by Unknown
“What’s the word?” Tara asked Griffin as soon as she’d caught her breath.
“Steel Wolf DropShips have entered the system,” the Colonel said. “They’ve been taking out our surveillance and weapons platforms as they go. The Far Point observation post reported their presence and then went dead.”
“Good on Far Point for getting the message through,” said Tara.
That brief accolade was all that she could afford to give the station and its people at the moment. If they weren’t dead already, they had a decent chance of being alive to collect their combat pay when the fighting was over. It all depended on whether the Wolves had simply fried the station’s comms and sensors in passing, or taken the time to blow the whole post to hell and gone.
“The Wolves don’t want us tracking them,” Ezekiel Crow said. His features were set and grim; Tara wondered if he was remembering what had happened after the Capellan Confederation descended on Liao.
“They want to make us guess where they’re coming down.”
“Then we’ll just have to be ready to jump in any direction,” Tara said. “And make certain our ground-based comms stay good.”
Colonel Griffin frowned. “I don’t like this. All our current intel on the Steel Wolves says Kal Radick is more straightforward than that.”
“Maybe there’s been a change of command,” Ezekiel Crow suggested. “It’s not inconceivable that the Wolves could have produced somebody with enough nerve to challenge Radick for his position, as well as enough of whatever else it takes to beat him.”
Tara filled a mug with strong black tea from CIC’s galley urn and added milk and sugar, using the time to think about what had been said. The Paladin and Colonel Griffin, though less mutually antagonistic than they had been initially, were never going to be the best of friends, and any issue upon which they were in agreement demanded serious consideration. “As of the last DropShip to come in with news from Tigress, Radick was still the man in charge.”
Griffin said, “The ship hit three other worlds in between leaving Tigress and coming here. That’s plenty of time for news to go stale.”
“Assume that the leader is still Radick, then,” Tara said. “But draw up contingency plans in case it’s somebody else.”
Colonel Griffin nodded. “We have intelligence files on most of his prominent or rising subordinate officers.
But if Radick’s been supplanted, I think our analysts need to put in a requisition chit for a better grade of crystal ball, because nobody on the list was tagged as a serious threat to the Galaxy Commander’s position.”
“People change,” Tara said. “Maybe somebody on Radick’s staff woke up feeling ambitious one morning and never bothered to let us know.”
Ezekiel Crow looked grave. “Perhaps. Or perhaps this hypothetical person is a wild card in the game, one for whom we have no helpful profiles or contingency plans. We must ready ourselves to deal with the unexpected.”
“Meanwhile,” said Tara, “we can start mobilizing the defense forces. And wait to see where to send them.”
24
Regimental Base near Tara
Northwind
June, 3133; local summer
“Up, up, up!”
The lights snapped on. Will Elliot, thrown out of a sound sleep by the shouted orders and by the strident clamor of the alarm, put up an arm to shield his eyes from the sudden glare. In the same movement he rolled out of his bunk—he knew better by now than to question a Sergeant’s voice.
“Move it, people!” the Sergeant was shouting. The barracks began to fill with the sound of lockers banging open and shut. “On your feet, on the grinder, full kit, combat loadout. Five minutes. We’re burning time, people.”
Will unlocked and raised the base of his bunk. His uniform lay inside. He snapped it on quickly, then pulled on his socks and boots. On impulse, he stuffed an extra pair of clean, dry socks into his outermost pocket. A visible bulge like that would never pass inspection, but Will didn’t think he needed to worry about passing inspection right now.
He closed his locker and left the bunkroom. Once out in the corridor, he joined a stream of other soldiers heading down the passageway to the left, where the armory door stood open. The tight press of so many individuals all heading in the same direction with single-minded intent reminded him of a raft of migratory eels running upstream at spawning time. Eels died when they reached the spawning-beds . . . maybe that wasn’t such a good thing to be thinking about right now, after all.
Inside the armory, the Gauss rifles waited in their racks.
“Elliot, William A.,” Will said to the armorer as he came up. “Four-nine-one-zero-seven.”
“Here’s your weapon, Elliot,” the armorer said. “Down the passage, draw your charge and your spares.”
“Don’t you want me to sign—”
“No, move it. Next! Pick it up, people!”
Will took his Gauss rifle and held it at trail arms as he walked quickly down the passageway. He didn’t know yet what was happening, but he had a feeling it was serious. This was the first time he hadn’t been required first to sign for his rifle and then inspect it under the armorer’s gaze.
Ahead of him, boxes stacked on one side of the corridor were filled with the metal slugs fired by the infantry’s Thunderstroke Gauss rifles. A Sergeant stood by the open crates.
“Pick up your load. Keep moving,” the Sergeant said.
Will grabbed up the slugs and power packs and stuffed them into the pockets of his battle fatigues. He was halfway down the steps to the parade ground before he realized that he’d automatically stowed the material in the standard pockets and the standard configurations that had been drilled into him in boot camp. Now he understood the reason for that drill, and for how it had been reinforced at the time by the voices of Sergeants in his ears and by the push-ups meted out for the smallest deviation from the standard.
He was trotting, no hint of weariness now, despite the hour. Even in boot camp, everyone had known that sooner or later there was going to be trouble—where from, though, was another question, and one that recruits weren’t expected to have an answer to.
Probably because nobody else had an answer, either, Will thought as he found his place on the paved strip where the scout/sniper platoon mustered. But it looked like they were going to get one now.
Jock Gordon was already there on the strip, a big man standing easy. He was the youngest son from a farm family in the grain and dairy country to the northeast, and had joined the Regiment because he’d grown bored with working on land that was already divided up among his three older brothers.
Will took position beside Jock. A moment later Lexa McIntosh fell in beside them.
“What’s the word?” Lexa asked. She was a hell-raiser from the Kearny outback, gypsy-dark and barely tall enough to make the recruiters’ minimum, but a dead shot with any weapon she could lift high enough to aim.
As one of the unit’s expert marksmen, she carried a Starfire ER laser rifle instead of a Thunderstroke Gauss.
“You know as much as I do,” Jock said back. “One minute there I am, dreaming of home and the love of a good woman—”
“And I’m not good enough? I like that, I do.”
“—a good woman who won’t come after me with a combat knife the first time she thinks I’m looking at someone else, and the next moment I’m out the door with a pack on my back and a rifle in my hand.”
Their questions were answered a moment later. A Sergeant climbed to the top of a truck and shouted,
“Company, ten-SHUN!”
Instantly, the Highlanders stopped talking and snapped to attention.
“Listen up,” the Sergeant said. “Here’s what I know. About two hours ago the Steel Wolves brought their DropShips into the Northwind system. Now, maybe the Wolves came here to drink tea and have a friendly chat, but if they didn’t, then we’re going to kick their sorry asses off our planet. By squads, mount up. We’re moving out.”
He continued down the list, naming the squads and packing them into the trucks. As each truck filled, it pulled away and started down the road.
“And to think that I joined up because the judge said ‘Three years with the Regiment, girl, or four in jail,” ’
Lexa said. “If I’d had any sense, I’d have told him, ‘jail,’ and still be asleep in my bed tonight.”
“If the Steel Wolves are coming, jail won’t be any safer,” Will replied. “At least this way you’ll get to fight back.”
Then their unit was called: “Scout/snipers, Unit Four, mount up. Move it, people. We don’t have all day.”
“Nor all night, either,” Jock Gordon said as he swung himself over the side of the truck, the last of their platoon to climb aboard. His words were covered by the sound of heavy engines moving from an idle to a roaring full power. The truck lurched, and they were on their way.
Will looked at his watch. Less than a quarter hour ago, he’d been asleep. Now he was on his way to war.
25
The Fort
City of Tara, Northwind
June, 3133; local summer
“The DropShips are down.”
Tara Campbell knew that she must have slept at least occasionally during the almost two weeks it had taken for the Steel Wolves to make it from the jump point to Northwind’s planetary surface. She wasn’t wearing the tartan bedroom slippers anymore, for one thing, although she couldn’t remember either going back to her quarters or changing uniforms. What rest she’d gotten, however, hadn’t come often enough or lasted long enough to keep the weariness out of her voice.
She didn’t even want to contemplate what she looked like. Michael Griffin and Ezekiel Crow hadn’t gotten any more sleep than she had, and in the dim light of the Combat Information Center—illuminated at the moment only by a map display showing the entire continent of New Lanark—both men appeared drawn and haggard. The pale light made the circles under their eyes seem even deeper.
“It was bound to come to this eventually,” Crow said. “The Senate and the Exarch knew it. Their only questions were who would attack and when—and whether Northwind could stand against the assault.”
“They’ll find out soon enough what the Highlanders are made of,” Tara told him.
“Flesh and blood,” Colonel Griffin said. He was pacing again, his hands clasped behind his back. “Entirely too much of which will have to be spilled, no matter what happens.”
“Do we know yet if it’s Radick who’s brought the Wolves to this party?” Crow asked.
“They’ve been canny with their message traffic,” Griffin said. “What little chatter we’ve managed to intercept doesn’t refer to the Galaxy Commander by name, only by rank.”
Tara shook her head. “That’s not like Kal Radick. He likes his Bloodname too much to keep quiet about it.”
“How sure are you of that?” Griffin asked.
“I’m not sure of anything,” Tara admitted. “Except for this: The enemy is down on the surface of my world, they want it, and they can’t have it.”
Crow pointed to the map of New Lanark, where a mass of flashing red glyphs—the symbols for grounded DropShips, for known troop concentrations, and for observed ’Mech and vehicle types—clustered together on the salt flats west of the Bloodstone Range of the Rockspires.
“From where the Wolves are now,” he said, “they can strike through the mountains here, at Red Ledge Pass, then take this city, and the rest of the world with it, in the space of a day. Our time to stop them may be measured in hours.”
“Then we’ll have to meet them here,” Tara said. “Outside the city.” She manipulated the screen to put a ring of blue light around the capital. “There’s our line: just past weapons range from the built-up areas.”
“It’s going to take ’Mechs to stop them,” Griffin said, still pacing. “And the Tyson and Varney rush retrofits only came out of the construction hangars the day before yesterday.”
“How long will it take them to get from the factory to the battlefront?” Tara asked.
Griffin contemplated the map with the expression of a man doing sums in his head and not liking the answers.
“Moving at full speed and abandoning any ’Mech that overheats and can’t keep up the pace—a day and a half, minimum.”
“We don’t have a day and a half,” Ezekiel Crow pointed out.
“We will,” Tara said. “Colonel Griffin. Take whatever forces you need from the troops already on alert, and delay the Steel Wolves in Red Ledge Pass. Buy me thirty-six hours. That’s all I ask.”
Griffin halted in his restless pacing. “Thirty-six hours? You’ve got them.” He saluted, turned, and strode from the Combat Information Center.
Crow turned to Tara. “You do know that you’ve probably just sent a man to his death,” he said.
“More than one man,” Tara replied. “But he’ll do what he says. It’s up to us to make sure that it won’t all be for nothing.”
PART FOUR
Northwind, Early Summer 3133
Forcing the Pass
26
Western slopes of the Bloodstone Range
Rockspire Mountains, Northwind
June, 3133; local summer
The sun had only been up for an hour, but already the salt flats were growing warm. The atmosphere on the flats was dry—bone-parchingly dry—and the wind that swept down off the distant mountains bore the smell of unfamiliar blossoms.
For Anastasia Kerensky, the arid, windswept landscape made a welcome change from the confined spaces of a DropShip, and long days spent breathing canned and stuffy shipboard air. Not everybody saw it that way—the specialists who worked the Steel Wolves’ battlefield electronics were already grumbling about dust and corrosion—but Anastasia didn’t care. She wouldn’t be keeping her forces in a holding position on the salt flats long enough for it to matter.
For the moment, however, she had set up her command post in a large tent not far from the grounded DropShips. The tent was open on two sides, letting in the morning breeze while still providing shade. A portable map table was already up and running, its heavy power cords running from the tent to a humming generator nearby.
The grounded DropShips showed up on the map as dots of yellow, surrounded by clusters of other symbols, also in yellow, representing the various elements of the invasion force. This part of New Lanark had no cities or towns big enough to show up on the invasion map, but Anastasia knew that even in the howling wilderness there was always someone—a hermit trying his best to avoid civilization, or a naturalist looking for some new breed of bird or beast or insect, or just a pair of young lovers hoping to find a private place to pursue their further acquaintance.
One way or another, even if at a distance, the locals had to have seen the DropShips come down. Complete interdiction of ground-based communications was impossible. By now, the Prefect and her Northwind Highlanders would know where the Wolves had landed, and would be mustering troops to meet the threat.
The grumbling of engines ran underneath Anastasia’s thoughts in a steady drone. She looked up for a moment and smiled at the sound: The tanks and artillery were disembarking now, growling out of the open maws of the DropShips and forming up into columns on the wide expanse of the salt flats.
She went back to looking over her maps. Inside another hour, at the most, the Steel Wolf BattleMechs would have left their berths aboard the DropShips and would be prepared for the march. The capital city of Tara lay a day away on the far side of the Rockspires. Her decision to avoid the main Tara DropPort had paid off so far, in that the Wolves hadn’t taken any hits or losses to their DropShips on the way down.
The aerospace fighters she’d sent to keep the Highlanders too busy to take out the grounded DropShips weren’t going to be so lucky. So
me of them, perhaps most of them, would die. Still, they were doing a vital job, and they knew it; and for the survivors there would be honor, advancement, and an increased chance of having their personal genetic legacy carried forward through the Clan’s breeding program.
Their morale, when they left for the attack, had been excellent. They would keep the Highlanders pinned down and distracted, spread out so loosely over the planet that the Prefect would never be able to gather them all in time.
Inside a day, Anastasia thought, she and her Wolves would be on the opposite side of the mountains, and within a half day more, the Fort at Tara would be hers.
The Highlanders would realize then that further resistence was futile. She could negotiate from a position of strength, or she could forgo negotiation entirely in favor of hunting the Northwind armies down like rats, whichever she pleased.
While she was still thinking, she heard the sound of booted footsteps approaching, and looked up. It was Nicholas Darwin coming to join her, looking eager and alert. His uniform was clean and sharply pressed, the insignia of a Star Colonel fresh and gleaming, and he wore his cap tilted in the rakish tanker style. Anastasia paused a moment to regret that during the weeks on the DropShip she had not seized the chance to enjoy his company. Now that they were out in the field, her chances would be even fewer.
If Darwin shared Anastasia’s regret for lost time he was not letting it show, anymore than she herself was.
He paused the regulation two paces off, saluted, and said, “Galaxy Commander. The tanks and artillery are landed and ready. We await your orders.”
“Excellent,” said Anastasia.
She pointed to the display on the map table. A red line snaked through the mountains and out into the plains on the other side.
“Carve me a road,” she said, “from here to Tara. The remaining infantry and the ’Mechs will follow as soon as they can—but you will have the responsibility of taking the lead. Go through the mountains and secure an assembly area for us on the plains north of Tara.”