A Silence in the Heavens (mda-4, tpgt-1) by Martin Delrio

Author:Martin Delrio [Delrio, Martin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sf_action
ISBN: 0451459326
Publisher: Roc
Published: 2003-10-12T04:00:00+00:00

25

The Fort

City of Tara, Northwind

June, 3133; local summer

“The DropShips are down.”

Tara Campbell knew that she must have slept at least occasionally during the almost two weeks it had taken for the Steel Wolves to make it from the jump point to Northwind’s planetary surface. She wasn’t wearing the tartan bedroom slippers anymore, for one thing, although she couldn’t remember either going back to her quarters or changing uniforms. What rest she’d gotten, however, hadn’t come often enough or lasted long enough to keep the weariness out of her voice.

She didn’t even want to contemplate what she looked like. Michael Griffin and Ezekiel Crow hadn’t gotten any more sleep than she had, and in the dim light of the Combat Information Center—illuminated at the moment only by a map display showing the entire continent of New Lanark—both men appeared drawn and haggard. The pale light made the circles under their eyes seem even deeper.

“It was bound to come to this eventually,” Crow said. “The Senate and the Exarch knew it. Their only questions were who would attack and when—and whether Northwind could stand against the assault.”

“They’ll find out soon enough what the Highlanders are made of,” Tara told him.

“Flesh and blood,” Colonel Griffin said. He was pacing again, his hands clasped behind his back. “Entirely too much of which will have to be spilled, no matter what happens.”

“Do we know yet if it’s Radick who’s brought the Wolves to this party?” Crow asked.

“They’ve been canny with their message traffic,” Griffin said. “What little chatter we’ve managed to intercept doesn’t refer to the Galaxy Commander by name, only by rank.”

Tara shook her head. “That’s not like Kal Radick. He likes his Bloodname too much to keep quiet about it.”

“How sure are you of that?” Griffin asked.

“I’m not sure of anything,” Tara admitted. “Except for this: The enemy is down on the surface of my world, they want it, and they can’t have it.”

Crow pointed to the map of New Lanark, where a mass of flashing red glyphs—the symbols for grounded DropShips, for known troop concentrations, and for observed ’Mech and vehicle types—clustered together on the salt flats west of the Bloodstone Range of the Rockspires.

“From where the Wolves are now,” he said, “they can strike through the mountains here, at Red Ledge Pass, then take this city, and the rest of the world with it, in the space of a day. Our time to stop them may be measured in hours.”

“Then we’ll have to meet them here,” Tara said. “Outside the city.” She manipulated the screen to put a ring of blue light around the capital. “There’s our line: just past weapons range from the built-up areas.”

“It’s going to take ’Mechs to stop them,” Griffin said, still pacing. “And the Tyson and Varney rush retrofits only came out of the construction hangars the day before yesterday.”

“How long will it take them to get from the factory to the battlefront?” Tara asked.

Griffin contemplated the map with the expression of a man doing sums in his head and not liking the answers.

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