23

The New Barracks

Tara, Northwind

June, 3133; local summer

Tara Campbell was asleep in the Prefect’s quarters in the New Barracks when the wall speaker buzzed. She came fully awake in an instant when a voice began speaking immediately without waiting for an acknowledgment—an override at this hour never meant good news.

“Prefect Campbell, please come to the Combat Information Center.”

Another buzz from the speaker, and the voice repeated, “Prefect Campbell, please come to the Combat Information Center.”

Tara was already out of bed and scrambling for her clothes. “On my way.”

She dressed in haste: plain working uniform, first item in the closet and the easiest to grab; enough underwear to be decent; hair finger combed and cleared back from her face with a stretch knit band. She was halfway to the Fort and the CIC before she realized that she was wearing not regulation shoes and socks, but her favorite pair of ancient bedroom slippers.

The hell with it, she thought. Northwind could survive the knowledge that its Countess wore fleece-lined tartan moccasins.

She wouldn’t be the only person who’d gotten an unexpected wake-up call, either. The courtyards and corridors of the Fort were full of people in uniform heading places with purposeful speed. Alarms clamored in the halls and stairwells as she made her way down to the bombproof chamber in the depths of the Fort that housed the Combat Information Center for Northwind’s local defense forces.

When she reached her destination, Colonel Michael Griffin, whose quarters were closer to CIC than hers, was already there, pacing back and forth amid the uniformed specialists who monitored the display screens on CIC’s array of communications and data consoles. Ezekiel Crow had VIP housing in a distant wing of the Fort complex; he arrived at a run forty-five seconds after Tara. The Paladin’s normally flawless uniform tunic and trousers looked tired and wrinkled. Tara could only guess that the nearest complete set to hand when the summons came had been the ones he’d taken off the evening before.

“What’s the word?” Tara asked Griffin as soon as she’d caught her breath.

“Steel Wolf DropShips have entered the system,” the Colonel said. “They’ve been taking out our surveillance and weapons platforms as they go. The Far Point observation post reported their presence and then went dead.”

“Good on Far Point for getting the message through,” said Tara.

That brief accolade was all that she could afford to give the station and its people at the moment. If they weren’t dead already, they had a decent chance of being alive to collect their combat pay when the fighting was over. It all depended on whether the Wolves had simply fried the station’s comms and sensors in passing, or taken the time to blow the whole post to hell and gone.

“The Wolves don’t want us tracking them,” Ezekiel Crow said. His features were set and grim; Tara wondered if he was remembering what had happened after the Capellan Confederation descended on Liao. “They want to make us guess where they’re coming down.”

“Then we’ll just have to be ready to jump in any direction,” Tara said. “And make certain our ground-based comms stay good.”

Colonel Griffin frowned. “I don’t like this. All our current intel on the Steel Wolves says Kal Radick is more straightforward than that.”

“Maybe there’s been a change of command,” Ezekiel Crow suggested. “It’s not inconceivable that the Wolves could have produced somebody with enough nerve to challenge Radick for his position, as well as enough of whatever else it takes to beat him.”

Tara filled a mug with strong black tea from CIC’s galley urn and added milk and sugar, using the time to think about what had been said. The Paladin and Colonel Griffin, though less mutually antagonistic than they had been initially, were never going to be the best of friends, and any issue upon which they were in agreement demanded serious consideration. “As of the last DropShip to come in with news from Tigress, Radick was still the man in charge.”

Griffin said, “The ship hit three other worlds in between leaving Tigress and coming here. That’s plenty of time for news to go stale.”

“Assume that the leader is still Radick, then,” Tara said. “But draw up contingency plans in case it’s somebody else.”

Colonel Griffin nodded. “We have intelligence files on most of his prominent or rising subordinate officers. But if Radick’s been supplanted, I think our analysts need to put in a requisition chit for a better grade of crystal ball, because nobody on the list was tagged as a serious threat to the Galaxy Commander’s position.”

“People change,” Tara said. “Maybe somebody on Radick’s staff woke up feeling ambitious one morning and never bothered to let us know.”

Ezekiel Crow looked grave. “Perhaps. Or perhaps this hypothetical person is a wild card in the game, one for whom we have no helpful profiles or contingency plans. We must ready ourselves to deal with the unexpected.”

“Meanwhile,” said Tara, “we can start mobilizing the defense forces. And wait to see where to send them.”

24

Regimental Base near Tara

Northwind

June, 3133; local summer

“Up, up, up!”

The lights snapped on. Will Elliot, thrown out of a sound sleep by the shouted orders and by the strident clamor of the alarm, put up an arm to shield his eyes from the sudden glare. In the same movement he rolled out of his bunk—he knew better by now than to question a Sergeant’s voice.

“Move it, people!” the Sergeant was shouting. The barracks began to fill with the sound of lockers banging open and shut. “On your feet, on the grinder, full kit, combat loadout. Five minutes. We’re burning time, people.”

Will unlocked and raised the base of his bunk. His uniform lay inside. He snapped it on quickly, then pulled on his socks and boots. On impulse, he stuffed an extra pair of clean, dry socks into his outermost pocket. A visible bulge like that would never pass inspection, but Will didn’t think he needed to worry about passing inspection right now.

He closed his locker and left the bunkroom. Once out in the corridor, he joined a stream of other soldiers heading down the passageway to the left, where the armory door stood open. The tight press of so many individuals all heading in the same direction with single-minded intent reminded him of a raft of migratory eels running upstream at spawning time. Eels died when they reached the spawning-beds… maybe that wasn’t such a good thing to be thinking about right now, after all.

Inside the armory, the Gauss rifles waited in their racks.

“Elliot, William A.,” Will said to the armorer as he came up. “Four-nine-one-zero-seven.”

“Here’s your weapon, Elliot,” the armorer said. “Down the passage, draw your charge and your spares.”

“Don’t you want me to sign—”

“No, move it. Next! Pick it up, people!”

Will took his Gauss rifle and held it at trail arms as he walked quickly down the passageway. He didn’t know yet what was happening, but he had a feeling it was serious. This was the first time he hadn’t been required first to sign for his rifle and then inspect it under the armorer’s gaze.

Ahead of him, boxes stacked on one side of the corridor were filled with the metal slugs fired by the infantry’s Thunderstroke Gauss rifles. A Sergeant stood by the open crates.

“Pick up your load. Keep moving,” the Sergeant said.

Will grabbed up the slugs and power packs and stuffed them into the pockets of his battle fatigues. He was halfway down the steps to the parade ground before he realized that he’d automatically stowed the material in the standard pockets and the standard configurations that had been drilled into him in boot camp. Now he understood the reason for that drill, and for how it had been reinforced at the time by the voices of Sergeants in his ears and by the push-ups meted out for the smallest deviation from the standard.