“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 thinking. 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.”