“Because Highway 66 is their best road through the mountains to Tara,” Will said. “Further north there’s Breakbone Pass, but that adds another two or three days to the trip even if the pass is clear—and I’ve known Breakbone to shut down for snow on the road as late as July or even August. Golden Gap to the south is a year-round road, but it’s even farther out of their way than Breakbone. No, this is where they have to come through. Right here in Red Ledge Pass.”

Unlike Jock, who was still looking dubious, Lexa appeared more eager than sensible. “Here? We fight them here?”

“No,” Will said. “Here is where we leave the Fox. From this point on, we’ll go on foot. A single man or woman is a lot harder to see in the woods than a machine.”

Jock heaved his gear out of the back of the Fox. “And has a lot less chance of stopping a ’Mech.”

Will shouldered his own pack and pulled his Gauss rifle out of the vehicle. “We don’t have to stop ’Mechs. We spot ’Mechs, and we tell the people who can stop ’Mechs where to go find them. And we won’t accomplish either one of those things by staying with the Fox.”

“As long as we don’t forget where we left it,” Jock said. He was still rummaging through the supplies in the rear of the vehicles, including the box that Lexa had scrounged before they left camp. “Six blocks demo charge. Det cord. Gauss power packs and ammo. Right then.” He put the items into his rucksack as he named them. “Where to now?”

“That way,” Will said. He pointed back uphill to where red-tinged bareface, seeming to glow where it was touched by the setting sun, rose above the loose rocks and scrub conifers that covered the lower slopes. “Up in the saddle there, we can see down the pass in both directions. And that’s the way the Wolves are going to approach, if they’re being sensible.”

“The Wolves?” Lexa asked. “If you ask me, the Wolves are crazy. If they were sensible, they wouldn’t have bothered coming to Northwind in the first place.”

“She has a point, Will,” Jock said.

“Well, maybe they aren’t sensible,” Will conceded. “Just the same, if they’re bringing vehicles through the mountains, they’ll have to come along here. But us, we’re walking. So we can go wherever we want.”

“Then I want to go out for a drink,” Lexa said.

“We’ll have drinks together afterward,” Will promised. “All three of us, and I’m buying the first round. But right now we have a job to do. The Wolves are going to have people ranging out ahead of their column and off the marked roads, doing the same kind of thing that we’re doing. As soon as we run into one of those units, we’ll know that the main body is coming up not far behind.”

Jock said, “I hear that their infantry are some kind of specially bred supersoldier types.”

“Elementals, they call them,” said Will. “I saw a tri-vid special on them once.”

“I wouldn’t mind meeting one of them someday,” Lexa said, in tones of lascivious curiosity. “On a purely social basis, that is.”

“You’d like to meet anybody on a purely social basis,” Jock said.

“I’ll have you know I draw the line at pimps and lawyers… I wonder if the Wolves send those special-built guys out scouting, or do they save them for the big push?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Will firmly. “We have one thing on our side that the Steel Wolves and their fancy custom-made supersoldiers don’t.”

“And that is?” asked Lexa.

“Local knowledge,” Will said. “The Wolves are going to be navigating by offworld maps and scanned images taken from space. Their instruments aren’t going to be much help to them once they get into the pass, and they don’t have a trained wilderness guide along to show them the way and hold their hands during the frightening parts.”

33

Red Ledge Pass

Bloodstone Range of the Rockspire Mountains

Northwind

June, 3133; local summer

The communications rig in Star Colonel Nicholas Darwin’s Condor tank crackled into life. A moment longer, and Darwin heard the voice of the radar operator back at the DropShip landing zone on the salt flats.

“Negative sign of aircraft,” the operator reported. “All quiet here at DropShip base.”

Another voice came over the rig—Anastasia Kerensky, keeping a close eye on the armored column she had tasked with leading the way through the pass.

“Good,” she said. “Keep it that way. These are your orders: If it flies, it dies.”

Star Captain Greer spoke up over the column’s private command circuit. “What are we expecting by way of resistance?”

“Not much,” Darwin told his second in command. “Partisans at best. The available intelligence says that the Highlanders are unlikely to have any heavy ’Mechs—or ’Mechs of any kind—close enough to the pass to take up a blocking position.”

“Are you certain of that intelligence?” Greer asked.

“Nothing is ever certain,” Darwin said. “But I feel confident enough in it that I willingly cede to you the honor of going in first. Take point, full speed.”

“Sir,” Star Captain Greer replied, and his tank surged forward, passing Darwin’s Condor—with some difficulty, since the road was narrow—to take up his new position at the head of the column.

“Trouble, Star Colonel,” the sensor operator in Darwin’s Condor said a few minutes later. “Our magnetic anomaly detectors are showing us nothing but garbage.”

“The scouts predicted it,” Darwin said. “All this red rock is magnetite and hematite ores, and they throw off the sensors. Run series checks and do your best to compensate.”

“Yes, sir.”

Darwin climbed back to the Condor’s hatch and stepped so that his upper body protruded from the top of the vehicle. Risky, if a sniper was around, but with the sensors no longer functioning reliably, it was the only real way to see what was happening outside.

“Series checks show interference consistent with geologicals,” the sensor operator said after a few minutes. “The receivers are acting correctly.”

“Not a thing we can do about it, then,” said Darwin.

“No, sir. But to the sensors, one heavy piece of metal is much like another. There is a chance that we could miss an enemy ’Mech in all this noise.”

“If the enemy does have a ’Mech out there, it can only stay hidden so long as it does not fire its main weapons,” Darwin said. “If the ’Mech fires anything, the signature will light up like sunrise on the infrared. Now pick up the pace. We have places still to go, and very little light.”

“Will we be running at night, too, sir?”

“We will be, Warrior.”

Nicholas Darwin surveyed the landscape around him. The sun had gone down behind the mountains already, and the evening was growing both dark and surprisingly chilly for the season. The wind that blew down from the mountaintops had passed over cold mountain streams, and over shaded snowbanks that might last all summer without melting. Those of his soldiers who had worn lightweight uniforms because of the heat on the salt flats would be shivering now. He hoped he didn’t lose any of them to hypothermia and their own stupidity. The strike force could ill afford to take the loss.

“We will be,” he said again. “We will run all day, all night, and all day again if we have to, until Northwind is ours.”