A Silence in the Heavens (12 page)

“It’s always possible that she sees things differently.”

“So that’s all treason is—a case of different people seeing things differently?”

“That’s one way to look at it.”

The anger she felt at Katana Tormark’s defection was still with her, making her voice sharper than she intended. “I suppose it was someone ‘seeing things differently’ who let the CapCons put down that DropShip on Liao.”

He went very still, almost as if she’d slapped him, and spoke carefully and distantly. “Nobody knows why it was done.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to—”

“The betrayer of Liao was never found. So many people died—he would have been just one more body, buried in a common grave like all the others.”

She swallowed, feeling sick. “Your parents, too?”

“Yes.”

“I
am
sorry.”

He drew a deep breath and visibly put the memories behind him. “It was a long time ago. But I haven’t forgotten. It’s one of the reasons I chose the career that I did, and why I worked so hard to reach the place where I am now. I don’t want anything like that to ever happen again.”

22

Tyson and Varney ’Mech Factory

Fairfield, Northwind

May, 3133; local spring

T
yson and Varney, Limited, had built most of the Mining- and ConstructionMechs currently in use on Northwind, and held the contracts for most of the unbuilt ones. Since the winter of 3132, Tyson and Varney had also held the Northwind Highlanders’ contract for retrofitting work ’Mechs to combat models.

Today Colonel Michael Griffin had come to Fairfield in order to pay an official visit on Tyson and Varney’s main plant. Griffin, who had made no secret of the fact that he was there to check on the company’s progress, was escorted around the factory by the senior plant manager, a stocky, thick-mustached individual named Evans.

The plant was a series of immense assembly hangars, each subdivided into three or four bays. Each bay held a ’Mech in progress, worked on by teams of a dozen or more men and women under the glare of sodium vapor lights. Hoarse voices shouted back and forth, metal clanged and crashed and groaned against metal, and the ’Mech bays were full of the hiss and spark of welding torches and the smell of ozone.

The workers in their safety goggles and heavy protective earmuffs looked like strange, bulbous-headed insects crawling over the giant anthropomorphic shapes of the ’Mechs. Colonel Griffin, encountering the noise and the dazzle of the ’Mech bays for the first time, felt grateful for the pair of yellow foam plugs that Evans had insisted he put into his ears before entering the hangar.

The manager waved an arm in the direction of the ’Mechs in the first three bays.

“These are the farthest along,” he said, shouting to make himself heard over the din. “They’re out-of-the-box models, no custom mods, so retrofitting them to your specs doesn’t mean ripping anything else out first.”

Griffin followed the manager’s gesture and looked at the nearest ’Mech. He wished he knew enough about design and engineering to estimate the workers’ rate of progress. “How soon until these are finished?”

“This lot? About a month. The ForestryMechs in the next bays over, maybe a week after that.”

Griffin suppressed his sinking feeling with difficulty. “No faster?”

“We’re not just stamping out stuff with cookie cutters here,” Evans said, scowling. “There’s a lot more one-of-a-kind handiwork goes into making these babies than most people think, and retrofitting them into units that can fight is a lot trickier than it looks.”

“I’m sure it is,” Griffin said hastily. “How about the new construction?”

“I won’t lie to you. It’s going a lot slower than we’d like.”

“The Prefect isn’t going to be very happy about that.”

“The Prefect will just have to live with it,” the manager said. “It turns out that designing a reconfigured IndustrialMech or ForestryMech from the ground up is only a couple of notches short of designing a full-scale BattleMech, and that’s a tough job. Not that Tyson and Varney couldn’t handle it, if you gave us all the right materials.”

“I’m certain you could,” said Griffin. “But what you’re telling me right now is that the new construction isn’t going to be coming on-line any time in the immediate future.”

“I don’t like being the bearer of bad news . . . but yeah, that’s about it. We can slap the design engineers around a bit, remind them they’re not supposed to be inventing the next generation in BattleMech technology here, but it’s still not going to change any of the basic problems.”

For a moment, Griffin considered ordering the shutdown of the redesign project. His mandate from Tara Campbell extended as far as that, he thought, even if his nominal authority didn’t; and if he stated for the record that he thought the ’Mech redesign program was a failure and ought to be closed down, the Countess would probably back his decision.

Griffin remained in silent thought long enough to notice the manager sweating. Finally he said, “Keep that part of the project going anyway. It may not be of much help to us in the short term, but in the long term . . .

in the long term, Mr. Evans, I’m very much afraid that things are going to be different. And your design engineers may yet get their wish.”

“I’ll tell them what you said,” the manager told him, and Griffin could see the man’s relief, somewhat tempered by his understanding of what Griffin had implied for the future. “Right now, I believe that if we reallocate resources and manpower and go to round-the-clock shifts, we can have the first retrofitted units ready to roll in three weeks or a bit less.”

“That would be good,” Griffin said. “I’ll make certain that the Prefect has your estimate.”

The manager gave him a gloomy look. “Which had better be binding, I suppose.”

Griffin smiled. “You said it, Mr. Evans. I didn’t.”

23

The New Barracks

Tara, Northwind

June, 3133; local summer

T
ara Campbell was asleep in the Prefect’s quarters in the New Barracks when the wall speaker buzzed.

She came fully awake in an instant when a voice began speaking immediately without waiting for an acknowledgment—an override at this hour never meant good news.

“Prefect Campbell, please come to the Combat Information Center.”

Another buzz from the speaker, and the voice repeated, “Prefect Campbell, please come to the Combat Information Center.”

Tara was already out of bed and scrambling for her clothes. “On my way.”

She dressed in haste: plain working uniform, first item in the closet and the easiest to grab; enough underwear to be decent; hair finger combed and cleared back from her face with a stretch knit band. She was halfway to the Fort and the CIC before she realized that she was wearing not regulation shoes and socks, but her favorite pair of ancient bedroom slippers.

The hell with it, she thought. Northwind could survive the knowledge that its Countess wore fleece-lined tartan moccasins.

She wouldn’t be the only person who’d gotten an unexpected wake-up call, either. The courtyards and corridors of the Fort were full of people in uniform heading places with purposeful speed. Alarms clamored in the halls and stairwells as she made her way down to the bombproof chamber in the depths of the Fort that housed the Combat Information Center for Northwind’s local defense forces.

When she reached her destination, Colonel Michael Griffin, whose quarters were closer to CIC than hers, was already there, pacing back and forth amid the uniformed specialists who monitored the display screens on CIC’s array of communications and data consoles. Ezekiel Crow had VIP housing in a distant wing of the Fort complex; he arrived at a run forty-five seconds after Tara. The Paladin’s normally flawless uniform tunic and trousers looked tired and wrinkled. Tara could only guess that the nearest complete set to hand when the summons came had been the ones he’d taken off the evening before.

“What’s the word?” Tara asked Griffin as soon as she’d caught her breath.

“Steel Wolf DropShips have entered the system,” the Colonel said. “They’ve been taking out our surveillance and weapons platforms as they go. The Far Point observation post reported their presence and then went dead.”

“Good on Far Point for getting the message through,” said Tara.

That brief accolade was all that she could afford to give the station and its people at the moment. If they weren’t dead already, they had a decent chance of being alive to collect their combat pay when the fighting was over. It all depended on whether the Wolves had simply fried the station’s comms and sensors in passing, or taken the time to blow the whole post to hell and gone.

“The Wolves don’t want us tracking them,” Ezekiel Crow said. His features were set and grim; Tara wondered if he was remembering what had happened after the Capellan Confederation descended on Liao.

“They want to make us guess where they’re coming down.”

“Then we’ll just have to be ready to jump in any direction,” Tara said. “And make certain our ground-based comms stay good.”

Colonel Griffin frowned. “I don’t like this. All our current intel on the Steel Wolves says Kal Radick is more straightforward than that.”

“Maybe there’s been a change of command,” Ezekiel Crow suggested. “It’s not inconceivable that the Wolves could have produced somebody with enough nerve to challenge Radick for his position, as well as enough of whatever else it takes to beat him.”

Tara filled a mug with strong black tea from CIC’s galley urn and added milk and sugar, using the time to think about what had been said. The Paladin and Colonel Griffin, though less mutually antagonistic than they had been initially, were never going to be the best of friends, and any issue upon which they were in agreement demanded serious consideration. “As of the last DropShip to come in with news from Tigress, Radick was still the man in charge.”

Griffin said, “The ship hit three other worlds in between leaving Tigress and coming here. That’s plenty of time for news to go stale.”

“Assume that the leader is still Radick, then,” Tara said. “But draw up contingency plans in case it’s somebody else.”

Colonel Griffin nodded. “We have intelligence files on most of his prominent or rising subordinate officers.

But if Radick’s been supplanted, I think our analysts need to put in a requisition chit for a better grade of crystal ball, because nobody on the list was tagged as a serious threat to the Galaxy Commander’s position.”

“People change,” Tara said. “Maybe somebody on Radick’s staff woke up feeling ambitious one morning and never bothered to let us know.”

Ezekiel Crow looked grave. “Perhaps. Or perhaps this hypothetical person is a wild card in the game, one for whom we have no helpful profiles or contingency plans. We must ready ourselves to deal with the unexpected.”

“Meanwhile,” said Tara, “we can start mobilizing the defense forces. And wait to see where to send them.”

24

Regimental Base near Tara

Northwind

June, 3133; local summer

“U
p, up, up!”

The lights snapped on. Will Elliot, thrown out of a sound sleep by the shouted orders and by the strident clamor of the alarm, put up an arm to shield his eyes from the sudden glare. In the same movement he rolled out of his bunk—he knew better by now than to question a Sergeant’s voice.

“Move it, people!” the Sergeant was shouting. The barracks began to fill with the sound of lockers banging open and shut. “On your feet, on the grinder, full kit, combat loadout. Five minutes. We’re burning time, people.”

Will unlocked and raised the base of his bunk. His uniform lay inside. He snapped it on quickly, then pulled on his socks and boots. On impulse, he stuffed an extra pair of clean, dry socks into his outermost pocket. A visible bulge like that would never pass inspection, but Will didn’t think he needed to worry about passing inspection right now.

He closed his locker and left the bunkroom. Once out in the corridor, he joined a stream of other soldiers heading down the passageway to the left, where the armory door stood open. The tight press of so many individuals all heading in the same direction with single-minded intent reminded him of a raft of migratory eels running upstream at spawning time. Eels died when they reached the spawning-beds . . . maybe that wasn’t such a good thing to be thinking about right now, after all.

Inside the armory, the Gauss rifles waited in their racks.

“Elliot, William A.,” Will said to the armorer as he came up. “Four-nine-one-zero-seven.”

“Here’s your weapon, Elliot,” the armorer said. “Down the passage, draw your charge and your spares.”

“Don’t you want me to sign—”

“No, move it. Next! Pick it up, people!”

Will took his Gauss rifle and held it at trail arms as he walked quickly down the passageway. He didn’t know yet what was happening, but he had a feeling it was serious. This was the first time he hadn’t been required first to sign for his rifle and then inspect it under the armorer’s gaze.

Ahead of him, boxes stacked on one side of the corridor were filled with the metal slugs fired by the infantry’s Thunderstroke Gauss rifles. A Sergeant stood by the open crates.

“Pick up your load. Keep moving,” the Sergeant said.

Will grabbed up the slugs and power packs and stuffed them into the pockets of his battle fatigues. He was halfway down the steps to the parade ground before he realized that he’d automatically stowed the material in the standard pockets and the standard configurations that had been drilled into him in boot camp. Now he understood the reason for that drill, and for how it had been reinforced at the time by the voices of Sergeants in his ears and by the push-ups meted out for the smallest deviation from the standard.

He was trotting, no hint of weariness now, despite the hour. Even in boot camp, everyone had known that sooner or later there was going to be trouble—where from, though, was another question, and one that recruits weren’t expected to have an answer to.