36

Belgorod

Terra

Prefecture X

April 3134; local spring

Will Elliot’s scout-sniper platoon, like those of his fellow Sergeants Jock Gordon and Lexa McIntosh, was mounted on Shandra Advanced Scout Vehicles. Together with the rest of the unarmored Northwind infantry, they were formed up and awaiting the order to advance. Will felt oddly light-headed and impatient; he knew that any moment now the signal for the advance would come, and he could stop anticipating the need for fear and get on with dealing with it.

This fight wasn’t going to be like Red Ledge Pass or the Plains of Tara, all broken terrain and small-unit skirmishes that didn’t resolve into a bigger picture until long afterward. This one was going to be more like one of the springtime mating fights between the big mountain lizards back home, when you got a pair of two-ton reptiles running at each other head-on as fast as they could move. Mountain lizards were stubborn, too. The ramming and clawing usually didn’t stop until one of the combatants fell over and didn’t get back up.

The sooner the battle started, Will thought, the sooner he could quit thinking about things like that.

He cast an eye over the soldiers in his platoon. Most of them looked as scared as he felt, and a lot of them didn’t have two campaigns against the Steel Wolves to keep them anchored.

“Remember,” he said, “if things get heavy, ditch the Shandras and keep going on foot. You’re harder to see and to hit than your scoutcar is.”

Then, between one moment and the next, the waiting ended. Loudspeakers and external communications circuits throughout the Highlander lines came to life with the drone and high-pitched skirl of bagpipes, and Will Elliot gave a sigh of deep relief.

“There’s the advance,” he said to the platoon Corporal. “Let’s go.”

To either side of them on the clear spring morning, the other soldiers of Northwind were heading west. The air vibrated around them with the rumble of motors and the tornadic roar of heavy-duty hoverjets, and the muddy ground shook under the footsteps of the ’Mechs—the Pack Hunter, and the battle-modified Forestry and Mining and Construction ’Mechs that swelled their ranks. At the ends of the extended line, ranks of armored infantry advanced by leapfrogging, jump jets sending one squad forward while their mates covered them, then the jumpers taking defensive positions while those who had been left behind jumped on ahead.

On the horizon to the west, Will spotted a single column of black smoke, and Lexa McIntosh’s voice crackled over his tactical radio. “Someone’s been having a bad day.”

Another crackle over the radio. Jock Gordon this time. “Just hope it isn’t us before sunset.”

“Aye,” said Will.

Overhead, the contrails of aerospace fighters showed against the blue of the sky. The air-power of both sides was meeting in combat high under the heavens. From time to time, the black burst of an exploding missile showed against the few clouds. Once an aircraft fell, trailing smoke, to land out of sight to the south.

“No help from them,” Will said. “They have their own war going.”

“They never are much help,” Lexa replied over the radio. “Their brains don’t function below a thousand meters.”

Already, Will could see signs of trouble in the Highlanders own ranks. Only the hovercraft, making their forward progress above the ground rather than on it, were still advancing untroubled, and those vehicles were now slowing to allow the tracked and wheeled vehicles to keep up. The Shandras, with their big wheels, were doing well enough, except for throwing up gouts of semiliquid mud that splashed and caked on the vehicle’s superstructure and rider both. Will’s uniform, that had been clean and crisply pressed at the start of the morning, now was dark brown and plastered to his body. The treaded tanks were caked with mud as well; they were in bad shape, their treads churning, their forward motion slowed to a crawl as they lurched from semisolid ground to semiliquid mire.

“This stuff sucks, Sarge,” said the soldier on the Shandra next to him.

“It’s mud, Corporal,” Will said. “It’s supposed to suck.”

“How do you think the ’Mechs are doing?”

Will scanned the area with his binoculars. “Can’t see any,” he said. “I think they’re away to the north of us.”

The ground underfoot was tolerable enough when the Shandra could manage to be the first vehicle to cross it. It was when they tried to cross the ruts left by some other, heavier vehicle that the going got slow and treacherous. Once the members of Will’s platoon found a Schmitt tank up to its hull in mud, wheels spinning, unable to gain traction, with a pair of Jousts ahead of it trying to pull it out with chains.

“Are things as bad where you are as they are where we are?” Lexa asked over the tactical radio.

“We still have our rifles, and we still have our legs,” Will replied. “The poor bloody infantry. Nothing stops us.”

“Right,” said Lexa. “Nothing.”

37

Belgorod

Terra

Prefecture X

April 3134; local spring

Farther to the west, Captain Bishop in her Pack Hunter was facing heavy going of her own. She was well ahead of the Highland lines and moving on west as fast as she could—which in her case wasn’t fast at all.

Heat was slowly building up in her ’Mech as though she were running flat out on concrete or packed earth at one hundred nineteen kilometers per hour and firing away; her real speed over the muddy ground was well under fifty. At just thirty tons, the Pack Hunter’s relatively light weight was the only thing that kept her from sinking to the waist in the low-lying areas.

“How are you doing, ma’am?” she called out to the Countess of Northwind over the command circuit.

“Hanging in here,” Tara Campbell replied. “You shouldn’t have any trouble finding me. I’ve sent up a flare.”

“I’m not worried about me finding you. I’m worried that the Steel Wolves are going to find you first.”

“It’s all right, Captain,” Tara Campbell replied. “I’ve done what I came here to do.”

“You certainly have not, ma’am,” Captain Bishop replied. “You came here to save Terra from the Steel Wolves—and the day is only beginning.”

The burning hulk of Ezekiel Crow’s Blade now came into sight, a tangled mass of broken and twisted metal flung down in the midst of a circle of devastation. The hulking, hunch-shouldered form of Tara Campbell’s Hatchetman stood motionless above it. From this distance, the scars left by the artillery barrage that had penned Crow in and forced him to stand up to the Hatchetman’s ax showed up clearly against the fresher ground both within the ring and without.

Captain Bishop sprinted to the edge of the churned-up area and fired her jump jets. She couldn’t take the Pack Hunter over the encircling mud in a single jump, but five jumps should just about do it. She hoped.

Her heat efficiency was good.

Five jumps. She could do it.

Anastasia Kerensky strode eastward in her Ryoken II and felt like singing. The day was fair, all her most cherished plans were coming to fruition, and her enemies had all but lined themselves up to do her honor. Even the lingering soreness from the knife wound that had nearly gutted her at the Saffel station had been washed away by the battle-generated adrenaline rush.

She checked her sensors and readouts, then looked to her right and left along the battle line. All was still well. The Steel Wolves were advancing along with her, sweeping toward the Highlanders in a huge metal wave over the winter-brown fields of Russia.