CHAPTER ELEVEN

"HAWKTHORNE CONTROL, THIS is the trader Bhalder.

Request orbital landing clearance. Clear."

Otho closed the mike and looked over the control panel at Sten. "By my mother's beard, this be an odd world. Last time we put down here there were three different landing controls." Otho rumbled slight merriment. "And they swore great oaths that if we followed anyone else's landing plot they'd blow us out of the atmosphere.

"Enough to drive a Bhor to stregg, I tell you." He grinned huge yellow teeth at Sten. "Of course, that doesn't take much doing."

Sten had noticed.

The speaker garbled, then cleared. "Vessel Bhalder. Give outbound plot."

"This is the Bhalder. Twenty ship-days out of Lupus Cluster."

"Received. Your purpose in landing?"

"My chartermate is hiring soldiers," Otho said. "Vessel Bhalder. this is Hawkthorne Control. Received.

Welcome to Hawkthorne. Stand by for transmit of landing plot.

Your approach pattern will be Imperial Pilot Plan 34Zulu.

Caution—landing approach must be maintained. You are tracked. Transmission sent."

"And if we zig when this pilot plan says to zag," Oth grumbled,

"we'll be introducing ourselves to interdiction missiles."

Even mercenaries have to have a home—or at least a hiring hall. Hawkthorne was such a "hiring hall" for this sector of the Galaxy. Here mercenaries were recruited and outfitted.

Hawkthorne was also where they crept back to lick their defeats or swaggered back to celebrate their victories.

It was a fairly Earth-normal world around a G-type star. Its environment was generally subtropical.

And Hawkthorne was anarchic. A planetary government would, be created by whatever mercenary horde was strongest at any given time. Then they'd be hired away and leave a vacuum for the smaller wolves to scrabble into. Other times the situation would be a complete standoff, and total anarchy would prevail.

The mercenaries hired themselves out in every grouping, from the solo insertion specialists to tac-air wings to armored battalions to infantry companies to exotically paid logistics and command specialists. The only coherence to Hawkthorne was that there wasn't any.

The Bhalder swung off final approach leg, Yukawa drive hissing, and the flat-bottomed, fan-bodied, tube-tailed ship settled toward the landing ground.

Weapons stations were manned—the Bhor took no chances with anyone. The landing struts slid out of the fan body, and the Bhalder oleo-squeaked down. A ramp lowered from the midsection, and Sten walked down, his dittybag in one hand.

A dot grew larger across the kilometer-square field and became a gravsled jitney, Alex sitting, beaming, behind the tiller.

Alex hopped out of the jitney and popped a salute. Sten realized the tubby man from Edinburgh wasn't quite sober.

"Colonel, y'll nae knowit hae glad Ah be't t'sae y', lad."

"You drank up the advance," Sten guessed.

"Thae, too. C'mon lad. Ah'll show y' tae our wee hotel. It's a magical place. Ah hae been here n'more't aye cycle, an' thae's been twa murders, aye bombin' an' any number'! good clean knifmt's."

Sten grinned and climbed into the gravsled.

* * *

Alex veered the sled around two infantry fighting vehicles that had debated the right of way and now blocked the dirt intersection with an armored fenderbender.

The main street of Hawkthorne's major "city" was a marvel, filled with heavy traffic, which consisted of everything from McLean-drive prime movers with hovercraft on the back to darting wheel-drive recon vehicles to a scoutship doing a weave about forty feet overhead.

The shops, of course, sold specialty items: weapons, custom-made, new or used, every conceivable death tool that wasn't under Imperial proscript (which of course meant the Guard-only willyguns. as well as some other exotica). Uniform shops. Jewelers who specialized in providing paid-off mercs with a rapidly convertible and portable way of carrying their loot and accepting on pawn whatever jewels a loser needed to hock.

And through the chaos marched, swaggered, stumbled, crawled, or just lay in a drunken babble the soldiers. All kinds, from the suited pilots to the camouflage-dressed jungle fighters to the full-dress platoons that specialized in guarding the palace.

Then Sten noticed a very clear area on one side of the street. It was a small shop, with the dirt walk neatly swept, the storefront freshly painted. The sign outside read:

JOIN THE GUARD! THE EMPIRE NEEDS YOU!

Sten glanced in the door at the recruiting post's only occupant, a very dejected, lonely, and bored Guards sergeant, wearing his hashmarks. medals, and unhappiness for all to see.

"Ah nae understand't our Guard." Alex said, seeing Sten's gaze. "Dinnae thay ken half ae thae troopies ae deserters in the first place an' in the secon't place men whae na sane army'd hae in th first place?"

Sten nodded glumly. Alex was quite correct—Hawkthorne was quite a place. Mahoney, Sten thought, was a jewel. Here, son. Go hire a few hundred psychopaths and crooks and topple two empires.

And see if you can't get it done before lunch…

But that was the way Mantis Section worked. Sten probably wouldn't have wanted it any other way.