“What do you mean—‘evacuate’?” she demanded. “Do you honestly think we’re so outclassed it’ll come to that?”
“I don’t want anyone to come home to find their parents shot in their beds,” he replied, tight-lipped. He looked up at her then, his blue eyes intent and blazing. “Yes, move them out. All the available transport that isn’t needed for the fighting—that isn’t crucial to the fighting—should be ferrying noncombatants away.”
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“If you want to sleep at night afterward.”
“I’ll give the order.”
He looked back down at his feet, as if embarrassed by his own sudden vehemence. “Thank you,” he said quietly.
“It’s all right,” she said. There was an awkward silence. Then Tara cleared her throat and consulted the data pad again. “The aerospace fighter wing out of Halidon will be overhead by dawn if they can make it through at all. The weather doesn’t look good.”
“Radick and his Steel Wolves aren’t going to give us until dawn,” Crow said. “After fighting their way through the pass, they’ll be too hungry for that.”
“We’ll do what we can.” Tara made some adjustments to the data pad and called up a rough, diagrammatic map. She passed the data pad over to Crow, saying, “I know a good place to do this. Halfway from here to the mountains. Look—I’ve got it marked.”
Crow took the data pad and glanced over the contents of the display. “What’s the ground like?”
“Low rolling hills, mostly,” Tara said. “We can draw up our forces along this north-south ridgeline, with the tanks hull-down just over the crest. There’s a stream along the bottom of the ridge that might slow down some of their tracked vehicles.”
“Speaking of slowing them down… has there been any new word from Colonel Griffin?”
She shook her head. “You were there for the last one.”
“Then we have to assume that he has fallen, and make our plans accordingly.”
“He promised me the time,” she said. “He’ll deliver it whether he’s fallen or not.”
She forced herself to stand up straight and pull her shoulders back, in what she hoped was a convincing facsimile of a ready-for-anything posture. “And if his time isn’t going to be wasted, you and I need to get into our ’Mechs and start the army moving.”
46
Plains north of Tara
Northwind
June, 3133; local summer
The approaching storm brought darkness unnaturally early to the plains north of the capital. Lowering clouds obscured the sunset and hid the twilight stars from view. Shifting, unpredictable gusts of wind disturbed the still air at irregular intervals, throwing up dust and leaves into miniature whirlwinds that swirled briefly in the headlight glare of passing vehicles, then fell apart.
The Northwind Highlanders had set up their advance command post in the gymnasium of an abandoned consolidated secondary school. The small farming and grazing communities of the plain had emptied out upon hearing that the Wolves were in the northern pass; the capital was packed with refugees.
If we fail now, Tara Campbell thought with an inward shiver, the whole city is vulnerable. And we cannot evacuate everyone in time. No matter how hard we try.
She said nothing aloud, however; Michael Griffin and Ezekiel Crow, who stood with her at the communications center—a fine name for what was in reality no more than a collection of modular consoles set up at one end of the gymnasium underneath the game clock and the scoreboard—both understood the situation without having her betray her own nerves by mentioning it. And Crow, at least, who knew firsthand what could happen when enemy troops ran wild in a city, would not appreciate having those memories stirred up without need.
One of the consoles beeped and spat out a printed sheet. Michael Griffin retrieved the paper and scanned it, frowning. Griffin had sustained several broken ribs in the last minutes of the battle for Red Ledge Pass, and his Koshi would lie on the field of battle until one side or the other won the war and brought the crippled ’Mech in for repairs, but he had refused to leave the front lines.
“Meteorology reports bad weather coming,” Griffin said.
“We didn’t need Meteorology to tell us that,” Tara said. “Do they have anything more specific?”
“There’s a major storm system coming up from the southeast; it should hit the local area around dawn. The forecast calls for high winds, heavy rain, thunderstorm activity, and localized flooding.”
Ezekiel Crow said, “That’s not good weather for ’Mechs and armor.”
“That’s not good weather for anything,” Tara said. She tugged distractedly at a strand of her yellow hair—when she was a little girl, she’d believed that the harder she pulled, the better she thought, and in times of stress her fingers believed it still—and came to a decision. She turned to the communications tech on duty and said, “Broadcast a message on the open channel. Tell Prefect Kal Radick that we want to parley.”
Griffin stared at her. “We want what?”
The Colonel was visibly taken aback by her proposal, as was Ezekiel Crow. Tara made haste to reassure them.
“I want to propose a temporary ceasefire until the storm system passes. That’s all. Fighting conditions aside, we can always use the extra time.”
The signal went out, and within minutes, Tara and Ezekiel Crow were in a Fox armored car, heading out for the designated meeting place—a set of map coordinates in the midst of open ground not held by either army. The drive from their temporary headquarters took close to an hour, even at speed. Nobody wanted the leader of the Steel Wolves any closer to the Highlander lines than that, even for a parley, and by the time they reached the gridposition, it was full night. They exited the Fox, leaving all the vehicle’s lights on and blinking as per the arranged signal, and waited.
The Wolves were prompt. Only a few minutes passed before Tara saw a vehicle approaching from the north—another Fox armored car, this one bearing Steel Wolf insignia. The Fox came to a halt a few meters off and two people got out, a woman and a man. They drew closer—and Tara repressed shock, keeping her face still with effort.
The man was not Kal Radick. Tara knew enough about Steel Wolf gear and uniforms to see that he wore the insignia of a Star Colonel, but not that of a MechWarrior. The woman, though—with her dangerous good looks, nobody was ever going to call that one the Angel of Anyplace, or try to make her over into a recruiting-poster darling, and for an instant Tara felt a wash of pure, irrational envy. Things in the Steel Wolves had clearly changed faster than the Highlanders’ intelligence reports could keep up with, because the woman was the one in charge.
“Galaxy Commander,” Tara said. It was a good thing, she thought, that she’d trained in diplomacy from toddlerhood on up. She could keep a calm face and a polite voice no matter what the circumstances. “Am I to infer, then, that Kal Radick no longer leads the Steel Wolves?”
The woman gave a curt nod. “You are. I am Anastasia Kerensky.”
Hell, thought Tara. A Kerensky. Stay calm, and don’t ask what happened to Radick. She probably cut his throat and ate him boiled for breakfast.
Her answering nod was as brief as Kerensky’s had been; perhaps even a fraction briefer. When she spoke, her voice was cool and steady. “I am Tara Campbell, Countess of Northwind and Prefect of Prefecture III. My companion is Paladin Ezekiel Crow.”
Crow had donned plain civilian attire for the parley, thus avoiding rank insignia entirely—a tactful move, ensuring that he did not undercut Tara’s authority as Countess and Prefect. Polite as ever, he bowed and said, “Galaxy Commander Kerensky.”
She nodded. “Paladin.”
Tara looked at Anastasia Kerensky’s male companion, the Star Colonel. Her expectant expression did no good; Kerensky didn’t provide any identification. If the man resented the omission, it didn’t show.