“You can convey your compliments in person,” the Star Captain replied. “My orders are very specific, and do not include leaving without you.”
Crow sighed, and relaxed. “I suppose I have no choice,” he said, and without pause swung his right leg behind the left leg of the trooper standing to his right. He threw his hip against the man’s hip, and felt the trooper’s knee snap.
The man yelped, and fell, and Crow used his now-free right hand to grasp the hand of the second trooper, the one who held his left arm.
He spun into position behind the trooper and his left arm snaked up and around the man’s throat, bending him back, lifting him from the floor by his windpipe. At the same time Crow pulled the trooper’s sidearm from the holster at his belt and raised it, bringing the slug-pistol’s barrel up underneath the trooper’s right armpit.
The Star Captain raised his own pistol and fired off a snap shot. Crow felt the projectile strike the body of the trooper he stood behind. The man jerked and slumped in Crow’s grip. Crow fired back, a double tap. The first projectile took the Star Captain in the chest, the second just under his jaw. He fell.
The entire exchange had taken only a matter of seconds.
Crow let go of the man he held; the trooper’s body collapsed to the deck. Still holding the slug-pistol loosely in his right hand, Crow walked forward and around the table where the Quicksilver’s Captain sat, and recovered the Star Captain’s fallen weapon.
“When a pistol is pointed at his head, a man does what he has to,” the Quicksilver’s Captain said. “But I’m a loyal citizen of The Republic.”
“So he does,” Crow agreed, “and so you are. And I think we should depart this planet before the Wolves notice that one of their Star Captains is not reporting back in.”
36
Tyson and Varney ’Mech Factory
Fairfield suburb
Tara
Northwind
February 3134; local winter
The long, low buildings of the Tyson and Varney ’Mech Factory covered several hectares of the ground in the suburb of Fairfield, to the northwest of the city. At the moment, the ’Mech Factory was anchoring the right side of the Northwind Highlanders’ defenses. Sergeant Hugh Brodie lay prone on the frozen ground behind the end of the Mech Assembly building, with just his head around the corner, binoculars pressed to his eyes.
“Movement,” he whispered into his throat mike. “Squad strength, Gauss rifles, full packs. Steel Wolf urban cammie smocks. No vehicle. Moving toward me in open formation.”
“Roger,” whispered an answering voice in his headset. “If they pass the halfway point, call in mortars. Else stand fast and report.”
“Roger, out.”
The sergeant pulled back behind the cover of the wall. “Right, lads,” he said to the fire team that clustered there. “Things may get hot in a bit. Check your gear, check your buddy’s gear. If anyone’s low, now’s the time to reload. Prepare smoke canisters. But don’t fire until I do.”
The fire team members nodded understanding. Sentry and security duty along the interface between Steel Wolves and Highlanders was wearing on the nerves—everybody was tense after a night spent waiting for the heavy fighting to break out, either from a full-scale Steel Wolf assault or from a Highlander counterattack—but these troops were good at what they did. They went through the motions quickly and professionally, with no excess sounds. The sergeant crawled back to his position looking around the corner of the building.
The Wolf troopers were closer, coming up on the midpoint of the long wall. Not a major attack, Brodie thought. Not yet. This looked like just a probe.
“Company, this is Observation Post Five,” the sergeant said over his throat mike. “Twelve in the open. Position alpha. Request mortar support.”
“Roger.”
A thump. A black flower of dirt bloomed along the road that connected the Steel Wolves’ lines with those of the Highlanders.
“Left two, add five, ten rounds, fire for effect,” the sergeant whispered. A moment passed. The approaching squad had vanished, taking cover along the walls and in depressions in the ground. They knew what was coming. Veterans of many campaigns, the Steel Wolves, too, were good at what they did.
The ground where the Steel Wolf infantry had stood earlier erupted in more geysers of dirt and smoke. The sergeant pushed himself to his feet, pointed to one of his troopers, then pointed around the corner.
“Let’s see what we got,” he said.
“ ’Kay, sarge,” the trooper said, swinging tight around the corner, pressing his body up against the wall.
“Cover him,” Brodie said to the rest of the fire team.
The sun was rising, the day would be cold but fair. The trooper dashed forward, his Gauss rifle at his shoulder, the muzzle swinging to follow his eyes.
He froze. “Armor!” he shouted, and dashed back toward the fire team.
“Smoke!” the sergeant shouted. Four canisters rattled as they were thrown, rolling along the road behind the running man.
“Fire!”
The team’s weapons shot past their comrade into the screening wall of white smoke. They weren’t planning on hitting anything, just on making the enemy keep their heads down and ruining their aim.
The man got back to the corner. “DI Schmitt tank,” he reported to Brodie between gasps for breath. “At least one. Plus dismounts.”
Damn, Sergeant Brodie thought. Maybe this is the big attack, after all.
“Places, people,” he said. “We’re going to hold here as long as we can, but fall back. We can’t hold against a push on our own.” He crawled back to his position observing around the corner. “Company, this is Observation Post Five. Schmitt inbound. Soft targets. Mortar support, free fire, same coordinates.”
“Roger.”
Once again the crump of mortars sounded from down the street. Mortar rounds wouldn’t hurt armor, but would strip away its infantry support and force the tank commander to button up, limiting his vision.
“Walking ladder,” the sergeant said. “Add ten. Fire. Drop five. Fire. Add ten. Fire. . . .”
The mortar rounds made a crawling curtain of smoke and fire as they crawled down the street away from the Highlanders’ position. The concussions of the mortar rounds, even at this range, felt like punches.
“And here he comes.” The Schmitt came through the mask of dirt and flying rubble. It crawled up the street. The tank’s main guns swung slowly from side to side. Then the vehicle stopped, rocked over onto its left side, then righted itself. A column of flame shot from the top hatch. A Highlander antitank gun inside the building to the right had fired through an open doorway directly into the Schmitt’s side armor at point-blank range.
The wall where the artillery piece hid collapsed as it was struck by a short-range pulse of energy. Shortly after, a second Schmitt crawled around the burning wreck of its mate.
“More armor inbound,” the sergeant said over the radio. “They’re taking hits but not turning back. This could be a push.”
“Roger,” the talker back at Company replied. “Stand fast. We’ll try to get some support out your way.”
“Wait, wait,” Brodie said. “We’re going to have to fall back. They’re backed by a ’Mech.”
“Report!”
“One ’Mech. Industrial mod, MiningMech with machine guns and short-range missiles. Jump-jet infantry accompanies. Steel Wolves combat loadout. Can’t tell which unit. Scout car with machine gun for infantry support. Coming this way.”
“Roger, Observation Post Five,” Company said. “Fall back to the workers’ dining hall. Await instructions.”
“Roger, out.” The sergeant crawled back from the corner, then stood and joined his troops. “Okay,” he said, and pointed toward the cafeteria building—perhaps fifty yards away, and still possessing unbroken glass in its many windows. “We’re going there. Now pop smokes, and let’s move.”
37
The Fort
&n
bsp; Tara
Northwind
February 3134; local winter
The Combat Information Center at the Fort was a windowless, subterranean room packed with map displays, data and communications consoles, and specialists in uniform. Under everyday circumstances it would have been a quiet, even boring place to stand a watch, but with the Steel Wolves at the DropPort and a major battle clearly in the offing, the CIC was full of intense but orderly activity.
Captain Tara Bishop had been working in the CIC all night, ever since the Countess of Northwind had sent out Paladin Ezekiel Crow to alert the mercenaries and bring them around into position. That had been a long time ago, as time flowed in wartime, and they still had no word. For some time now, Captain Bishop had been mentally reviewing the varieties of disaster that could have overtaken a single warrior—even a warrior in a ’Mech—while passing through territory supposedly still under friendly control. “Supposedly” being the key word; and Bishop knew that if its implications made her feel concerned about the Paladin’s safety, then the Countess of Northwind, under her highly polished diplomatic exterior, must be close to frantic.
The Countess checked her watch. She’d been doing that at roughly five-minute intervals for the past half hour. This time, whatever feelings she was keeping in check behind the Countess-and-Prefect façade finally impelled her to speak. “What’s taking Crow so long? Even if it took him longer than it should have to roust Farrell’s mercenaries out of bed and get them moving, we ought to have heard something from them by now.”
“I don’t know what the hangup is, ma’am,” Bishop replied. Now was not the time to air her own visions of disaster, when the Countess undoubtedly had her own fears to deal with. “But I’m sure he’s got the mercs moving by now.”
“I’d be happier if I’d actually heard from Crow that they were moving,” the Countess said. “I’d be even happier if anyone had actually seen them moving. I’d be happier if . . . a lot of things.”
“We’d all be happier if the Steel Wolves took their anger-management problems elsewhere,” Captain Bishop agreed. “But they’re here, and we’re stuck in hurry-up-and-wait mode.”
She picked up the stack of messages from the comm board. Half-a-hundred requested the Countess’s action or reply. By now Captain Bishop knew which messages were the ones that the Countess really needed to see, and which were the ones that Bishop could initial and send back all on her own.
None of the messages were from General Griffin, and those were the ones she and the Countess were waiting for, with almost as much eagerness as they waited for Ezekiel Crow to walk back through the door with word that Farrell’s mercenaries were moving to flank the Wolves. Catch the Steel Wolves between the hammer and the anvil, with the Highlanders as the anvil, and the sparks they struck would send fire all the way back to Tigress.
“Have you considered sending out a scout/sniper unit to look for Kerensky?” Bishop asked, as she flipped through the messages.
“Considered it, decided against it,” the Countess replied. “It comes a bit too close to deliberate assassination, for one thing—not the kind of precedent I’m willing to set—and for another thing it probably wouldn’t work. If she isn’t at her field headquarters with Elemental infantry three deep guarding the perimeter, then she’s out on the line in that Ryoken II of hers, and it would take a bigger can opener than a squad of scouts and snipers to cut her out.”
A knock sounded at the door of CIC.
“Enter!” Bishop called.
A courier appeared, holding a message. “Ma’am,” he said to the Countess. “Compliments of Colonel Ballantrae, northern sector, and the Wolves are jamming our comms.”
“That explains quite a lot,” Bishop said. “The Countess’s compliments to the Colonel and is that all?”
“No, ma’am.” The courier offered her a message pouch. “There’s some kind of attack going on along the right flank.”
“About damned time,” the Countess said, as Bishop took the pouch and opened it. “That’ll be Farrell’s people. Tell the Colonel to stand fast, and allow any Steel Wolves who wish to do so to surrender.”
“That isn’t it,” Captain Bishop said. She’d opened the pouch and begun looking over the hard-copy messages that the courier had brought. “I’m seeing reports of a number of probing attacks in the northeast, but no reports of movement by Farrell’s mercs, or anyone else. It’s all—”
“Ma’am,” the messenger said. “The Colonel requests reinforcements. Or he can’t hold. Ma’am.”
“Damn,” the Countess said. She turned to Captain Bishop. “We can’t send reinforcements to the flank without weakening the center of the line. How do you feel about the two of us suiting up and adding some ’Mechs to stiffen the Colonel’s spine?”
Captain Bishop smiled, feeling the smile stretch into an eager grin despite her best efforts to remain cool and collected. “To think that when I pulled headquarters duty, I was afraid that I’d never get to see action again.”
“You shouldn’t have worried,” the Countess said. “You’re with me.” She turned to the courier. “Tell Colonel Ballantrae that help’s on the way. If you hurry, you’ll get there before we do.”
38
Northwest Quadrant
Tara
Northwind
February 3134; local winter
The Highlanders’ command post in the northwest quadrant had seen an increasing tempo of operations as night wore on into morning. First radio comms, then messengers brought word of attacks all along the line. The Steel Wolves weren’t yet pressing hard, but they were pressing hard enough, and in enough places, that any slackness on the part of the defenders could bring about a break in the line. And a break in the line could become the hole through which the Wolves would pour, rolling up the Highlanders right and left, attacking simultaneously from before and behind and on the flank, leading to a collapse of command and control over all of Tara’s northwestern suburbs.
And after the suburbs, the whole city, and after the city, the planet.
“ ’Mech approaching,” Corporal Shannon MacKenzie reported to her sergeant. “Industrial Mod of some kind.”
“One of ours or one of theirs?”
“Theirs, I think,” MacKenzie said. “Everything else coming from the east has been theirs. Why not this?”
“Because I’d hate to fry one of our own people. We don’t have enough ’Mechs as it is.”
Colonel Ballantrae had been listening to the Corporal’s report as well, with an expression of increasing grimness. Now he said, “Get me Captain Fairbairn.”
Corporal MacKenzie worked the field phone—a primitive model, working off of strung wire, but one not vulnerable to the Wolves’ jamming—then passed the handset over to the Colonel.
“Got him, sir.”
“Fairbairn,” the Colonel said. “There’s a ’Mech, up on Lombard Street. One of theirs. Take what you need, do what you have to, but stop it.”
“Yes, sir.”
Captain Fairbairn put down the field phone. “Well, Sergeant, if you had to stop a ’Mech, how would you do it?”
“Dig a pit, let it fall in. Works in the tri-vids, anyhow.”
“I like it,” Fairbairn said. “If our city utility maps are right, there’s a sewer up under the car park, west of the ’Mech construction hangars. Get demolition rigged under the street, enough to give me a five-meter-deep crater. Command detonated. Nothing showing on the surface. When will you have it?”
“When do you need it, sir?”
“Yesterday.”
The sergeant frowned for a moment in thought. “Um . . . twenty minutes, then. Sir.”
“Very well. Twenty-one minutes from now there will be a Steel Wolf ’Mech on top of your pile of demo. Blow it.”
The sergeant saluted. “Sir.”
“Very impressive,” Lieutenant Griswold said as the sergeant left. “Now, how are you going to get that ’Mech into place?”
“I have a couple
of ideas,” Fairbairn told the lieutenant. “We can lure it, or we can drive it. Or some combo of the two.”
“Combo.”
“Right. Lombard runs north of the car park. We need a tempting target, on the south side of the car park.”
“And we need to make sure the ’Mech can’t use ranged weapons on it.”
“We can do that. There’s a disabled Behemoth II at the repair yard. Get it down on the south side of the square, facing south. Put a squad on it making smoke so it’s obscured until . . . 0827. At 0827, they will stop making smoke. Got it?”
“I think I see where you’re going,” Griswold said.
“Then get moving, Lieutenant. You don’t have a lot of time to round up a tow to put it in place.”
Griswold saluted in turn, and headed out.
“Last thing . . .” Fairbairn picked up the field phone again. “I need a section of flamethrowers on the north side of the ’Mech Factory car park. I want the north side and the west side of the park, and the side streets, covered. If they see a ’Mech, and they will, I want them to flame. Make it happen.”
Then he strolled from the storefront he’d been using as a headquarters to the street where a mortar battery was emplaced. Fairbairn walked over to the sergeant in charge.
“Good morning, sir,” the sergeant said, saluting.
“Good morning,” Fairbairn replied. He looked at his watch. “I have a problem you can help me with. There’s a Wolf ’Mech north and east of here. I want to drive it south and west. How much white phosphorus do you have?”
“Thirty rounds,” the sergeant replied.
“Get an observer out, and start dropping Willie Pete on that ’Mech. I want him warm.”
The sergeant pointed to a man and made a come-hither gesture with his forefinger. The man, a private, approached.
“Hamish,” the sergeant said. “Since you’re my best observer, and since you don’t owe me any money, I have a special assignment for you.”
Truth and Shadows Page 15
