by Unknown
“Local knowledge,” Will said. “The Wolves are going to be navigating by offworld maps and scanned images taken from space. Their instruments aren’t going to be much help to them once they get into the pass, and they don’t have a trained wilderness guide along to show them the way and hold their hands during the frightening parts.”
33
Red Ledge Pass
Bloodstone Range of the Rockspire Mountains
Northwind
June, 3133; local summer
The communications rig in Star Colonel Nicholas Darwin’s Condor tank crackled into life. A moment longer, and Darwin heard the voice of the radar operator back at the DropShip landing zone on the salt flats.
“Negative sign of aircraft,” the operator reported. “All quiet here at DropShip base.”
Another voice came over the rig—Anastasia Kerensky, keeping a close eye on the armored column she had tasked with leading the way through the pass.
“Good,” she said. “Keep it that way. These are your orders: If it flies, it dies.”
Star Captain Greer spoke up over the column’s private command circuit. “What are we expecting by way of resistance?”
“Not much,” Darwin told his second in command. “Partisans at best. The available intelligence says that the Highlanders are unlikely to have any heavy ’Mechs—or ’Mechs of any kind—close enough to the pass to take up a blocking position.”
“Are you certain of that intelligence?” Greer asked.
“Nothing is ever certain,” Darwin said. “But I feel confident enough in it that I willingly cede to you the honor of going in first. Take point, full speed.”
“Sir,” Star Captain Greer replied, and his tank surged forward, passing Darwin’s Condor—with some difficulty, since the road was narrow—to take up his new position at the head of the column.
“Trouble, Star Colonel,” the sensor operator in Darwin’s Condor said a few minutes later. “Our magnetic anomaly detectors are showing us nothing but garbage.”
“The scouts predicted it,” Darwin said. “All this red rock is magnetite and hematite ores, and they throw off the sensors. Run series checks and do your best to compensate.”
“Yes, sir.”
Darwin climbed back to the Condor’s hatch and stepped so that his upper body protruded from the top of the vehicle. Risky, if a sniper was around, but with the sensors no longer functioning reliably, it was the only real way to see what was happening outside.
“Series checks show interference consistent with geologicals,” the sensor operator said after a few minutes.
“The receivers are acting correctly.”
“Not a thing we can do about it, then,” said Darwin.
“No, sir. But to the sensors, one heavy piece of metal is much like another. There is a chance that we could miss an enemy ’Mech in all this noise.”
“If the enemy does have a ’Mech out there, it can only stay hidden so long as it does not fire its main weapons,” Darwin said. “If the ’Mech fires anything, the signature will light up like sunrise on the infrared.
Now pick up the pace. We have places still to go, and very little light.”
“Will we be running at night, too, sir?”
“We will be, Warrior.”
Nicholas Darwin surveyed the landscape around him. The sun had gone down behind the mountains already, and the evening was growing both dark and surprisingly chilly for the season. The wind that blew down from the mountaintops had passed over cold mountain streams, and over shaded snowbanks that might last all summer without melting. Those of his soldiers who had worn lightweight uniforms because of the heat on the salt flats would be shivering now. He hoped he didn’t lose any of them to hypothermia and their own stupidity. The strike force could ill afford to take the loss.
“We will be,” he said again. “We will run all day, all night, and all day again if we have to, until Northwind is ours.”
34
Red Ledge Pass
Bloodstone Range of the Rockspire Mountains
Northwind
June, 3133; local summer
“Night’s coming on,” said Jock.
“So it is,” Will said. He looked at the sky to the west, where blue was fast shading into indigo and the setting sun touched the clouds with crimson. “We’ll have time enough to get up by Red Peaks before we have to show a light.”
“I’m worried,” Lexa said. “We haven’t seen any fliers all day. None of theirs, none of ours.”
“Could mean anything,” Jock said. “Maybe they’re mixing it up somewhere else.”
“It could be that,” Will said. “But if I had to guess a reason, I’d say that there was weather rolling in that the pilots don’t want to fly through.”
He gestured to the east, where thick clouds darkened the sky almost to blackness. “See that?”
“I see it,” Jock said. “But I’m a city lad myself. I couldn’t say what it means.”
“This time of year,” Will said, “it means trouble. If I were still at my old job, right about now I’d be telling all the bold offworld hunters and fishermen to get ready to spend their weekend playing cards back at the lodge, because the best place to be in bad weather is snug under a roof.”
“Too bad you can’t tell that to the Wolves,” said Lexa.
“Aye,” said Will. “But if we meet any of them, I don’t think we’ll have the opportunity for talk. Not with words, at any rate. Maybe with rifles.”
Lexa glanced at him curiously. “Have you ever shot anything? I mean, for real?”
“Just animals,” Will said, at the same time as Jock said, “No.”
“Me neither,” Lexa said. She ran a hand over the stock of her laser rifle. “I know I’m good at the targets.
But when it comes to the real thing . . . I don’t know.”
Will said, “When the time comes, we’ll all do what we have to do. Remember, our primary orders are to make contact and report. Delaying the Steel Wolves comes extra.”
“The three of us by ourselves aren’t going to be able to delay anyone very much, anyway,” Jock said.
“We’ll do the best we can with what we’ve got,” Will said. “Let’s go.”
They scrambled up the slope, with Will in the lead. The scrub conifers that grew at this altitude provided only scant cover, and the stones rolled under their feet, sometimes cascading downhill behind them.
“Don’t skyline yourselves,” Will reminded them as they approached the crest of the first slope.
“Don’t worry,” Lexa said. “We won’t. Just because I like to shoot at targets doesn’t mean I want to be one.”
They paused just downhill from the crest line, and flopped belly-down on the dirt to crawl the last few yards.
Will propped his binoculars in front of his eyes.
“See anything?” Jock asked.
“Nothing moving.”
For a while they watched the road below in silence. Then Lexa said, “All this waiting and watching is just grand, but you’d think that there’d be something else we could do.”
“I know what you mean,” Will said. “But first let’s get a little farther east.”
They crawled backward down from the skyline. Then they walked along the ridge, ten yards below the crest, for close to three kilometers, until Will said, “Here. This is the best place to watch the road.”
“I can’t see anything from here,” Lexa complained. “It’s getting too dark.”
“Listen for the noise of birds being disturbed. They’ll fly up from the woods. Look for smoke or dust.”
“And look for gunfire,” Jock added. “The Wolves are going to be out there looking for us at the same time as we’re looking for them. They don’t have a trusty native guide, either, so they’re going to believe that anything that so much as rustles in the underbrush is a Highlander scout patrol.”
“That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking,” Will said. “Which gives me an idea about what we can do with
all that explosive firepower you’ve been hauling around in your backpack.”
“And what’s that?”
“How big is the biggest ’Mech you know?”
“I’ve heard that the Jupiter ’Mechs are twelve meters tall,” Jock said. “I’ve never seen one of ‘em, though.”
“Doesn’t matter. Twelve meters tall would give it a stride of about five meters.” Will paced out the dimensions of a single giant step. “Give me a piece of rope. Great. Those demolition blocks you’ve got with you—measure out the footprints of a Jupiter . Lexa, use your laser rifle to drill holes down to rock so Jock can put in the charges. Separate detonators for each charge.”
“I believe I know what you’re planning,” Lexa said. She unlimbered her laser rifle and aimed it down at the rock. “And you’re a mean, mean man. I like the way you think.”
35
Red Ledge Pass
Bloodstone Range of the Rockspire Mountains
Northwind
June, 3133; local summer
“Star Colonel.”
Nicholas Darwin looked down at the sensor operator from his position in the open hatch of the Condor tank.
“What is it, Warrior?”
The sensor operator wore a set of heavy earphones. At the moment he was holding one of the padded earcups away from his head so that he could hear his commanding officer’s reply. “We have picked up something of interest on seismic, sir.”
“What kind of interest?”
“We are no longer getting useful data on electromagnetic out here—there is too much iron in these hills. But, sir, listen to this.”
He pulled off the headset and handed it up to Darwin, stretching out the connecting cable so that his commanding officer could put on the headphones and listen without having to climb back down into the belly of the tank. Darwin settled the headset onto his own head, and adjusted the cups over his ears.
The sensor operator hit the replay button on his console, and Darwin could hear it—the sound that ruled the battlefield. Footsteps. Big footsteps. The footsteps of something heavy enough to shake the very ground when it walked.
A BattleMech.
“Did any of the other sensor units pick this up?” Darwin asked as soon as the replay was done.
“Aff, sir. Scout Team Beta, with the Shandra scout vehicle four kilometers to the north. We are comparing signals now, sir, and—”
The sensor operator paused and touched the display screen.
“There it is, sir. Range twenty, due west of our position, moving from south to north at forty-five kilometers per hour. We are getting separation, and a good triangulation.”
“Very well,” Darwin said. “Do you know where it stopped?”
“Aff, sir.”
“Chart it and transmit that location to all units. With that size and speed, it could be an Atlas or even a Jupiter . If it starts moving again, let me know.”
“Sir.”
Darwin turned back to his tactical comms. “All units, enemy ’Mech located. We are going to take this one.
Arm with long-range armor-piercing.”
The other commanders acknowledged.
Darwin smiled. Now that he had the Highlanders’ ’Mech located, he would be able to take it out with a sudden, overwhelming blow.
“Forward,” he said. “We will salvo on target when in range.”
Anastasia Kerensky would be pleased.
On the cliff top by the saddle between the mountains, time passed slowly. Will, Lexa, and Jock took turns watching the road to the west through infrared binoculars. The night air grew cooler around them as they waited, and the wind made sighing noises in the conifers on the slope below.
“What happens if you guessed wrong?” Lexa asked, after nothing had happened for some time.
“Then some other scout team will get the glory,” Will said. “But I don’t think—”
“I see something,” Jock called down from his position lying belly-down on the ridge, the binoculars to his eyes.
“What?”
“Heat shimmer. Bearing zero-seven-five true.”
Will and Lexa crawled up onto the ridge to lie beside Jock and look out through their own binoculars at the road below.
“I see it, too,” Lexa said. “But something—tell me. Do you think they heard our little sound show?”
“I certainly hope so,” Will said.
“And if they heard it,” she persisted, “then they know where that supposed ’Mech of ours is?”
“Can’t bet that they don’t,” Jock agreed.
“Then about thirty seconds after they get in range, we’re going to get hit hard.”
Will thought a moment. “You’re probably right. Do either of you know the max range of the Steel Wolves’
biggest?”
“Their best bet for capturing a ’Mech would be infantry,” said Lexa. “And that means a range of—ah, damn, I knew I should have stayed awake more during basic training—no more than a hundred meters.”
“That’s no good,” Jock said. “They can’t afford the time to send up the gorillas. It’ll be rockets.”
36
Red Ledge Pass
Bloodstone Range of the Rockspire Mountains
Northwind
June, 3133; local summer
The report came back to Nicholas Darwin from the sensor operator in his Condor tank: “Target in range.”
“Very well,” Darwin said. “On my command . . . stand by . . . fire.”
Columns of smoke and fire lit up the night sky to the right and to the left of Darwin’s tank and arced away to the east, as the Valiant Arbalest long-range missiles of all the Steel Wolves’ Condor tanks spoke as one. The multiple separate columns first converged in the darkness of midheaven, then slowly descended to a point.
That point suddenly grew brighter, like an expanding ball of incandescent gas.
Nearly a minute later the sound of rolling thunder came echoing from the distant hills.
“Well,” said Star Captain Greer over the private command circuit, “if the Highlanders somehow failed before to notice that we were coming, they certainly know it now.”
“They were bound to find out,” Nicholas said. “And they have found out in the worst way—by losing a
’Mech. Move out now. Resume tactical column.”
The order echoed through the links.
“Losing signal,” the communications operator said. “Sir, the radio propagation is terrible through here.”
“It will only get worse,” Nicholas said. “Pass to all units: Continue west, do not allow the Highlanders to slow you down. Maintain visual contact with the friendly beside you.”
We have an appointment to keep on the far side of the mountains, he added to himself. He would not let Anastasia Kerensky down.
“Forward, Wolves!”
The road to Tara lay through the black shadows in the valleys of Red Ledge Pass. Ahead, smoke rose from just below the crest of a ridge.
“Our orders were to locate the enemy and report,” Jock said.
“We’ve done that,” Lexa said. She was sitting on the hood of their vehicle, some three kilometers back from where an empty bit of ridge line had recently become smoking vapor. “I thought that sound was going to blow out my eardrums.”
“Just be glad that their aim was good,” Will said. “A miss could have nailed us all the way over here.”
“And I suppose you thought about all that in advance,” she said.
“No, not really,” Will admitted. “I didn’t think of it until after we popped those fake footsteps.”
Jock nodded soberly. “So do you know which way they’ll be coming?”
“Yes . . . well, no. Not exactly. I have a best guess, though.”
“Why not radio it in?” Lexa asked.
“Because for one thing, radio reception is no good through here,” Will said. “And for another thing, we don’t want the Steel Wolves listening in when we make our report.”
“Then we’d better hope that someone with landline communications saw the explosion and called it in,” Jock said.
Lexa glanced upward at the night sky as Jock spoke. “They may have done better than that,” she said.
There was a whistling sound, and a momentary darker shadow passed across the night. A second later, a man in powered jump armor marked with the insignia of the Northwind Highlanders scooted out of the sky.
“What was that flash and bang?” he demanded as soon as the dust of his landing had cleared. “I’ve been assigned by Colonel Griffin to scout forward and find out what the hell.”
“Well, you can take this back with you to the Colonel,” Lexa said. “We have the Wolves located. They’re out to the west of this spot, somewhere in missile range, and they’re down one rack of ammo per long-range shooter.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes,” Will said. “They’re coming through the mountains on Highway 66.”
“Great,” said the man in jump armor. “I’ll take that word back to the Colonel. Oh, one more thing. Better be careful. I was told they’ve got a hell of a big ’Mech, and it’s not too far from here. Have you seen it?”
“Seen it?” Lexa asked. She laughed. “We are it.”
37
Red Ledge Pass
Bloodstone Range of the Rockspire Mountains
Northwind
June, 3133; local summer
“Better you than me,” said the infantryman in jump armor. “I’ll take your message back to the Colonel.”
“Thanks,” said Will.
“And if I were you I’d be moving out of here soon. There’s probably going to be hell’s own horde of Wolves coming through here before very long.”
Will nodded. “Sure.”
The infantryman in jump armor took off, rising from the ground in a long flat arc. The jets of his suit made a fast-fading blaze of light against the night sky. A distant observer, knowing no better, might have taken it for the path of a meteor.
Will and his two companions watched his departure in silence. Lexa was the first to speak.
“He’s right. We should go. But—”