A Silence in the Heavens (11 page)

She set the new development aside for later consideration—once the fighting on Northwind was done, she would have to congratulate Nicholas properly—and continued her talk.

“Here is our overall strategy. If need be, we can change and adapt it to fresh information and changed conditions, but the basic outline is here. Northwind has two DropPorts, one here, near the capital city of Tara”—she indicated a flashing red light on the largest landmass—“and one small port here, on Halidon”—she indicated a second flashing light. “The DropPort for the city of Tara is heavily defended, because it is the place where they expect ships to land.”

She looked around at her assembled commanders and grinned. “So we will not be landing at the main port.

The Halidon DropPort would be the obvious second choice. But it is isolated, and a long way from our main targets. Also, it has a resident aerospace training contingent, and while I doubt the cadets there would count as serious opponents, they could make taking the Halidon DropPort harder than its size is worth.

“So. We bypass the working DropPorts entirely. But here”—she indicated a large blank area on the main continental mass—“on the interior plains of New Lanark, on the opposite side of the Rockspire Mountains from the capital”—a touch of a button, and the mountain range that formed the spine of the continent lit up in shades of green—“are natural salt flats that served in the early days of Northwind’s settlement as the functional equivalent of a DropPort landing field. We will take the DropShips down there. Our aerospace contingent will be taking out the electronic orbital spy satellites, dealing with the aerospace fighters over Tara, and keeping the Highlanders busy on the other side of the mountains.

“Meanwhile, our forces pass through the Rockspires at this point.” She indicated a winding line in red passing through the green of the mountains. “The locals call it Red Ledge Pass. As you can see, it leads through the mountains and out onto the open plains just north of the capital. Once through the Rockspires, we are within a day’s striking range of Tara.

“And once we have Tara,” she concluded, “we have Northwind.”

Northwind, Late Spring 3133

Standing Guard

20

Castle Northwind

Northwind

April, 3133; local spring

C
astle Northwind, official residence of the Counts and Countesses of Northwind, was a big gray stone pseudo-Gothic pile, built by one of the early Northwind Campbells out of nostalgia for similar buildings back on Terra. Unlike its architectural predecessors, this latter-day version wasn’t actually a defensible fortress; Northwind had never gone through a swords-and-armor feudal age that would have required one.

Nevertheless, the castle was an impressive structure, high-walled and many-towered, situated on a green hill above a deep spring-fed highland lake. Banners snapped in the wind that blew across its battlements, and all around the valley that held it rose the gray, glacier-scarred peaks of the northern Rockspires.

The Countess of Northwind and Paladin Ezekiel Crow were at work in the castle solar, a large, airy room at the top of the main tower. Afternoon sunlight streamed in through the leaded-glass panes of the tall windows, illuminating the remains of a working lunch spread out on the central table. The crumbled leftovers of a beef roast wrapped in pastry shared space with file folders and data pads and other administrative debris.

“Didn’t I tell you that we’d get a lot more done if we did our work here instead of in the city?” Tara Campbell said.

“We’ve had fewer interruptions while we’ve been working here, at any rate,” Crow admitted.

“That’s because there isn’t any place in the city where I’m not on the job and available to anyone who needs to see me,” she said. “When I come back to Castle Northwind, I’m at home, and the staff here has known me so long that they’re almost family. They know better than to let people bother me if I don’t want to be bothered.”

“I suppose it’s one of the advantages to growing up in a castle.” He smiled briefly. “Like a princess in one of the old stories.”

“Happily ever after . . . at least until my mother died. Then my father went back to military service, and after that we lived here, there, and everywhere.” She paused a moment to pick up the loose papers on the table and stack them neatly. “Where did you grow up?”

“Liao.”

She looked at him, reminded again that he was older than he appeared. “Oh. Were you there during—”

His expression, always reserved, closed off even more. “During the Massacre? Yes.”

She felt a surge of embarrassment at her own verbal clumsiness. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up painful memories.”

Everybody in The Republic of the Sphere knew the story, after all: how agents of the Capellan Confederation fomented unrest on Liao, making it into a perpetual thorn in the side for The Republic of the Sphere; how a traitor working at Liao’s DropPort had allowed an unauthorized CapCon ship to land; how the streets of Chang-an had run red with blood before the CapCons were done with Liao and The Republic of the Sphere was done with them.

“It’s all right,” he said. “It happened a long time ago. It’s just painful still, sometimes. Both my parents died in the city fighting, during the early days.”

“You were close to your parents?”

“Not close enough, as it turned out,” he said. “I couldn’t get home in time to save them.”

“I can’t imagine. . . .” On impulse, she laid her hand lightly on his arm for a moment before taking it away, and felt his muscles go tense under even that briefest of touches. “My parents are gone, too. Nothing as bad as—as what happened on Liao. But I still miss them.”

The moment was interrupted by a rumbling in the air and a rattling of the glass in the windows. A shadow passed across the clipped green lawn outside.

Ezekiel Crow froze, listening, then relaxed. “VTOL craft going over.”

“Coming down, more likely,” she said. “We’re not on any regular flight paths, and—unfortunately for our continued lack of interruptions—Headquarters knows that I’m here.”

“I don’t hear it landing.”

“There are a couple of densely wooded hills between here and the VTOL pad and that cuts down on the noise pollution and preserves the view.” She pressed the housekeeper’s call button set into the wall by the door. “Mrs. Danvers? Put some tea and some hearty sandwiches on hot standby. I think we’re going to have visitors.”

Their visitor, a quarter-hour later, turned out to be Colonel Michael Griffin. By the time the Colonel arrived in the solar, all evidence of the earlier working lunch had been cleared away and replaced by a porcelain tea service and a platter of sliced bread, meat, and cheese. Griffin filled his plate with the polite concentration of a man who had already missed lunch and was anticipating missing dinner.

“What brings you here in such haste, Colonel?” Tara asked.

“Strategic consultation,” he said. “That’s something best done face-to-face. There’s no telling who’s keeping an ear on electronic transmissions these days.”

Ezekiel Crow looked at him darkly. “Are you suggesting to the Countess that there might be traitors on Northwind?”

Colonel Griffin paused and gave Crow a level glance over the top edge of his tea cup. “I work in intelligence, my lord. Assuming traitors is part of my job.”

Tara, listening, suppressed a sigh. The two of them were doing it again, bristling up at each other like dogs; she wondered if they even realized she noticed.

As if I didn’t have enough work to do, she thought, without the two people I most depend on pushing and sniping at each other every time they’re together in the same room. That was one of the reasons I brought Crow to Castle Northwind to work in the first place, to get him out of Griffin’s way.

Oil on troubled waters time, Tara, she told herself. It’s all part of the job.

“It doesn’t even need a traitor to mess things up,” she said. “Just somebody on-planet with different loyalties or a different agenda. And even with the HPG network down, we still get enough travelers for there to be plenty of those.”

Griffin looked somewhat mollified. “It keeps me busy, I can tell you.” He sipped at his tea. “Today’s a case in point.”

“How’s that?” she asked.

“We’ve got a DropShip in at the port, and it’s brought along the usual pile of mail and news-discs.” The Colonel opened the leather valise he’d brought with him and took out a disc. “Including this one from General Davies on Quentin. Is there a player in here?”

Tara nodded at the polished wood tri-vee cabinet set against the far wall next to the call button. “In there.”

Griffin opened the cabinet and put the disc into the player. The tri-vee filled with images of Quentin, fading into and replacing one another—the DropShip landing field; a ship descending, the image cut off suddenly in a blaze of light; a
Tundra Wolf
BattleMech, seen in jerky, narrow-field motion from inside a fast-moving vehicle; armored infantry, firing Gauss rifles at something outside of the image. Ship and ’Mech and infantry armor all bore Steel Wolf insignia.

The images continued, now with a voiceover running along with them.

“General Gwyn Davies, Commander of the Highlander forces on Quentin, speaking. Two weeks ago, Quentin came under attack by elements of the Steel Wolf faction under the command of Star Colonel Ulan.

Their apparent target was the industrial district in Port Frome, since factories there produce the necessary elements for conversion of Agricultural and ForestryMechs into battleworthy configurations. It is my pleasure at this time to report that the Wolves were repulsed after sharp fighting; the rest of this disc contains full intelligence summaries and battle data on the conflict.”

The end of the brief speech coincided with the cube display’s final image: Steel Wolf DropShips rising from the landing field, and fadeout. The image loop started to repeat, Colonel Griffin hit the stop button, and Crow and Tara and Griffin looked at one another.

“Well,” said Tara, after a long silence. “We’ve been wondering for months exactly who we were going to have to fight. I think that now we know.”

21

Castle Northwind

Northwind

April, 3133; local spring

S
everal hours after Colonel Michael Griffin had departed from Castle Northwind, Tara Campbell and Ezekiel Crow remained at work in the solar chamber, burning the midnight oil—or at least, the midnight electrons. Clouds had darkened the skies over the castle as the afternoon drew on toward sunset, and nightfall brought with it a fast-moving spring storm. Thunder rumbled outside the windows, and strong gusts of wind dashed heavy raindrops against the leaded-glass panes. Flashes of lightning illuminated the dark, lowering clouds and the wind-tossed trees on the mountain slopes beneath.

Tara waved a hand at the weather outside. “I used to love watching bad weather from this room when I was a little girl.”

Another flash of lightning lit up the turbulent waters of the lake below the castle.

“It’s certainly dramatic,” Ezekiel Crow acknowledged.

“I always liked how solid the castle felt, no matter what was going on outside.” She laughed. “Then I got older, and found out that the weather we have around here is nothing. Down by Tara—the city, I mean; do you have any idea how annoyed I still am at my parents, sometimes?—the summer storms can tear down buildings.”

“Not good weather to fight in, to be sure.”

She sighed, and turned back to the papers and display pads on the table. “I know. But unless Radick and the Steel Wolves exercise a lot more patience than intelligence reports give them credit for, we’re probably going to have to.”

Ezekiel Crow picked up a data pad with the latest manpower reports. “At least the on-planet elements of the Regiments are coming up to full strength. That was a good thought, to start the recruitment drives.”

“Thanks.” She could feel herself blushing, and turned her head away to hide it—that was the curse of a fair skin, that every passing change of color showed up like neon. “When Katana Tormark left, I was afraid I was going to drop the ball completely, because I knew how unprepared I was for this job. All I could do was keep my chin up and hope that nobody else noticed how scared I was.”

Ezekiel Crow gave her a curious look. “It never occurred to you to decline the promotion?”

“If I’d thought that there was anybody else available with the right combination of family and training—then, trust me, I would have turned this job down in a heartbeat. But there wasn’t.”

“So it was a matter of doing your duty to The Republic?”

“Something like that, yes,” she said. “I know it sounds sentimental, but—”

“There’s nothing wrong with feeling a sentimental attachment to one’s home. But it’s unusual to find someone thinking about The Republic of the Sphere in that fashion.”

“It
shouldn’t
be unusual, though,” she said. “Making it not be unusual was what Devlin Stone was trying to do in the first place. Encouraging immigration, breaking up the factions—”

“Which didn’t work, unfortunately.” Crow looked grim now. “Duchess Tormark is an excellent example.”

Tara felt the sudden surge of an old anger. “If Duchess Tormark had kept faith with The Republic like she ought to have done, then the Dragon’s Fury would still be just a bunch of disaffected misfits instead of a serious military threat.”

“One could say the same thing of Galaxy Commander Kal Radick. Who is, face it, a much more immediate threat than the Dragon’s Fury.”

“I suppose so.” Tara exhaled and drew a calming breath. “But I never expected anything better of Radick or the Clans. They’re not assimilated, no matter how much they pretend to be. Katana, though . . . we had the same training, we swore the same oaths . . . and she threw it away, she made it all into
nothing
.”

“A betrayal.”

“Yes.”

Crow gazed out at the darkness beyond the rain-slashed windows, his expression distant and thoughtful.