A Silence in the Heavens

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s Imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  PART ONE

  Northwind, Winter 3132–3133

  Rumors of War

  1

  The Fort

  City of Tara, Northwind

  Prefecture III, Republic of the Sphere

  November, 3132; local winter

  Tara Campbell, Countess of Northwind and Prefect of Prefecture III, stood alone in the Hall of Warriors in the Fort of the Northwind Highlanders. The day’s meeting was done, and the chamber was empty. No grave and serious warriors watched her from their places on benches of timeworn, polished oak, looking out across data terminals and communications arrays whose bright screens and metallic reflections gave an incongruous touch of workaday modernity to the stark and ancient chamber.

  The room’s only illumination came from units built into the walls and ceiling—at this time of day, with the chamber mostly deserted, they put forth only a dim and murky light. Outside the Hall of Warriors, Tara knew that the vast stone bulk of the Fort would still be touched and warmed by the last rays of the sun as it set behind the Rockspire Mountains, painting the sky above Northwind’s capital city with vivid streaks of red and orange.

  Away to the northern part of the Fort complex lay the New Barracks—a commonplace term for the collection of sprawling stone buildings that had housed the main elements of the Northwind Highlanders ever since they had ceased to be a far-flung mercenary force and had come home to defend their own planet instead. The main armory and the training simulators were also located in the New Barracks, as were a set of living quarters provided as a matter of regimental courtesy to the Prefect whenever he or she was resident on Northwind. Only a few months ago, those quarters would have been offered to Katana Tormark, but Duchess Tormark had broken her oath to The Republic of the Sphere, and had openly declared for House Kurita and the Dragon’s Fury.

  And to think I led the cheering when they first made that woman Prefect, Tara thought bitterly. I lacked the experience and the seasoning for the job, I said when my name was mentioned, and I told them to choose Katana Tormark instead. She had everything that was needed—the Academy training, the administrative experience, the impressive battlefield record—everything, it turned out, except loyalty. Now she’s gone and I’m standing here in her place, and everything I said about myself, that compared to Duchess Tormark I was young and untested and green, is as true now as it was before.

  But I, at least, am loyal.

  She turned away from the speaker’s platform and walked across the floor to the shallow stone steps that led upward to the double doors at the far end of the empty hall. The corridor outside the Hall of Warriors was likewise empty, though of more modern construction and considerably better lit.

  “Working late, ma’am?”

  The voice of the security guard stationed outside the chamber startled her. I’m getting jumpy, she thought.

  “Yes,” she said. “I was. But I’m done for the night.”

  “Will you be wanting an escort to your quarters?”

  “Thanks, no,” she replied. The walk to the Barracks wasn’t long, and passed through the heart of the Fort complex. “See that all stays secure.”

  “Aye. Good night, ma’am.”

  Tara was aware of the echoes of her own footsteps as she walked down the corridor toward the elevator on the north rotunda.

  The rotunda was dark, and the elevator was a glass-enclosed booth that scooted down the wall into the lower lobby. Tara found this out of place and disturbing for some reason—her mind kept telling her that this elevator belonged in the Senate Chambers on Terra, rather than here on Northwind. She told her mind to be quiet, and entered the elevator.

  The door shut behind her. The elevator began to descend.

  The lights everywhere were dim. Outside the walls it would be full night by now, and the entire building was deserted. That too, she thought, was wrong. The Fort was never completely empty. It was above all else a military installation, with troopers standing guard and officers on watch night and day.

  She told her mind to stop picking at insignificant details, and rode the elevator down.

  As she descended into the dark, a shadow moved below her—a shadow in human form. Tara looked again.

  The person down there is a woman, she thought. And she moves—she moves like—

  The elevator reached the bottom of its transit just as the shadow-woman moved forward. Tara gasped, but managed to maintain her composure.

  “Katana!” she said.

  “Yes,” the other woman said. “I’ve come back. I’ve come back for you.”

  “I knew that you were loyal,” Tara said. “But why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because”—two swords whispered from their sheaths—“facing you in a ’Mech wouldn’t be nearly as satisfying as slicing you to pieces hand to hand.”

  Tara fell backward, avoiding the twin blows that sliced through the air where she had been standing, rolled to her feet, and feinted right. A katana—the long sword of the samurai—was nothing to take on barehanded.

  But she didn’t have a choice; the lobby of the Senate Chamber wasn’t the sort of area that was full of the makings of improvised weapons.

  “This is going to be fun,” Katana said.

  Her right-hand blade made a whistling sound as she spun it forward and down toward where Tara had moved. The second blade came in from the side, waist-high.

  Tara retreated again, spinning to let the whirling steel miss her.

  “Katana!” she said. “What are you doing here? And why—”

  She leapt again. The last attack had come too close, slicing the cloth above her chest.

  “You lured me here.”

  “No, it was me.”

  The voice came from behind them. A man’s voice. The security guard. How did he get here? Tara wondered, in the instant before Katana brought both her blades across the space Tara had been occupying.

  But instead of feeling steel bite through flesh, the Duchess found herself facing a guard with a drawn handgun.

  “What have you done with Tara Campbell?” he asked.

  The light was dim, and getting dimmer. And Tara was . . .

  . . . awake, and tangled in the sheets of her bed in the Barracks, with the early-morning sunlight hitting her in the face. She lay still for a few minutes, waiting for the adrenaline rush from the nightmare to subside. Finally, she gave up on trying to relax and rose to a sitting position.

  “Never mind trying to catch a few more minutes of sleep,” she said aloud. “I’m going to go over to the armory, and I’m going to fight something in a simulator that knows it’s a simulator, and that I know is a simulator, and I’m going to fight it until it’s dead.”

  She got out of bed and dressed hastily in a plain set of uniform fatigues. After a brief moment’s consideration, she pulled a dark fleece changing robe out of her closet and added it to the zippered bag that held her MechWarrior’s neurohelmet and cooling vest. Fighting in a simulator was almost as hot and sticky a job as fighting in a real ’Mech—the training wouldn’t be any good if that weren’t the case—and she didn’t want to risk taking a chill when she left the simulator for the colder air outside.

  The main floor of the armory was all but deserted when she entered. She exchanged salutes with the sergeant on duty at the front desk, said, “If anybody needs me in the next hour or so, I’m going to be trai
ning in the ’Mech simulator,” and within minutes was exorcising the last vestiges of her nightmare in a scenario featuring a single Hatchetman ’Mech against two tanks, a hovercraft, and a full platoon of armored infantry.

  She reduced both tanks and the hovercraft to smoking rubble within the first fifteen minutes, but the infantry proved more recalcitrant, harassing her ’Mech with rifle fire and grenades in an attempt to distract her from a fire team with a laser cannon that was maneuvering for position. The simulated game of high-firepower tag that resulted went on for almost half an hour, and had not yet reached a conclusion when the communications rig inside the simulator buzzed and crackled.

  “. . . Colonel Michael Griffin. . . .” it said, between bursts of static.

  The outside sound pickup wasn’t as good as it would have been in a real ’Mech; the audio portion in a simulation came over the internal system, and the simulator’s designers had paid more attention to blocking out external noise than they did to admitting it.

  “. . . important news.”

  2

  Red Ledge Pass

  Bloodstone Range of the Rockspire Mountains

  Northwind

  November, 3132; local winter

  Will Elliot whistled under his breath as he made his way down the snow-covered Red Ledge Pass. The party of well-heeled bankers and industrialists he’d been nursemaiding through the backcountry for the past two weeks had climbed aboard their chartered VTOL craft and headed home to their offices and factories on Northwind’s equatorial continent. He was free and on his own, at least until he reached the trailhead and the offices of Rockhawk Wilderness Tours.

  The tourists had offered him a ride in the VTOL, but that would have meant flying with them into Tara and taking ground transportation back out again. Add in all the time he’d have needed to spend waiting for connections, and hiking was actually faster, even on snowshoes in midwinter.

  Besides, Will Elliot liked mountains, whatever the season, and he didn’t like cities. Today was a fine bright day, the sky a pure blue so intense it almost hurt the eyes, and the snow beneath it a glittering, purple-shadowed white. The air was cold and resin-scented, and Will thought that if it had been any cleaner it would have squeaked when he breathed it.

  The trail emerged from the trees and looped around a jumble of boulders mottled with the dark red and green of the hematite and magnetite ores that gave the Bloodstone Range its name. From this point Will had a good view of the Red Ledge road, a strip of macadam barely wide enough for two regular vehicles or one ForestryMech, winding along snakelike at the bottom of the narrow defile. The pewter blue waters of Killie Burn, too swift-moving to freeze over, ran beside the road.

  His view didn’t last long; the trail led around the rocky outcrop and back into the shelter of the forest. Will continued to follow the sometimes obscure signs and blazes for the next three hours, coming at last in late afternoon to the trailhead.

  Rockhawk Wilderness Tours occupied a rustic log building near the paved lot where trail hikers parked their vehicles. Will’s old BannsonBuilt truck was still where he’d left it two weeks ago; he paused long enough to shuck off his backpack and heave it into the rear of the vehicle, and his snowshoes after it, before continuing across the lot to the office. He’d stop in long enough to collect his pay for the tour just completed, maybe have a cup of coffee that hadn’t been boiled to death over a campfire; then he’d drive home.

  The front room of the office felt hot and stuffy by comparison with the cold air of the trail. The young woman who did Rockhawk’s filing and computer work looked up as he came in.

  “Old Angus wants to see you,” she said. She nodded her head toward the inner office. “In there.”

  Will stuffed his knit cap and his insulated gloves into the cargo pockets of his parka and hung it up on one of the wooden pegs that lined the office wall. “Did he say what for?”

  “Not to me,” she said. “Robbie was in here bitching again earlier, though.”

  Robbie Macallan was Rockhawk’s other full-time guide. He was also the boss’s son, which he fancied gave him a license to complain about minor inconveniences.

  “Good thing I missed him, then,” Will said, and passed on through to the inner office.

  Angus Macallan had started Rockhawk Wilderness Tours in 3093 with himself as owner, office clerk, and sole employee. His first stroke of good fortune, securing work with a fishing-mad scion of House Kurita who wanted to try his luck with Northwind’s mountain finnies, had been the start of an expanding network of regular offworld clients.

  Advancing age had taken Angus Macallan off the trails, forcing him to leave the heavy work to Robbie and Will, but he still had the rugged frame of the outdoorsman he had been. He was standing at the double-glazed office window, looking out at the snow beneath the trees, a tired expression on his weathered features.

  Robbie must really have given him an earful about something, Will thought.

  “Are the boys from Halidon safely off?” Angus Macallan asked.

  “Aye,” Will said. “Smiling and happy, the lot of them, and wanting to come back in spring for the pebblefish.”

  “That’s good.” Angus left the window and went back over to his desk. “Sit down, Will.”

  Will complied. Old Angus had something on his mind, that was clear—there was nothing for it but to listen until he’d talked himself out. Just the same, Angus’s next words confused him.

  “You know the trouble they’ve been having with the HPG network.”

  “I’ve heard about it,” Will said. “Mum’s unhappy that she’s missing the last episodes of For Clan and Honor. ”

  “Yes. Well.” Angus traced a pattern with his forefinger on the wooden desktop. “If the network never comes back up . . . we have to make plans for that, you understand.”

  So that’s what Robbie was going on about, Will thought, but didn’t say it aloud. No good, after all, ever came of criticizing a man’s son to his face.

  “I understand,” he said. “Some things will have to change.”

  Angus looked relieved. “I’m glad you see it that way, because without the network, we’re going to lose most of our offworld bookings. Oh, a few of the regulars may still come back, but when it takes sending mail by ship to make all the arrangements, how many new clients do you think we’ll be seeing?”

  “There’s always more clients like today’s. Right here on Northwind.”

  “And thank God for them,” Angus said. “They’ll keep us from going under, if we’re careful . . . but we’re going to have to be very careful.”

  “Aye.” Will kept his voice incurious and noncommittal. Whatever bad news Old Angus was working himself up to deliver, he’d get there in his own good time, and hurrying him wouldn’t make it any better.

  Angus sighed heavily. “We can’t afford to keep on going with two guides, Will, and that’s the long and the short of it. Not with the offworlders mostly gone and not coming back. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is.”

  “So I’m to go, and Robbie’s to stay.”

  “It’s nothing against you. It’s just that with the times the way they are. . . .”

  “I know.” Robbie was a whinging bastard, was what he was, but he wasn’t bad enough at his work that Old Angus would let him go and keep someone who wasn’t family. “You’ll put in a good word for me if I need one?”

  “You can count on it.” Angus looked a great deal happier now that he’d shifted his burden of bad news onto someone else’s back.

  “Thanks,” Will said. He stood up. “I just need to get my money for this time, then, and I’ll be gone.”

  “Sheila has it ready for you,” Angus said. “The same as always.”

  “Aye,” said Will, “the same as always.” He went back into the outer office without bothering to close the door gently behind him. “Old Angus says you have my pay,” he said to Sheila.

  She pulled a long brown envelope out of the paperwork rack next to her compute
r and handed it to him.

  “It’s all yours. What did the old man want?”

  “To see the back of me, as it turns out,” Will said. The envelope turned out to hold more than he’d anticipated; Angus had thrown in a good-performance bonus. Conscience money, Will supposed. Well, he’d take it. “There’s only enough work these days for one guide, and my last name isn’t Macallan.”

  “That isn’t fair.”

  “Nobody’s pretending it is.” He put on his parka and slipped the brown envelope into an inner pocket before sealing up the front. “Take my advice and marry Robbie,” he said. “That way you’ll be safe if Old Angus starts worrying that there won’t be enough business left to pay the office help.”

  3

  The New Barracks

  City of Tara, Northwind

  November, 3132; local winter

  Tara Campbell exited the ’Mech simulator as rapidly as possible, stripping out of the bulky cooling vest almost before her feet hit the floor of the armory.

  She was glad she’d had the foresight to bring the plain dark changing robe with her. If the news Colonel Michael Griffin brought was important enough to drag the Prefect of Prefecture III out of a training simulation, then she didn’t have time to go back to the locker room and change—and she didn’t care to hold an emergency conference with the man while wearing only a snug pair of trousers and an undershirt gone nearly transparent with perspiration. Such an encounter would lack dignity, and a Prefect whom everybody—including the Prefect herself—suspected of being too young for such a high position needed all the dignity that she could scrape together.

  She pulled on the robe and belted it tight around her waist, then hurried across the polished floor of the armory to meet Colonel Griffin. She would have preferred the chance to shower first, because even in a simulator a MechWarrior inevitably worked up a heavy sweat. But the officer had said that his news was urgent, and she wanted to make it clear to everyone that she took such messages seriously. Filling Duchess Katana Tormark’s elegant samurai shoes was going to be hard enough without alienating the very people who were supposed to be helping her do the job.