by Unknown
“Aye,” said Jock.
Another drawn out silence followed. Finally Will said, “I think we ought to get at least a look at the Wolves before we run.”
“Yeah,” said Lexa. “I think we should.”
“Aye,” said Jock again. “But how are we going to do it?”
“Same as before,” Will said. “We take the Fox as close as we can without getting burned; then we get out and walk.” He thought further, and added, “One of us’ll have to wait on the road with the Fox’s hover jets running. We might need to get out in a hurry.”
Lexa and Jock nodded agreement to the plan, such as it was, and they soon had the Fox armored car back on the road. With Jock at the wheel, they drove to within a few hundred meters of the timberline. At that point the road ended except for a footpath—not much more than a blazed trail, and one that would have been useless in the dark if Will hadn’t known the way.
Will took his Gauss rifle from the Fox. Lexa hesitated briefly, then set aside her laser rifle in favor of the heavy particle gun she’d brought with her that morning.
“More firepower,” she explained.
“Can’t hurt,” Will agreed. “Jock, you get the armored car pointed back down the way we came, and keep it warmed up and ready to go.”
Lexa and Will took the footpath up to the timberline and across the bareface, then belly-crawled the last few meters. Will said, “This is as far as we ought to go. Any nearer the road and we’ll be out of cover. We’re looking at a blind turn down there as it is—anyone coming through won’t actually be within range until we’re almost on top of them.”
“Maybe you’re looking at a blind curve,” said Lexa. “For all that I can see, this entire mountain is as dark as the inside of a goat.”
“I’ve been here before. That’s the secret. I used to take parties of rock climbers through Red Ledge in the summertime, back before the HPG net went down and the offworld tourists stopped coming.”
“You’re kidding. Rock climbers?”
“God’s honest truth,” said Will. “The road’s about fifty meters ahead of us and fifty meters down, and the walls of the pass at that point are bare rock and go straight up. The rock climbers liked the challenge. They’d spend all day pulling themselves up the cliff face by their fingernails, and I’d go around by the trail and meet them at the top with a nice hot dinner.”
“I wish someone would meet us with a nice hot dinner,” said Lexa. “Are you sure we don’t want to get a bit closer? We aren’t going to get a real good look from here.”
“This is close enough. We’ll hear the Wolves a long time before we ever get a chance to see them.”
Time passed. With the sky covered in clouds, Will found it hard to estimate hours and minutes. He considered illuminating the face of his watch long enough to check, but reminded himself that an enemy sniper would only need one flash of light in the dark to pinpoint his location. After a while, he became aware of a low, almost subliminal rumbling—a distant noise that was almost more a shuddering in the ground and a tremor in the air than anything actually heard.
“Here they come,” he said. “Sounds like they’re pushing it.”
“Top speed, in the dark? Somebody sure has guts.”
“Nobody ever said the Wolves were cowards,” Will said.
“Not more than once, anyway,” Lexa agreed. “This bunch—how many of them are there, do you think?”
He shrugged, though he knew she couldn’t see the movement in the dark. “Can’t tell. Some kind of advance guard, probably—a noise like that isn’t just a couple of scouts.” A moment later he continued, moved by the same impulse that earlier had rendered him unwilling to turn tail without actually making visual contact with the advancing Wolves. “I think we can throw a scare into them, though—maybe get them to slow down a little.”
“How?”
“Let them come closer. Get the particle gun ready, and when I give the word, blast away with it against that cliff face I was talking about earlier. Try to hit it about twelve meters off the ground. Can you do that in the dark?”
Lexa chuckled. “I can do a lot of things in the dark, soldier. Hitting a rock wall isn’t even going to be one of the tough ones.”
They fell silent again. Will heard Lexa unlimbering the particle gun and settling down into a prone firing position. He had his own Gauss rifle close to hand. The rumbling of the Wolves’ advance grew closer, growing from a faint and steady noise to an enormous and overwhelming one.
Closer, Will exhorted the Wolves privately, as the air filled with the noise of engines and tank treads. Come just a little closer. Just a little more. . . .
“Now.”
He fired his Gauss rifle at random into the dark. Beside him, at the same time, Lexa let fly with the particle gun.
The weapon roared. Its blast hit the red stone of the cliff with a noise of splitting rock, and illuminated the sheer bareface for an instant with a yellow light brighter than the day. Rock shards flew about in all directions like broken glass.
“Time to go now, I think,” Will said as the echoes died. “Leave the Wolves to stew.”
38
Red Ledge Pass
Bloodstone Range of the Rockspire Mountains
Northwind
June, 3133; local summer
Nicholas Darwin’s Condor tank lurched and grumbled along the highway—the narrow two-lane road, to give it a more accurate description—leading along the bottom of Red Ledge Pass. The tank’s hatch was closed, since in the dark night there was no advantage to leaving an observer exposed to possible enemy fire.
The Condor’s interior dimensions left little room for movement; tankers couldn’t afford to be claustrophobes. Darwin watched the display screens from a position bare inches away from the sensor operator’s shoulders.
Garbage and more garbage, he thought in frustration. His own eyes were blinded by the night and the clouded sky, and the sensors that should have augmented or replaced them gave back nothing but bad data—all of it rendered contradictory, fragmentary, or garbled by the high concentration of iron ores in the mountains that hemmed them in on all sides.
At least the road leading through Red Ledge Pass was open and clearly marked. All that the tank column had to do was stay on it, and overwhelm all opposition along it, and in time they would reach the far side of the mountains. And after the mountains, the capital.
The tank’s communications rig broke the silence with its wheebling signal. The comms operator listened over the headset, then turned to Darwin.
“It is a general communication, sir.”
“Put it on.”
The operator toggled the switch. A voice crackled. Bad interference, thought Darwin, those damned rocks again.
“Command,” said the crackling voice, “this is Scout Team Delta.”
“Go ahead, Delta.”
“I wish to report that we have made contact with the enemy.”
“Excellent,” Darwin said. “What is their position?”
“Transmitting encoded grid coordinates now, Star Colonel.” There was a pause, filled with a burst of crackles and high-pitched whistling. “There is one unanticipated problem, sir.”
“What is it, Delta?”
“That Jupiter ’Mech we thought we had finished off, sir? It appears to still be functional. The Highlanders have it holding the pass with infantry support just ahead of us.”
Damn, thought Darwin. Our long-range missiles failed to take it out . . . which means that it waits for us in an entrenched position.
He was careful not to let his expression reflect his chagrin. “You are sure of this?”
“Aff, sir. It discharged its main weapon once while Delta was scouting within several meters of its position. I saw the flash myself.”
“You are coolheaded, Warrior. You did well.”
“Thank you, sir. What do we do now?”
“Hold your position. Do not attack unless ordered. Darwin out.”
He frowned, still thinkin
g. Damn. He most emphatically did not want to take on an entrenched Jupiter BattleMech and its infantry support, not in a narrow pass in the dark. Not when all the advantage lay with the defenders.
To the communications officer, he said, “Pass the word to the entire column: Stand down. We will tackle the enemy ’Mech at first light.” He waited while the signal went out, then said, “Open a channel to Galaxy Commander Kerensky.”
Once again the communications rig crackled and wheebled, and he heard the familiar clear ringing tones, only slightly distorted by the transmission. “Galaxy Commander Anastasia Kerensky here.”
“Star Colonel Nicholas Darwin here. We have a report from the advance scouts. The enemy are holding the narrowest part of the pass with a Jupiter BattleMech, and—unless otherwise directed—I do not intend to squander personnel and equipment trying to take it out in the dark. If we had moonlight, it might be possible.
But we have clouds tonight, and no moon.”
This time there was a long pause. Darwin could imagine Anastasia Kerensky’s frustrated expression, her restless pacing, while she swallowed the bad news. If she asked him to press the attack, he would do so—she was the Galaxy Commander, and a Kerensky, and what she ordered, the Wolves would do.
Finally, once again, he heard Anastasia’s voice. “Understood, Star Colonel. Stand down for the night.”
39
The Fort
City of Tara, Northwind
June, 3133; local summer
The Highlanders’ Combat Information Center lay deep within the hardened bombproof recesses of the Fort.
Ordinary residents of Northwind’s capital city might be frightened out of their sleep by the intermittent flashes and rumblings that came from the direction of the DropPort, where local aerospace defense fighters contended with the Steel Wolves for control of the skies. Down in CIC, however, neither light nor sound could penetrate. Only the flicker of display monitors and the hiss and slide of message printouts falling into receiving trays gave any hint that somewhere outside a battle was raging.
Tara Campbell had been in CIC since before the Steel Wolf DropShips had landed, living on stale sandwiches and mugs of strong sweet tea and listening to the battle reports as they came in. She knew that the figures and the dry summaries didn’t tell it all. Men and women were dying, burning like meteors across the sky above the DropPort; and miles away in Red Ledge Pass, Steel Wolves and Highlanders confronted each other in the dark.
She wished for a moment that she was out there with the troops holding the pass, and that Colonel Griffin had been the one left behind in bombproof safety. She knew from experience that it was much easier to be a junior officer, or even a Colonel, out in the field. Your only worry then was the enemy directly in front of you.
A Prefect, on the other hand, had to worry about everything: the Wolves in the pass, the retrofitted ’Mechs still in the factories, the reserve air cover that had yet to be scraped together from God-knew-where.
The door to the Combat Information Center sighed open, breaking into her exhausted thoughts and admitting Ezekiel Crow. The Paladin was clean-uniformed and freshly shaven. If Tara hadn’t known for a fact that he’d been awake almost as long she had, those minor changes would have done a surprisingly good job of convincing her that he’d shown up alert and well-rested after a full night’s sleep.
Paladins, too, had to worry about everything.
“Countess,” he said, by way of greeting.
Her answering nod was formal and correct, a triumph of training over exhaustion. “Paladin.”
“What’s the status?”
“The Wolves aren’t packing up and going home. But we knew that already.” She mustered enough energy for a smile—the troops, after all, were watching. “The good news is, they seem to have halted for the night.”
Crow came over to join her at the map of Red Ledge Pass displayed on the planning table. The red lights that marked known and conjectured enemy units hadn’t moved in over an hour; she couldn’t remember whether they’d advanced at all while the Paladin had been away from CIC.
Now he studied the map gravely and said, “Rather than trying to force a narrow road in the dark? I’m not sure that I blame them. What they lose in time, they’ll make up for in daylight by being well-rested.”
“You really know how to cheer a woman up, my lord.”
He shook his head regretfully. “Heartening lies aren’t what’s called for at the moment, I’m afraid.”
“Damn. Because I’ve run out of good ones to tell myself.” She gestured at one of the work-stations, currently attended by a young woman in regimental fatigues—Corporal Baker, according to her name tag.
“Meteorology is starting to make unhappy noises about weather patterns to the southeast of here. We could end up fighting in the rain, or worse.”
Crow considered the meteorology screen and the map table, and nodded gravely. “True enough. On the other hand, all that low cloud cover seems likely to discourage attack from the air.”
“Good.” The Clan Wolf aerospace fighters had been yet another factor delaying the combat readiness of the converted Construction- and MiningMechs. Moving the new battle machines out of the factory and into the streets of the city would make them into easy and convenient targets if the Wolves’ air wing wasn’t neutralized first. “Once the skies are safe—”
She fell silent, twisting a strand of her hair around her forefinger as she tried to estimate the point when local air support would have inflicted enough damage on the Wolves that the converted ’Mechs could roll out without taking too many losses. The answer eluded her—the part of her brain that normally handled such calculations with ease was fogged by lack of sleep.
She felt the light touch of a hand on her forearm, and suppressed a start.
Turning her head, she saw that the hand belonged to Ezekiel Crow. The Paladin looked concerned, causing Tara to wonder exactly how much exhaustion she herself betrayed to an outside observer, if the visible signs of it could worry him.
“Prefect,” he said. “A word with you in private?”
Translation, she thought, let’s not disturb the rank and file with this discussion. She nodded and followed Crow out into the empty, dimly lit corridor.
As soon as the door closed behind them, he turned to face her, stopping just inside casual speaking distance—not close enough that a chance passerby might notice and remark on it, but still a change from his usual punctilious formality. This close, she could see the lines of fatigue marking his face, and not even the natural tan of his complexion could hide the dark circles under his eyes.
When he spoke, his voice was blunt but kind.
“Countess, you will be of no use to Northwind tomorrow if you don’t get some sleep tonight.”
“I shouldn’t leave CIC—”
“Let me take over that duty.” He gave her a wry smile. “A Paladin will function as well as a Prefect for reassurance and inspirational purposes, at least for an hour or so.”
The thought of getting some rest was tempting, but she felt obliged to give resistance one more feeble try.
“You need sleep as much as I do.”
“I caught a quick nap in my office earlier—not much, but sufficient. You need to go do the same.”
She was still reluctant, but when she found herself struggling to smother a yawn even as she stood there, she gave in. “All right. But only for a couple of hours. And call me at once if anything changes.”
“Of course,” he said, and stepped back inside CIC.
She didn’t bother going to her quarters in the New Barracks. They were too far away. If she was going to take an hour or so off for sleep, she didn’t want to waste any of it.
Her office—the small temporary office down here in the depths, rather than the personal office in her quarters or the large formal office several levels above her head in the Fort proper—contained a couch, an elderly specimen that might have been intended for the comfort of visitors, but
more than likely was meant to be used as she was planning to use it now. She half dropped, half fell onto the cracked green leather cushions, not bothering to loosen her clothing or take off her shoes, and was asleep within seconds.
40
Eastern slopes of the Bloodstone Range
Rockspire Mountains, Northwind
June, 3133; local summer
The first light of the rising sun touched the eastern foothills of the Bloodstones with a wash of pink. Colonel Michael Griffin awakened at the change in the light; he’d finally caught an hour or so of sleep along toward dawn, wrapped in a sleeping bag on a cot set up by the foot of his Koshi . If the Steel Wolves’ attack came under cover of night, he didn’t intend to waste his time running for the ’Mech in the dark. He hadn’t really expected to be awakened instead by the sky above him paling toward daylight, and the sound of reveille playing over the encampment’s speakers.
“Tea, sir?”
His aide-de-camp, Lieutenant Owain Jones, approached the cot with a steaming mug in either hand. Griffin sat up, accepted one of the mugs, and drank gratefully of the strong, heavily sweetened contents.
“Thank you, Lieutenant.”
“You’re welcome, Colonel.” The early summer mornings at this elevation were chillier than those back at base. Jones—another warm-climate native, like Griffin himself—had his hands wrapped around the mug for warmth as he drank. “So the Wolves didn’t come in the night, after all.”
“Don’t worry, Lieutenant. Now that it’s daylight, they’ll be on the move for sure.”
“For what we are about to receive,” said Jones, “may the Lord make us truly thankful. How do you rate our chances of stopping them?”
“We don’t have to stop them. Just hold them.”
“For how long?”
“Until I tell you it’s been long enough,” Griffin said, and handed back the empty mug.
Lieutenant Jones faded away toward the mess tent, leaving Griffin thoughtful. He had time, he estimated, for catching a quick breakfast and tending to those early-morning personal chores that couldn’t be handled gracefully in the cockpit of a ’Mech. Then he would have to make an address to the troops. He couldn’t say much more to them than he had to Lieutenant Jones, but everyone would expect him to say something, even if they mocked his words later in private. Morale would suffer if he didn’t behave as expected.
