She felt the impact in her own arm as it struck, and felt the housing of the Blade being driven down. One of the Blade’s legs broke. She swung again.
The great expended-uranium-edged hatchet rose and fell, slicing through the layers of ferro-fibrous armor into the interior of Ezekiel Crow’s ’Mech. Black smoke poured out. She struck again.
This time a spark blossomed in the crevice she had made in the Blade’s hull. As she pulled her hatchet back the spark burst into a flame, then flared up with the brilliant white light of burning magnesium. She stepped backward, forced away by the glare as the ’Mech spat out a cascade of sparks and a fire too brilliant to look at with unshielded eyes.
“Countess! Countess!” Captain Bishop’s voice was sounding in Tara’s ears.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Get out of there. Get to our lines. Please. Now.”
“What—why?”
“It’s the Steel Wolves,” Bishop said. “The whole line. They’re moving. They’re advancing. They’re attacking. Now.”
Tara looked at the sea of mud around her.
“I’m afraid I’m not moving anywhere right now, Captain. I can’t fire my jump jets and expect to do anything more than freeze up.”
“Then stand fast, ma’am. I’ll be there directly.”
Over the command circuit, she heard Bishop start giving orders to her subordinate troops: “On my command, in column of divisions, forward. Condition red. Weapons free. Stand by, execute.”
On Tara’s sensor readout she could see rank after rank of soldiers, artillery, and tanks coming from the Highland side. Rank after rank, wave after wave, moving in her direction, as orderly as if they were on a parade field.
But that was nothing compared to what she saw on her forward sensors, a mass of men and ’Mechs and armor that made her own force seem puny.
The Steel Wolves were attacking at speed.
36
Belgorod
Terra
Prefecture X
April 3134; local spring
Will Elliot’s scout-sniper platoon, like those of his fellow Sergeants Jock Gordon and Lexa McIntosh, was mounted on Shandra Advanced Scout Vehicles. Together with the rest of the unarmored Northwind infantry, they were formed up and awaiting the order to advance. Will felt oddly light-headed and impatient; he knew that any moment now the signal for the advance would come, and he could stop anticipating the need for fear and get on with dealing with it.
This fight wasn’t going to be like Red Ledge Pass or the Plains of Tara, all broken terrain and small-unit skirmishes that didn’t resolve into a bigger picture until long afterward. This one was going to be more like one of the springtime mating fights between the big mountain lizards back home, when you got a pair of two-ton reptiles running at each other head-on as fast as they could move. Mountain lizards were stubborn, too. The ramming and clawing usually didn’t stop until one of the combatants fell over and didn’t get back up.
The sooner the battle started, Will thought, the sooner he could quit thinking about things like that.
He cast an eye over the soldiers in his platoon. Most of them looked as scared as he felt, and a lot of them didn’t have two campaigns against the Steel Wolves to keep them anchored.
“Remember,” he said, “if things get heavy, ditch the Shandras and keep going on foot. You’re harder to see and to hit than your scoutcar is.”
Then, between one moment and the next, the waiting ended. Loudspeakers and external communications circuits throughout the Highlander lines came to life with the drone and high-pitched skirl of bagpipes, and Will Elliot gave a sigh of deep relief.
“There’s the advance,” he said to the platoon Corporal. “Let’s go.”
To either side of them on the clear spring morning, the other soldiers of Northwind were heading west. The air vibrated around them with the rumble of motors and the tornadic roar of heavy-duty hoverjets, and the muddy ground shook under the footsteps of the ’Mechs—the Pack Hunter, and the battle-modified Forestry and Mining and Construction ’Mechs that swelled their ranks. At the ends of the extended line, ranks of armored infantry advanced by leapfrogging, jump jets sending one squad forward while their mates covered them, then the jumpers taking defensive positions while those who had been left behind jumped on ahead.
On the horizon to the west, Will spotted a single column of black smoke, and Lexa McIntosh’s voice crackled over his tactical radio. “Someone’s been having a bad day.”
Another crackle over the radio. Jock Gordon this time. “Just hope it isn’t us before sunset.”
“Aye,” said Will.
Overhead, the contrails of aerospace fighters showed against the blue of the sky. The air-power of both sides was meeting in combat high under the heavens. From time to time, the black burst of an exploding missile showed against the few clouds. Once an aircraft fell, trailing smoke, to land out of sight to the south.
“No help from them,” Will said. “They have their own war going.”
“They never are much help,” Lexa replied over the radio. “Their brains don’t function below a thousand meters.”
Already, Will could see signs of trouble in the Highlanders own ranks. Only the hovercraft, making their forward progress above the ground rather than on it, were still advancing untroubled, and those vehicles were now slowing to allow the tracked and wheeled vehicles to keep up. The Shandras, with their big wheels, were doing well enough, except for throwing up gouts of semiliquid mud that splashed and caked on the vehicle’s superstructure and rider both. Will’s uniform, that had been clean and crisply pressed at the start of the morning, now was dark brown and plastered to his body. The treaded tanks were caked with mud as well; they were in bad shape, their treads churning, their forward motion slowed to a crawl as they lurched from semisolid ground to semiliquid mire.
“This stuff sucks, Sarge,” said the soldier on the Shandra next to him.
“It’s mud, Corporal,” Will said. “It’s supposed to suck.”
“How do you think the ’Mechs are doing?”
Will scanned the area with his binoculars. “Can’t see any,” he said. “I think they’re away to the north of us.”
The ground underfoot was tolerable enough when the Shandra could manage to be the first vehicle to cross it. It was when they tried to cross the ruts left by some other, heavier vehicle that the going got slow and treacherous. Once the members of Will’s platoon found a Schmitt tank up to its hull in mud, wheels spinning, unable to gain traction, with a pair of Jousts ahead of it trying to pull it out with chains.
“Are things as bad where you are as they are where we are?” Lexa asked over the tactical radio.
“We still have our rifles, and we still have our legs,” Will replied. “The poor bloody infantry. Nothing stops us.”
“Right,” said Lexa. “Nothing.”
37
Belgorod
Terra
Prefecture X
April 3134; local spring
Farther to the west, Captain Bishop in her Pack Hunter was facing heavy going of her own. She was well ahead of the Highland lines and moving on west as fast as she could—which in her case wasn’t fast at all.
Heat was slowly building up in her ’Mech as though she were running flat out on concrete or packed earth at one hundred nineteen kilometers per hour and firing away; her real speed over the muddy ground was well under fifty. At just thirty tons, the Pack Hunter’s relatively light weight was the only thing that kept her from sinking to the waist in the low-lying areas.
“How are you doing, ma’am?” she called out to the Countess of Northwind over the command circuit.
“Hanging in here,” Tara Campbell replied. “You shouldn’t have any trouble finding me. I’ve sent up a flare.”
“I’m not worried about me finding you. I’m worried that the Steel Wolves are going to find you first.”
“It’s all right, Captain,” Tara Campbell replied. “I’ve done what I came here
to do.”
“You certainly have not, ma’am,” Captain Bishop replied. “You came here to save Terra from the Steel Wolves—and the day is only beginning.”
The burning hulk of Ezekiel Crow’s Blade now came into sight, a tangled mass of broken and twisted metal flung down in the midst of a circle of devastation. The hulking, hunch-shouldered form of Tara Campbell’s Hatchetman stood motionless above it. From this distance, the scars left by the artillery barrage that had penned Crow in and forced him to stand up to the Hatchetman’s ax showed up clearly against the fresher ground both within the ring and without.
Captain Bishop sprinted to the edge of the churned-up area and fired her jump jets. She couldn’t take the Pack Hunter over the encircling mud in a single jump, but five jumps should just about do it. She hoped.
Her heat efficiency was good.
Five jumps. She could do it.
Anastasia Kerensky strode eastward in her Ryoken II and felt like singing. The day was fair, all her most cherished plans were coming to fruition, and her enemies had all but lined themselves up to do her honor. Even the lingering soreness from the knife wound that had nearly gutted her at the Saffel station had been washed away by the battle-generated adrenaline rush.
She checked her sensors and readouts, then looked to her right and left along the battle line. All was still well. The Steel Wolves were advancing along with her, sweeping toward the Highlanders in a huge metal wave over the winter-brown fields of Russia.
The spectacle reminded her of stories she’d heard about the knights of old, who rode at one another with lances leveled and fought until one or the other had measured out his length on the ground.
The Countess of Northwind and I are like that, she thought. We will see who is still alive and on horseback after the meeting.
She took the Ryoken II forward, and the earth quaked under her feet. The long lines of IndustrialMechs, armored vehicles, and infantry squads followed after her. She did not think she had ever been happier.
“Anyone have a fix on the Countess of Northwind’s ’Mech?” she asked over the command link. “Or on the Blade?”
“Aerial reconnaissance puts them eight klicks ahead, on your right.”
“I will head up in that direction and see for myself,” Anastasia said.
“Messages are coming in from the heavy armor, Galaxy Commander. They report slow going. Tracked vehicles are bogging down.”
“Our tracked vehicles or theirs?” she asked.
“Presumably both.”
“Very well. Relay these orders to all units: Tracked and wheeled vehicles, find tactically significant terrain. Tops of knolls, ridgelines, whatever will give you protection or increase your fields of fire. Stand fast. Hover vehicles, move up. I want hovers swinging wide, north and south. Come around to attack the Highlanders from the flanks and rear.”
Acknowledgments poured in from the Stars and Trinaries of armor. She continued giving orders, “Infantry and ’Mechs, right up the middle. Make contact, keep contact. Press contact. Do not let the Highlanders rest for a moment.”
Acknowledgments were still coming in from the outlying units when she saw the column of black smoke in the sky up ahead. That would be where the Countess of Northwind had fought Ezekiel Crow. She turned the Ryoken II’s footsteps in that direction. The closer she drew to the scene of that battle, the muddier and harder to navigate the terrain around her became.
She spotted a ’Mech up ahead. No, two ’Mechs. Sensors identified them as a Pack Hunter and a Hatchetman. The burned-out hulk of a third ’Mech lay on the ground beside them.
“I know you,” Anastasia said. “Countess.”
As she spoke, an SM1 tank destroyer topped a rise on the far side to the east. She sent a burst of particle projector cannon fire in its direction; the tank destroyer reversed course and scuttled out of sight back behind the ridge. Anastasia ignored it as not worthy of her further attention. Instead, she keyed on her comm set.
“Hello, Countess,” she said. “Surrender to me now and I will send you home with honor.”
“No, thank you, Galaxy Commander,” came Tara Campbell’s voice over the radio. “You surrender to me, or I’ll send you back to Tigress in a box.”
“Neither one of us is given to making idle threats,” observed Anastasia. “This could get complicated.”
She fired a pair of missiles across the intervening ground, one for each ’Mech.
“Unless my scouts and my sensors misinform me,” she continued, punctuating her remarks with blasts from her particle cannon, “both you and your friend over there are damaged, not to mention low on ammo and cut off from your troops.”
“I hate to disillusion you,” Campbell replied. “But you’re wrong.”
Hatchetman and Pack Hunter fired at once, laser and particle cannon. The mixed fire struck Anastasia’s Ryoken II with double intensity. The Pack Hunter jumped toward her. Anastasia fired another pair of missiles, trying to ruin the Pack Hunter’s forward leap.
At the same time, she saw the Hatchetman jumping away from her, heading east.
“Running out on me, are you?” Anastasia said, and put her Ryoken II into a trot around the edge of the plowed-up ground. Even here at the outermost perimeter of the circle, her ’Mech was sinking into the earth up to the ankles with every step she took.
Horrible terrain, she thought. But it ties them down as much as it does us.
Over the Steel Wolves’ private command circuit she ordered, “I want some tank destroyers and tactical missile carriers up here. Guide on my location. We have a chance to end this battle here and now.”
“Galaxy Commander,” the voice at the other end said, “the scouts you sent away southward have returned with word. The DropShips have opened. We have mercenaries on our right flank.”
“Who?”
“The leader is riding a Jupiter.”
“No problem,” she said. “Jack Farrell is the only merc I know of who rides a Jupe. They are friends.”
“Galaxy Commander, they have destroyed five of our vehicles already. I doubt that they are friends.”
“Not according to their current contract, at any rate,” she said. There was no point in resenting mercenaries for doing what they were paid to do—but it did present a problem. “Continue bringing the JES and SM1 up to this location. I am going to swing south to take a look.”
She put the Ryoken II into a trot and headed away to the south.
“I hate to leave a fight unfinished,” she called back to the Hatchetman and the Pack Hunter on the all-frequency channel. “But I have important things to deal with elsewhere. We will finish this later.”
38
Belgorod
Terra
Prefecture X
April 3134; local spring
“What was that all about?” Captain Bishop wanted to know, as Anastasia’s Ryoken II turned and sprinted away to the south. “She was getting herself all psyched and ready for a bit of two-on-one action, and then she just breaks off and leaves.”
“Who knows?” Tara Campbell replied. “Considering that this is Anastasia Kerensky we’re talking about, the only thing we can be sure of is that she wasn’t scared.”
“You’re probably right, ma’am,” Captain Bishop said. “She isn’t nearly sane enough to be scared. Unlike some of us, who I have to tell you are getting saner by the minute.”
“I’m practically a textbook picture of sanity myself,” Tara Campbell said. “And I’m getting reports of fighting up and down the line. What do you think are the odds that Kerensky targeted us for her people before she took off?”
“Pretty good, ma’am.”
“I don’t see anything but small stuff around here at the moment,” Tara Campbell admitted. “But ’Mechs will go down under small stuff if there’s enough of it in the air, and I’m sure that Anastasia called in as much as she could.”
“And then took off,” said Captain Bishop. “We still don’t know what that was all about.”
“My guess? She went looking for a ’Mech to fight.”
“We’ve got ’Mechs right here,” Bishop protested.
“Somebody else has brought along bigger ones, then,” Tara Campbell said. “If I had to guess, I’d say that means One-Eyed Jack’s in town.”
“What the hell—sorry, ma’am—is that merc bastard doing here?”
“What mercenaries do, most likely,” said Tara Campbell. “Earning his pay. He’s a loaded weapon, and somebody’s pointed him at Anastasia this time, and not at us. So long as he stays bought, that is.”
“He’ll keep to the letter of his contract,” was Bishop’s considered opinion. “Of course, there’s no rule that says he has to tell anyone exactly what his contract is.”
“And when you shake hands with him, count your fingers afterward,” Tara Campbell agreed. “But if he’s the only advantage we’ve got, we’ll make the best of him while we’ve got it. Now, listen, whatever Anastasia whistled up to take care of us is going to be here soon. I think we can ambush it.”
“How? There isn’t any cover for miles in any direction.”
“Just do what I tell you.”
39
Belgorod
Terra
Prefecture X
April 3134; local spring
Agroup of Steel Wolves shot over the low crest of a rise to the west of the muddy ground where Tara Campbell had devastated Ezekiel Crow: Three SM1 tank destroyers, their hungry autocannons seeking prey, a Scimitar MKII tank providing close-in support, and a JES tactical missile carrier with medium-range six-packs studding its body, ready to deliver a devastating volley into any armor or ’Mech.
The hover vehicles did not care about the churned-up ground. Their powerful fans could carry them across water or sand, mud or stone. Ahead of them, bright in their infrared sights, the Countess of Northwind’s Hatchetman strode back toward the Highlander lines. The ’Mech was moving at a slow, deliberate pace, its power plant clearly on the verge of an overheat shutdown.
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