten withdraws her finger abruptly.

Dakota lifts the small hatch on top of the carrier and bends to scratch the pup under his chin one last time, and smooth the fur on the mother’s head. “Go safely,” she murmurs. “Live well.”

“They’ll be all right, won’t they?” Kirsten asks.

Koda slides the hatch closed and reaches across the top of the crate to take Kirsten’s hand in her own. “The place where Ate will release them has a stone outcropping for shelter and a spring for water. With only one cub, the mother will have no trouble feeding him until he can join her on the hunt.”

“He’s going to release them on your ranch?”

“Han,” Koda says, squeezing her lover’s hand. “I wish we could go with him now. I wish you could see it.”

“When this is over, we’ll go. I still need to meet your mother.”

Koda says nothing, only tightens her fingers around Kirsten’s. Wanblee Wapka’s easy acceptance will make the meeting easier, when it comes. It occurs to Dakota that she probably should have written a letter for her father to carry home to Themungha, but there is no time now. Coward, she berates herself. You can run across a ruined bridge straight into an army like a freaking idiot, but you can’t manage to face your own mother. Aloud she says, “I think I hear the truck.”

The sound an approaching engine grows louder, and Koda goes to unlock the back gate that leads to the runs. Beams from a pair of headlights sweep across the small parking lot, and Wanblee Wapka’s big pickup makes a three-point turn then backs slowly, coming to a stop between the two rows of kennels. Overhead, stars still spangle the western sky, swinging low over the Paha Sapa. The hills bulk huge and dark below them, distinguished from the arching darkness above only by the wash of moonlight along their flanks. A white shape passes overhead, almost too swift for sight, and Koda shivers in the dawn breeze. Owl.

Owls are messengers from the spirit world. But she needs no additional omen to know that death is near them—herself, Kirsten, her father, Tacoma, all of them. Her vision has told her that, and the preliminary reports from the scouts have confirmed the forces now converging on Ellsworth in numbers far greater than any they have encountered so far.

The driver’s door opens, engine still running, and Wanblee Wapka steps behind the truck to open the tailgate. “Let me give you a hand with that, chunkshi.”

Together, with Kirsten assisting, they lift the mother wolf and her cub up into the bed of the truck. Wanblee Wapka slides the carrier back toward the cab and ties it down in place, giving the knots an extra pull to secure them. To Koda he says, “Don’t worry. I’ll have them in their new home before the sun is over the trees. I’ll see that there’s food available for the first few days, just until Ina here gets the lie of the land.”

For answer, Koda walks into his arms and hugs him fiercely. “I wish that I could come with you, Ate. That we could.”

“I know,” he says. “But you’re needed here, both of you.”

“Mother—”

“Hey, I’m a diplomat, remember?” Laughter runs through her father’s voice. “I’ll have the peace treaty ready to be signed by the time you come home.”

“Oh, yeah,” she says wryly. “The droids’ll just be the warm-up.”

His arms tighten around her. “Wakan Tanka nici un, chunkshi. Toksha ake wachingyankin kte.**” He releases her then, turning to Kirsten. “Chunkshi,” he says, pulling her into a hug. “Take care of each other.”

The fleeting startlement in Kirsten’s face gives way to a blush, and she shyly returns the embrace. “We will. Thank you, Ate.” Her brow creases briefly. “Ate—is that right?”

“It’s exactly right,” he answers.

Almost too low for Koda to hear, she says, “Dakota and I—can you see—?” She drops her eyes, leaving the question in the air.

“I see that you are meant to be together, Kirsten. It is something you have chosen, time and again. But no, I do not see what is on the other side of this battle. There is a cloud over it, and what is beyond I don’t know.”

Then, with a last squeeze of her arm, a hand on Koda’s shoulder, he is gone, the red points of the truck’s taillights vanishing as he turns onto the road that will take him out the main gate. Koda takes Kirsten’s hand in hers, feeling the chill of her skin. In the east, a faint haze of rose and gold washes the hills. “You’re cold,” she says. “Let’s go inside.”

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

WHAT A MAN will do for love.

Manny stands just inside the shadow of the hanger, his harness strapped and buckled, his helmet in the crook of his elbow. By main force of will he banishes what he knows is a sappy, lovestruck grin from his face. At least, he banishes it for a moment. His watch shows his copilot/navigator due in less than three minutes, and it costs him an effort o refrain from tapping the toe of his boot against the runway apron. It will not do to show eagerness. He has flown a couple times before with Ellen Massaccio, an experienced and careful pilot; he has no reason to believe she will not be prompt today. That gives him a few more moments to contemplate the object of his affection as she sits on the tarmac, her silver skin gleaming in the spring sun, her slender form made all the more enticing by months of abstinence and flying helicopters.

For Manny, his Tomcat is not a male of any species. She is a she, a lady sleek and sure and deadly, a lioness stalking the high cloud savannah, her fur silvered by moonlight. She is, as she was originally, Tom’s Cat, the brainchild of Admiral Tom Connolly, the last and most perfect in a series of his brainchildren. After forty years of refinement and the shift from pure naval deployment to air defense, the craft is still the fastest, meanest fighter in the world. And Manny is as enamored as he was the first time he set eyes on her, as desperate in his forced estrangement as any deserted lover. Their reunion will be sweet.

At least I didn’t out and out grovel to get to fly this mission. Not quite, anyway.

All right, he had almost groveled. He had been prepared to and would have, if Kirsten had not shown immediate understanding when he had asked for the assignment. Instead, she had merely agreed that his request to go was reasonable and pointed out that for a single day on Base, at least, she was unlikely to need more protection than Andrews, Koda, Maggie, a three- pound Sig Sauer and Asimov could provide. Put like that, the Colonel had agreed that he should be the one to fly recon. Somewhere in the back of his mind, there lives the nasty suspicion that he would have copped the assignment anyway, given that he knows the country better than any of the other surviving pilots and can navigate by sight or with an AAA map if he has to.