by Unknown
Anastasia took a step forward. Her own mass was centered and her breathing was steady and slow. “Are you ready?”
“I am,” Radick said. “If you win, my rank and position are yours. If you lose—would you prefer that I kill you, or let you live? If I leave your face unmarked, you may be able to work your way home to Arc-Royal on your back.”
She had been expecting a deliberate insult, an attempt to throw her mind and emotions off balance before the start of battle, and Radick’s choice of slurs was as unimaginative as she had suspected it would be. She set aside the anger that rose up in her just the same, and let it fade from her consciousness like everything else in the room except the circle in which she stood.
“You are all talk, Kal Radick,” she said, and deliberately turned her back on the Galaxy Commander.
In the same moment that she turned, she began a subvocal count. And one and two and—
She leapt up, spinning, and felt, as she had expected, the breeze of a blow aimed at her back, a punch at full extension that might have snapped her spine. It struck only empty air.
Anastasia landed on her feet behind and to one side of Kal Radick, and continued her spin without pause.
She brought her right leg up and forward, driving a snap-kick into his back on the level of his left kidney.
Radick staggered forward, but kept his footing.
Damn, she thought. That kick came in too light.
Radick had already been moving forward in the same direction as her strike. Now he was touched—hurt, perhaps—but not crippled.
“Very—good,” he gasped.
He turned, pivoting on the balls of his feet, then lowered his hands and made a grab for the heel of Anastasia’s still-raised foot. Catching it, he pulled backward and up. Anastasia lost her balance and fell.
She let herself go with the fall, tucking into a roll instead of landing on her back with stunning force, and came up on her feet and in guard position: feet wide, knees flexed, hands palm up at waist height.
“And you are not good enough,” she said. “Not to command the Wolves.”
Radick did not answer—not with words. He turned sideways to her and brought up his left foot to knee level, and she prepared herself to meet an incoming side kick. Instead, he leapt and lunged, his right hand aimed like a spear at her solar plexus. A hard enough blow there, in the nerve bundle below her breastbone, and nothing else would matter. Her own body would betray her.
An outside block with her right hand turned the blow. But Radick must have anticipated that defense, because her hand touched only air, and in the next fractional instant Radick’s left hand punched in hard on her biceps, sending an electric wave of pain down to the tips of her fingers.
A gasp—of surprise? of admiration?—came from one of the spectators, somewhere outside the ring. Kal Radick had known what his opponent would do, and had aimed to strike her muscle while it was contracted and at its most vulnerable. Anastasia’s right hand would be useless for a while, and if Radick had ruptured the muscle her whole arm would be useless for the rest of the fight and for some time thereafter.
Anastasia reacted without thinking. Her left hand swept up and in, and she struck down onto Radick’s collarbone with the knife-edge of the hand. She felt two bones break under the impact—the medial carpal bone in her own left hand, and Kal Radick’s clavicle. Now each of them was down an arm—with his broken collarbone, Radick’s left hand hung as useless as Anastasia’s right arm.
“We shall see who commands the Wolves,” Radick said.
He raised his right knee as if trying to jab it into her belly, then snapped forward with his foot. The vicious kick might have crippled her if it had struck her kneecap, where it had been clearly aimed.
Anastasia didn’t waste breath. Instead she kicked out at the left leg that supported her opponent in his attack. He turned to slip the blow, and Anastasia sprang forward, throwing the whole weight of her body against him. The two of them went down in a tangle together: Kal Radick on the bottom; Anastasia above him and facing away.
So far so good, but in a prolonged fight, the larger and more muscular Radick would have an advantage in stamina. She had to end the combat now if she didn’t want to lose.
Anastasia jabbed her left elbow backward at full strength into Kal Radick’s torso, and struck meat. She pulled her arm forward and struck back again at the same point. This time she was rewarded with the sound of a sharp exhalation, and a solid impact that told her she was hitting Radick’s rib cage.
But Radick still had not given up. He threw an arm around Anastasia’s neck and pulled backward, cutting into her windpipe and choking off the blood in the arteries that fed her brain, and not letting go. Blackness gathered at the edges of her vision. If she let the blackness take her, the night would never leave her and she would die.
She struck again with her elbow. The solid ribs that she struck cracked. Another blow in the same place—she could no longer feel her elbow; had she dislocated it?—and the ribs became suddenly softer.
Again and again she struck, feeling the ribs fragmenting beneath her blows while her lungs cried out for air and the blackness rose steadily behind her eyes.
At length she felt Radick’s arm fall from around her neck. She rolled away from him, and without the aid of either arm—both of them were useless now—she staggered to her feet and looked down at where Kal Radick lay choking and struggling for breath. The Galaxy Commander’s face had gone gray and was covered with sweat, and pink-tinged foam bubbled from his lips and nose.
“Punctured a lung, did I?” Anastasia said. The blackness had receded from her vision, leaving an array of floating bright spots in its place. “No worry. I can fix it.”
She dropped full weight with both knees onto Radick’s chest. More of his ribs snapped as he convulsed under the blow. She struggled back to her feet and dropped kneeling onto his chest for a second time. This time he didn’t move, and it felt like dropping onto a sack of wet sand.
Still kneeling on Kal Radick’s lifeless chest, Anastasia looked up at the ring of spectators. “This Trial is over,” she said.
Her voice was scarcely more than a harsh rasp, and she drew each breath with difficulty—her throat had begun swelling from the damage that it had sustained when Radick had gotten his forearm across her neck and pulled back. But there was no other sound in the room except her words.
“I am the Galaxy Commander now. I, Anastasia—”
“Kerensky!” shouted a voice from outside the ring. Then again, in chorus, “Kerensky!” out of many throats.
“Yes,” Anastasia said. “We have been quiet too long, my Wolves. But soon all the worlds—soon Terra herself—will hear us howl.”
She stood. She did not allow herself to sway, in spite of the fact that the room was spinning around her. She walked forward, out of the ring.
“I am going to my quarters,” she said. “Star Colonels, tonight, report to me. Be prepared to tell me how soon you will be ready for combat operations. Our target is no longer Small World. It is Northwind.”
19
Clan DropShipLupus
Northwind Drop Point
Prefecture III, Republic of the Sphere
June, 3133; no season
“Immediately,” when speaking of a full-scale invasion of Northwind, still required a certain amount of time spent in preparation, even for a Steel Wolf force already bent on attacking Small World. By the time the Wolves left Tigress, Anastasia Kerensky’s bruises from her fight with Kal Radick were fading, although her hand was still splinted. The injury was not important—she had no need for those fingers in either planning strategy or riding a ’Mech—so she ignored it.
During her time aboard the DropShip Lupus, she made a point of seeking out and talking with as many different elements of the Steel Wolf invasion force as possible—seeing and being seen, letting people know directly that the new Galaxy Commander was not at all the same as the old one. The get-acquainted process also
gave her a better feel for the strength and composition of the force for this mission than she could get from cold words and numbers on a notepad or in a file. There were other Steel Wolf resources in the Prefecture engaged in other missions. She’d worry about them another time.
The news for now was both bad and good. On the bad side, the Wolves—like everybody else these days, it seemed—had more qualified Mech Warriors than proper ’Mechs to carry them into battle. The invasion force possessed a Koshi, a MadCat, and a Catapult, plus her own Ryoken II; beyond that, the MechWarriors had to make do with retrofitted Industrial and ForestryMechs. Thinking about it, she could not resist an inward sneer. The Wolves should never have given up their BattleMechs, no matter what Devlin Stone had promised them in return.
On the good side, the Steel Wolves had more than a sufficiency of tanks and other vehicles, both troop transports and motorized cavalry. Another pleasant surprise, this one on a more personal level, came from her perusal of the personnel files: Nicholas Darwin had turned out to possess an excellent battlefield record, as well as the respect of his peers among the tank officers.
She could use that. If she decided to promote him—as she was toying with the idea of doing—she would have at least one Star Colonel firmly on her side in the coming fight. Which would mean a smaller chance of accidental or deliberate sabotage of her plans, and a better chance of actually having them understood.
She could have used more air and aerospace craft; Radick and his chosen commanders had spent those elements heavily in the past few campaigns. As matters stood, the Steel Wolves had sufficient helicopters and VTOL craft for close air support, and enough aerospace fighters to either take out the air defenses over Tara or protect their DropShips from aerial assault after landing, but not enough to do a full-scale job of both.
The Steel Wolves also had units of both regular and Elemental infantry—though again, not nearly as much of the latter as she would have liked. Still, the invasion force overall was fairly heavy on infantry, and she would have to craft her battle plan to make use of it. The mix was not exactly as she would have liked, but it was adequate, and she would play the hand that she had been given.
Anastasia looked at the maps of Northwind, and at the data in the Galaxy Commander’s files, and pondered strategy. The character of the opposing commander was always an important consideration, and the news in that department was both good and bad. Kal Radick’s most recent intelligence reports put Prefect Tara Campbell in residence on Northwind, backed up by a Paladin of the Sphere. Northwind was Tara Campbell’s home world, and she was its Countess, which gave her strong ties to the place, plus strong loyalty from the local forces. Add to that a Paladin’s authority and resources and the corresponding boost to morale in general . . . and the combination could mean trouble.
On the other hand, a divided command held considerable potential for disputes in authority. The Paladin technically outranked the Prefect, and could overrule her decisions if he so chose. If the two of them had not managed to achieve a working partnership, they would be fighting each other as much as the enemy, and both efficiency and morale would suffer.
Anastasia Kerensky contemplated that possibility, and felt a certain amount of justified scorn. Among the Clans, such a situation would never be allowed the chance to develop. There would be a Trial, and the question would be settled. One way or the other.
The Prefect herself remained something of an unknown quantity. Her public record was open, true . . . but a public record showed only the surface of a person’s words and actions, not the reasons or motivations beneath. Tara Campbell’s exchange of hot words with Kal Radick, for example, in the days before the HPG
net fell apart—her remarks could have been either a calculated insult or an accidental one, depending upon whether the Prefect was recklessly aggressive or merely quick-tempered and somewhat naive.
Not, Anastasia thought with a smile, that either alternative argued well for the Countess being a strategic thinker of any great ability. The Paladin, on the other hand, was almost guaranteed to be a proven Warrior and Commander. Once again, much depended on how well Prefect and Paladin could work together.
Anastasia knew better than to count on incompetence and dissension. She would assume that Tara Campbell and her Paladin had achieved some kind of understanding, and would formulate her plans accordingly.
Twenty-four hours before the DropShips made contact with Northwind, she called a meeting of her senior commanders in Lupus ’s tactical room. When they arrived, she had a map of Northwind lit up and tagged on the display table: the large continent of New Lanark; the second landmass, almost as large, that was oil- and mineral-rich Kearny; and Halidon, the third and smallest of the three continents.
She tapped on the table to draw the officers’ attention. “Take a good look,” she told them. “This is what we are going after.”
Her Star Colonels gathered around the table. She was a bit surprised to see that Nicholas Darwin was among them, although neither she nor he changed expressions or allowed themselves to betray any reaction.
They had not had the opportunity to share a conversation, or a bed, since the invasion force had boarded the DropShips. She presumed that Darwin had been bunking with the other tank officers, while she herself, as befit a Galaxy Commander, slept in the isolated splendor of private quarters.
His appearance now as a Star Colonel somewhat startled her. She had not known that there had been a Trial of Position during the voyage. The affair would have been routine, then. Nothing out of the ordinary had taken place to make it worth the Galaxy Commander’s attention.
She set the new development aside for later consideration—once the fighting on Northwind was done, she would have to congratulate Nicholas properly—and continued her talk.
“Here is our overall strategy. If need be, we can change and adapt it to fresh information and changed conditions, but the basic outline is here. Northwind has two DropPorts, one here, near the capital city of Tara”—she indicated a flashing red light on the largest landmass—“and one small port here, on Halidon”—she indicated a second flashing light. “The DropPort for the city of Tara is heavily defended, because it is the place where they expect ships to land.”
She looked around at her assembled commanders and grinned. “So we will not be landing at the main port.
The Halidon DropPort would be the obvious second choice. But it is isolated, and a long way from our main targets. Also, it has a resident aerospace training contingent, and while I doubt the cadets there would count as serious opponents, they could make taking the Halidon DropPort harder than its size is worth.
“So. We bypass the working DropPorts entirely. But here”—she indicated a large blank area on the main continental mass—“on the interior plains of New Lanark, on the opposite side of the Rockspire Mountains from the capital”—a touch of a button, and the mountain range that formed the spine of the continent lit up in shades of green—“are natural salt flats that served in the early days of Northwind’s settlement as the functional equivalent of a DropPort landing field. We will take the DropShips down there. Our aerospace contingent will be taking out the electronic orbital spy satellites, dealing with the aerospace fighters over Tara, and keeping the Highlanders busy on the other side of the mountains.
“Meanwhile, our forces pass through the Rockspires at this point.” She indicated a winding line in red passing through the green of the mountains. “The locals call it Red Ledge Pass. As you can see, it leads through the mountains and out onto the open plains just north of the capital. Once through the Rockspires, we are within a day’s striking range of Tara.
“And once we have Tara,” she concluded, “we have Northwind.”
PART THREE
Northwind, Late Spring 3133
Standing Guard
20
Castle Northwind
Northwind
April, 3133; local spring
Castle Northwind, official residence
of the Counts and Countesses of Northwind, was a big gray stone pseudo-Gothic pile, built by one of the early Northwind Campbells out of nostalgia for similar buildings back on Terra. Unlike its architectural predecessors, this latter-day version wasn’t actually a defensible fortress; Northwind had never gone through a swords-and-armor feudal age that would have required one.
Nevertheless, the castle was an impressive structure, high-walled and many-towered, situated on a green hill above a deep spring-fed highland lake. Banners snapped in the wind that blew across its battlements, and all around the valley that held it rose the gray, glacier-scarred peaks of the northern Rockspires.
The Countess of Northwind and Paladin Ezekiel Crow were at work in the castle solar, a large, airy room at the top of the main tower. Afternoon sunlight streamed in through the leaded-glass panes of the tall windows, illuminating the remains of a working lunch spread out on the central table. The crumbled leftovers of a beef roast wrapped in pastry shared space with file folders and data pads and other administrative debris.
“Didn’t I tell you that we’d get a lot more done if we did our work here instead of in the city?” Tara Campbell said.
“We’ve had fewer interruptions while we’ve been working here, at any rate,” Crow admitted.
“That’s because there isn’t any place in the city where I’m not on the job and available to anyone who needs to see me,” she said. “When I come back to Castle Northwind, I’m at home, and the staff here has known me so long that they’re almost family. They know better than to let people bother me if I don’t want to be bothered.”
“I suppose it’s one of the advantages to growing up in a castle.” He smiled briefly. “Like a princess in one of the old stories.”