by Unknown
Anastasia’s left hand throbbed beneath its bandages, a reminder of what she had done and endured before now to get this far. Power fantasies later, she decided. Action now.
She set the giant ’Mech to moving forward at a stroll, so that the inevitable heat buildup wouldn’t overrun the cooling ability of the machine. The heavy and light tanks, spread out in a V-shape behind her, started moving forward at the same rate of speed. The diamond formation was good for fighting off air attacks—not that Northwind had much air capacity left after the Wolves’ aerospace elements had finished savaging their atmospheric craft.
Nevertheless, it was always better to do the drill, so that if some other world should provide more resistance, the Steel Wolves would be ready for it.
30
Village of Liddisdale, Northwind
June, 3133; local summer
The afternoon was drawing on toward evening by the time Will Elliot and his two fellow scouts approached Red Ledge Pass along the main highway.
In the morning, and on through the early afternoon, they had passed a steady stream of vehicles and even foot traffic heading the other way. They had stopped one of the refugees—an elderly gentleman in an electric runabout, its backseat piled high with books, clothes, and a portable food cooler, its front passenger seat occupied by a parrot in a cage—to ask him if he had actually seen the Steel Wolf forces.
“Infantry—soldiers on foot, probably with Gauss rifles—or vehicles like this one, or tanks, or ’Mechs?” Will asked. “Anything like that?”
“I haven’t seen anything,” the old man said. “There was a long-haul trucker screaming down Highway 66 at top speed just before dawn, telling everyone with a radio scanner that DropShips had landed on the salt flats.
I think he’d seen them come down himself, and not just heard somebody else’s message. Either way, I decided it was time to pack up the runabout and take Myrtle—” He nodded toward the caged parrot in the other seat. “—to some place where she’ll be safe.”
“Good idea,” Will said. “Thanks.”
The old man drove on toward Tara, and the three scouts continued westward into the foothills in the Fox armored car. By midafternoon the stream of refugees had diminished, and Will—who so far had found nothing else to occupy his mind—had begun to fret about his mother. She would have heard the same news as the old man with the parrot, but what would she do?
Mum wouldn’t head for Tara, he didn’t think. There was nobody there that she knew. And she wouldn’t go to his sister across the mountains. That would mean heading straight into the Wolves’ advance. Somewhere away from the main roads would be best, going back up into the mountains—Old Angus Macallan had a hunting cabin up on Razor Ridge, and would probably take her in if need be.
So would anybody else up there, if she wasn’t too proud to ask, which she might be. He realized that he had no idea how his mother was likely to react in a crisis like this one. He wished he could make contact with her, make sure she had someplace to go, but he couldn’t, not even on the public net. The Wolves might be listening—would surely be listening, if they were even half as clever as Will thought they were—and there was no way to guarantee that Mum wouldn’t say something by accident that would reveal more than the enemy should know.
The scouts passed through Harlaugh in the late afternoon. The big lumber mill was silent and deserted, no plume of smoke rising from its tall smokestack. As they drove past, Will wondered briefly what his life would have been like if he’d taken a job there instead of talking with the recruiting sergeant. After a moment’s consideration, he thought that he would probably have run off into the hills by now along with everybody else. He decided that he didn’t like that idea; not running was better.
They reached Liddisdale at sunset. The fuel stop and the all-night pharmacy were both boarded shut—as if that would stop any determined soldiers on either side who wanted to get in—and nobody was in sight on the street or anywhere else. He thought he saw a curtain twitch in Bridie Casimir’s house on the other side of the green, but he couldn’t be sure. He hoped not; Bridie was a dreadful gossip, and had spanked him when he was six for digging up her garden in search of buried treasure—his sisters had sworn that she kept it hidden there, and he’d believed them—but she didn’t deserve to get caught in the middle of an armored advance.
Jock Gordon broke the silence. “You’re the quiet one all of a sudden, Will. What’s the story?”
“This is the town where I grew up,” he said. He set the Fox armored car to hovering in place, and pointed at a big brick building, down the street two blocks off the central green. “See there? That’s the secondary school. There’s a chip in the stone steps out front where I set off a homemade incendiary device the night after graduation.”
Lexa looked at him and shook her head. “And the judge called me a troublemaker.”
“The difference is, I never got caught.”
Jock nodded sagely. “Must be why the Sergeant put you in charge. For what we’re doing, not getting caught at it is probably a good idea.”
There was a moment of uncomfortable silence before Jock spoke again. “It’s getting dark.”
“You noticed,” Lexa said. “And I hate to mention it, but the sensors on this bus have been intermittently fuzzing up ever since we passed that town back there with the big smokestack. I think maybe they’re broken.”
“They aren’t broken,” Will said. “The mountains in this district are full of magnetite and hematite. Iron ores.”
Lexa slapped herself on the side of the head. “Bloodstone Range. Red Ledge Pass. Damn, I’m dumb—I should have guessed that magrez wasn’t going to work well here.”
“Cheer up,” said Jock. “If you’re dumb, the Wolves are probably even dumber.”
Will nodded. “That’s why sporting men in these mountains usually hire a professional guide. Not even a compass will help you out once the distortion gets really bad. And I don’t think the Wolves have a guide along.”
Lexa smiled evilly. “But we do.”
“That’s right,” Will said. “And the first thing we’re going to do now that we’re here is get off the main road.
The Wolves will be on it, I’m guessing—it’ll be the one that’s marked on the off-planet maps, and the one that’ll show in any pictures they took from high up on their way in.”
“What are you thinking we should use instead?” Jock asked.
“Unpaved logging roads,” Will said. “Most of them won’t appear on the satellite photos because they’re hidden underneath the tree cover. People don’t realize how thick the forest canopy around here really is.
Every now and then somebody gets lost in these woods and nothing but a foot search stands a chance of finding them.” He paused. “I found a guy once like that when I wasn’t even looking for him. Of course, he’d been missing for two years by that point, so it didn’t do him any good.”
Lexa grimaced. “You’re trying to cheer us up, aren’t you?”
“Just letting you know what the Wolves are up against—and they don’t even know it.” He put the Fox back into forward motion. “Have your weapons charged and ready. If we don’t know where the Wolves are yet—well, they could be anywhere.”
31
Red Ledge Pass
Bloodstone Range of the Rockspire Mountains
Northwind
June, 3133; local summer
Star Colonel Nicholas Darwin stood in the open hatch of his Condor tank, scanning the winding road ahead.
In actual combat, making a target of himself in such a manner would be dangerous, but the comparative safety of remaining buttoned up inside the vehicle was paid for with decreased visibility. The tanks had sophisticated on-board sensors and guidance displays, but the information they provided didn’t satisfy him completely.
For this mission he wanted all the data that he could gather, and the feel for terrain that came from observations made using his own five senses. Small things—th
e shift of a breeze bearing a scent of oil or ozone, the disturbing flicker in his peripheral vision that meant something was moving and out of place, the taste of dust at the back of his throat—had given him warning before this, on other worlds. He wanted access to them now.
Behind him stretched out the long tail of vehicles and infantry that made up the advance column of the Steel Wolves. He wished that the column could move faster. Evening was drawing on, and the road already lay deep in purple shadow where the bulk of the surrounding mountains blocked out the sunlight. But however much he might wish it, he knew that faster progress was not possible. The column had to hold itself to the speed of its slowest members, or risk becoming scattered up and down the length of the narrow defile that was Red Ledge Pass.
Nicholas Darwin’s command tank was at the head of the column. The only Steel Wolf units further along the road were the scouts—two- and three-person teams driving light, all-terrain Shandra Advanced Scout Vehicles and making frequent radio contact. He made a point of pulling the scouts back into the main group at regular intervals and sending out fresh teams to take their places.
Even among the Steel Wolves, people talked a lot of nonsense about scouts reporting contact with the enemy, but Nicholas Darwin knew as well as anyone else that such was not in fact the usual case. Most often, word of the enemy came when a scout failed to check in. He had done scout duty himself more than once before attaining his present rank. And he had even—more than once—found the enemy and lived to make his report, which had gained him a reputation early on for being both competent and lucky.
These days, however, he received reports, rather than making them. The Condor’s radio crackled; he picked up the handset and keyed it on.
“Darwin here.”
“Scout Team Alpha reporting, sir. Main road clear, next ten kilometers; no sign of the enemy.”
Darwin checked the topographical map display on his handheld pad, and frowned. The main route—Highway 66, if the signs were to be believed—continued to follow the narrow defile through the pass. He did not like it. The column was strung out with no room to turn or maneuver, and the high mountains pressing in on either side of the road made him feel hemmed in and twitchy.
“What about off-road movement?” he inquired over the radio. “Can the column handle the rough terrain?”
“Negative, sir,” said the distant, crackly voice. “The Shandras can handle it, and the ’Mechs could probably handle it, but nothing else. The grade is too steep.”
“Very well,” he said. “Continue checking out the terrain surrounding the road ahead. Pay particular attention to the high ground.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Anything further to report, Warrior?”
There was a pause. Darwin could imagine the distant infantryman frowning as he searched for the right words. “The sensor instrumentation on the Shandra, sir.”
“What about the instrumentation?” Darwin experienced a sinking feeling. It was never good when previously reliable machinery started showing signs of unpredictable behavior. “What is it doing?”
“Bad readings, sir. Shifting, inconclusive, alerting when there is nothing to find.”
“Any idea what might be going on?”
No pause this time. “Conjecture, sir. Signage earlier identified this part of the Rockspires as the Bloodstone Range, and I am seeing large outcroppings of hematite and magnetite ores. I believe these outcroppings to be interfering with the action of the sensors.”
“Iron and lodestone,” Darwin said thoughtfully. “Not surprising, Warrior. Place no trust in the sensors; rely on your own eyes and ears. Is that all?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Carry on. Let me know at once if you make contact with the enemy. Darwin out.”
He closed the handheld and sealed it back into the cargo pocket of his fatigues. To the Condor’s driver he said: “Move it on forward,” then gave the hand signal for the rest of the column to follow.
Behind him, the long line of vehicles stirred into motion and rumbled onward into the gathering dusk.
32
Red Ledge Pass
Bloodstone Range of the Rockspire Mountains
Northwind
June, 3133; local summer
Will Elliot paused on the high ridge, just below the crest line. He took care to stand in the shelter of a large boulder so as not to show up against the darkening sky. Night was coming on, and the winding road below was already half in shadow.
The view was a familiar one. The last time he’d stood in this place, he’d just finished what turned out to be his last guiding job for Rockhawk Wilderness Tours. That day felt like a lifetime ago in some ways. The world around him had already been changing at that point, but he hadn’t yet realized how fast those changes would come, or how many of them would be bad.
Here on the high ground the wind was keen, cutting through his regimental jacket, making him wish that he had his old wilderness gear instead. Standard-issue summer uniforms did well enough for the warm weather in the lowlands, but hypothermia posed a danger all year round on the mountain slopes, and could kill an infantryman as dead as any Steel Wolf ’Mech. Jock and Lexa didn’t understand the changeable mountain weather; he would have to keep an eye on both of them.
He scrambled back down the slope and into the shelter of the trees. The logging road wasn’t far. It was a dirt track, not meant for the use of ForestryMechs. The ’Mechs were mostly good for clear-cutting, and for working the ordered rows of conifers and hardwoods on the big tree farms. Here in the protected forest area, any harvesting done would be selective and small-scale, the timber hand-cut with one- and two-person power saws and hauled out on skiploaders along narrow roads that left no visible scars on the mountainside.
The protected forests had survived largely because offworld tourists didn’t like the big clear-cuts; and they didn’t appreciate the presence of hulking ForestryMechs spoiling their pristine wilderness vistas. Will didn’t know how much longer that concern for the mountains would endure, now that the offworld tourists were gone.
Except for the likes of the Steel Wolves, he reminded himself—and they aren’t here to admire the scenery.
He was still in a somber mood when he joined Jock and Lexa by the Fox armored car.
“Bad news?” Lexa asked.
He shook his head. “No sight of the enemy yet.”
“Maybe they’re not coming,” Jock said.
“They’re coming,” he said.
“There’s a thousand miles around us in every direction,” Jock said. “Why here?”
“Because Highway 66 is their best road through the mountains to Tara,” Will said. “Further north there’s Breakbone Pass, but that adds another two or three days to the trip even if the pass is clear—and I’ve known Breakbone to shut down for snow on the road as late as July or even August. Golden Gap to the south is a year-round road, but it’s even farther out of their way than Breakbone. No, this is where they have to come through. Right here in Red Ledge Pass.”
Unlike Jock, who was still looking dubious, Lexa appeared more eager than sensible. “Here? We fight them here?”
“No,” Will said. “Here is where we leave the Fox. From this point on, we’ll go on foot. A single man or woman is a lot harder to see in the woods than a machine.”
Jock heaved his gear out of the back of the Fox. “And has a lot less chance of stopping a ’Mech.”
Will shouldered his own pack and pulled his Gauss rifle out of the vehicle. “We don’t have to stop ’Mechs.
We spot ’Mechs, and we tell the people who can stop ’Mechs where to go find them. And we won’t accomplish either one of those things by staying with the Fox.”
“As long as we don’t forget where we left it,” Jock said. He was still rummaging through the supplies in the rear of the vehicles, including the box that Lexa had scrounged before they left camp. “Six blocks demo charge. Det cord. Gauss power packs and ammo. Right then.” He put the i
tems into his rucksack as he named them. “Where to now?”
“That way,” Will said. He pointed back uphill to where red-tinged bareface, seeming to glow where it was touched by the setting sun, rose above the loose rocks and scrub conifers that covered the lower slopes. “Up in the saddle there, we can see down the pass in both directions. And that’s the way the Wolves are going to approach, if they’re being sensible.”
“The Wolves?” Lexa asked. “If you ask me, the Wolves are crazy. If they were sensible, they wouldn’t have bothered coming to Northwind in the first place.”
“She has a point, Will,” Jock said.
“Well, maybe they aren’t sensible,” Will conceded. “Just the same, if they’re bringing vehicles through the mountains, they’ll have to come along here. But us, we’re walking. So we can go wherever we want.”
“Then I want to go out for a drink,” Lexa said.
“We’ll have drinks together afterward,” Will promised. “All three of us, and I’m buying the first round. But right now we have a job to do. The Wolves are going to have people ranging out ahead of their column and off the marked roads, doing the same kind of thing that we’re doing. As soon as we run into one of those units, we’ll know that the main body is coming up not far behind.”
Jock said, “I hear that their infantry are some kind of specially bred supersoldier types.”
“Elementals, they call them,” said Will. “I saw a tri-vid special on them once.”
“I wouldn’t mind meeting one of them someday,” Lexa said, in tones of lascivious curiosity. “On a purely social basis, that is.”
“You’d like to meet anybody on a purely social basis,” Jock said.
“I’ll have you know I draw the line at pimps and lawyers . . . I wonder if the Wolves send those special-built guys out scouting, or do they save them for the big push?”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Will firmly. “We have one thing on our side that the Steel Wolves and their fancy custom-made supersoldiers don’t.”
“And that is?” asked Lexa.