Текст книги "Mercenary's Star"

Автор книги: Уильям Кейт

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12

 

It stormed during the night, but throughout the rest of the long, Verthandian day, Grayson's people had worked to refit the unit's BattleMechs, to unload necessary supplies and equipment from the Phobos,and to ready the DropShip herself for the sea voyage.

The conversion of a gut-torn DropShip into an unwieldy and practically unsteerable, steam-powered boat was risky enough that Grayson wanted to salvage all the equipment he could before consigning the vessel to the mercies of the Azure Sea. The actual refitting of the pumps and conduits that would gulp in sea water took only a bit more than five hours, speeded up with the help of ‘Mechs able to lift massive sections of hull plate or machinery weighing nearly as much as they did. The longest part of the refit was the transferral of bulky ‘Mech harnesses, booms, and repair rigs from the ‘Mech bays to the shore.

It was two hours past dark when the Phoboswas ready to set sail. It was already raining, with winds gusting in wave-flattening bursts that caused the lightened DropShip to shudder. The motion aboard was queasily uncomfortable as the DropShip moved with the slap and lurch of the waves. The tide was in now, and lightening the ship's holds had brought her up off the bottom. The motion was made worse by the fact that selected outboard holds along one side of the cargo deck had been pumped full of water, giving the ship a twenty-degree list. Movement along her decks was treacherous and accomplished by slowly and carefully planting feet and hands with each step.

Grayson picked his way across the Phobos'sbridge. Martinez was in her control seat, strapped in against the increasingly violent efforts of wind and wave.

"A storm is up, Captain,'' he said.

"It is, indeed, Major," she replied. Now that the Phoboswas again a ship in the purest sense of the word, Grayson had his honorary, if temporary, promotion back."That could be bit of good luck."

Grayson nodded. "It means the Dracos won't have recon aircraft up tonight, and you'll certainly be screened from enemy satellites. Their patrols won't be close enough to pick you up on infrared scan, either."

"Hell, it means they'll think we broke up and sank in the storm! Well, it's about time our luck changed!"

"I'm glad you feel that way. Captain, because you've got to sail this thing in weather I wouldn't care to face inside a Marauder!"

Martinez touched a panel on the armrest control block. One of her console monitors came on, displaying a computer-generated map. It was based on the Azure Sea charts they had been studying earlier in the day. She used a stylus to trace across an arm of the sea to a convoluted thrusting of water into the land. "The Skraelingas River. Any idea what's there?"

"None, beyond what Brasednewic was able to tell us," Grayson replied. “There are plantations nearby, and he says their owners support the revolution. You should be able to trade machine parts and such for food."

"Food doesn't bother me. It's hiding from the damned Dracos! This storm won't last forever, and a DropShip'll show up to a satellite like a big fat bug on a dinner plate!"

"Only if they catch you at sea. Captain, under clear skies. The cove Brasednewic told us about...here...you should be able to ground the Phobosthere, where the tide won't move her. Though you might have to wait for high tide to do it. It's close in under the rocks of these cliffs, just inside the mouth of Ostafjord. You've got camouflage netting enough to hide the ship, as long as you douse your reactor to kill your infrared signature."

"I'm not doubting the analysis. We just don't know what it's reallylike there. Suppose those rock cliffs are too low or there are unmapped sand bars that keep me from getting close? Suppose I can't get the Phobosclose enough under the cliffs? Suppose... oh, the hell with it. I'll worry about it when I get there." She looked at Grayson, her dark eyes somber under their tatooed wings. "I wish you well, Grayson," she said, the formalities of command forgotten for the time. "I hope to see you again...soon."

"You've got a skimmer ready in your number three hold. If you start to founder, let the old tub go, and abandon ship. We can join up later."

"It's not me I'm worried about. Major. It's you! I'm not sure I trust these Verthandians yet And you folks have got a long way to go." She laughed. "I'd rather face five hundred kilometers of open ocean in a storm than that damned, Kurita-infested jungle!"

He smiled and extended his hand. Use took it gravely. "I'll get word to you somehow," he said, shaking her hand. "Just as soon as we're set up with a decent headquarters, supplies, repair facilities, and so forth. Then we can see about getting the Phobosspaceworthy again."

"For now. Major, I'll just be happy if she stays seaworthy!"

The rain was driving up the beach in sleeting walls, pelting at Grayson's face and hair with savage fury. He heard the DropShip's engines throb to life, a deep, rumbling sputter that carried above the pounding of the surf and the roar of wind and rain. Visibility was so low, however, that he couldn't make out the ship as she got underway. Good. That meant that other eyes in the jungle wouldn't see her departure, either.

Moments later, the combined column of rebels and mercenaries set off into the jungle on their own voyage. The rain offered advantages to the land party as well as to the seagoing Phobos.Rebel forces travelling through the jungle were always threatened by Kurita satellites or orbiting spacecraft spying down from two hundred kilometers overhead. Though Verthandi's skies were frequently cloudy and the jungle canopy provided nearly unbroken cover across most of the Silvan Basin, there were frequent clearings and stretches of open ground. Even a fragmentary patch of blue-green sky might be enough for a satellite to catch sunglint and the movement of a hovercraft column. BattleMechs pushing along the jungle paths were harder still to hide. The rebels had long ago learned to move through the jungle by night and to take advantage of the blessed natural invisibility offered by clouds and rainstorms. The secret rebel base and the Verthandian Revolutionary Council lay across almost four hundred kilometers of jungle, and it took all night to get there.

Verthandi, was, above all, an agricultural world. There was heavy industry centered near the principal cities, of course, and petroleum and various metal ores. Chromite, principally, and bauxite, were dug or pumped from the edge of the deserts to the south. It was the fertile land along the jungle basin slopes that was Verthandi's most important economic asset, however.

Paradoxically, the soil of the lush jungle floor was impoverished, leached beggar-poor of minerals by constant water erosion. In most places, the jungle canopy was so thick that not enough sunlight entered to support undergrowth, resulting in surprisingly little dead vegetation or humus. The swamps were another matter, bottomless layers of muck and ooze stinking with decay. Neither terrain was suited to farming.

Verthandi's fertility existed in the area known as the Silvan Basin, which had been formed in ages past when a massive asteroid had smashed out a depression in the planet's jungle belt. The land sloped down sharply from the encircling high ground plateaus and rugged mountains. At the northern base of the slope, in a narrow circle clear around the world's pole at roughly 60° north, was a fertile zone where erosion from the southern slopes combined with runoff from the spring floods on the high plateaus. The land here was wet, laced with swamps and stretches of tropical undergrowth far more impenetrable than any true jungle. Scattered here and there among the bogs were islands, solid ground where plantations raised kevla, blueleaf, and garlbean as well as bananas, sugarcane, cotton, and grovacas. Further into the swamps were clearings for rice, rubber, and jute. High along the basin slopes, the steep-sided jungle ridge called Basin Rim, there were plantations that grew coffee and cacao.

Despite the war, the Dracos had attempted to keep up the flow of the world's lifeblood of commerce. Verthandi's puppet government in Regis continued to collect taxes in the form of a percentage of each harvest, and DropShips loaded with jute, rubber, garlbean, cotton, or blueleaf periodically roared skyward from the prairie north of Regis to freighters waiting at the system's jump points. The image of trade and a productive economy was largely show by this time, however. All across Verthandi, many abandoned plantations had fallen into rot and ruin, while villagers went to war against one another. Like all revolutions, the war on Verthandi was as much a civil war of neighbor against neighbor as it was a revolt against foreign masters.

Grayson had learned or guessed much of this from conversations with Erudin on the voyage from Galatea. He learned more in the night-long march through the jungle, speaking with Tollen Brasednewic on a short-range, directional microwave com circuit that allowed them to question one another without alerting possible eavesdroppers on the mountain ridges above. He was, therefore, somewhat prepared for it when the rebel hovercraft led the mercenary ‘Mechs and hover transports across a shallow stream and into the village.

Fox Island was a large and fertile wedge of solid ground lying at the confluence of a pair of rivers flowing from the foot of the Bluesward Plateau. The Ericksson family had owned and operated the Fox Island Plantation since the world was first colonized by Terrans of Scandanavian descent, over six hundred years before. Gunnar Ericksson was clan head and owner now, and his landhold was a fair-sized village tucked away in the verdant blue-green of the jungle-shrouded island.

Everywhere, knots of people busied themselves uncrating supplies or disassembling machinery. The knocking of hammers could be heard farther back among the trees where a new warehouse was being hastily constructed. High in a treetop, a pair of rebel troops stood on anarrow camouflaged platform, TK assault rifles cradled in their arms. Not that the rifle or the lookouts would be of much use in a sudden airstrike, but the discipline was necessary and the routine Of military duties comforting. Indeed, the whole camp had a reassuringly professional but relaxed atmosphere. Erudin reminded Grayson that these rebels had been fighting Kurita soldiers and the troops of the Kurita puppet government on Verthandi for nearly ten years, and those who had survived this long were very good at what they did.

They fought to keep their world from dying, for the Draconis Combine was systematically stripping the world bare. The government DropShips that ferried goods skyward were carrying them to freighters bound for Luthien and other worlds of the Combine. When the ships returned, they brought back, not machine parts or automated equipment, but Kurita soldiers and BattleMechs. Propaganda had it that the legitimate Verthandian government had "hired" these as protection from attack by the Lyran Commonwealth or the rebel bandits who skulked in the forests of the Silvan Basin.

The existence of the rebel base fascinated Grayson. According to Tollen, Kurita satellite photos of the area revealed only workers in the Fox Island fields, with no unusual activity among the countless clearings and inhabited areas that dotted the island. In fact, those workers were rebel soldiers. On those infrequent days when the skies were clear, however, most of the rebels went indoors or underground to avoid detection by the enemy's spy satellites. When officials from the puppet Verthandian government arrived to assess taxes or to investigate rumors of armed men or jungle-based smugglers, they saw nothing out of the ordinary. Or at least, so far they hadn't.

As Grayson brought his Shadow Hawkto a halt in the broad clearing in front of a long, low mansion with a sweeping, roofed veranda, rebel soldiers and technicians gathered to watch the arrival of the six mercenary BattleMechs. It was still raining, though the high winds and lightning of the night before had fallen off. Despite the weather, the rebels' work went on. They seemed to be raising a new building, with the help of a Waspand a pair of civilian ‘Mechs of unfamiliar design. Here, too, the rebels made the best use possible of chance clouds and rain. Judging by the progress on the building, the structure would be up and well-camouflaged by the time the sun shone into the village clearing again.

The members of the Verthandian Revolutionary Council met Grayson as he descended from the ladder of his ‘Mech. Devic Erudin was there, looking far fresher than Grayson felt after his trek through the jungle. For the first time since Grayson had known the man, Erudin was smiling broadly as he introduced the other members of Verthandi's Revolutionary Council.

Gunnar Ericksson seemed to be the group’s leader. Though there was no indication of relative rank, Grayson sensed the others deferring to him. With his prematurely white hair, he had the bearing of a man born to his world's aristocracy. As the village, the plantation, and the island were all his, Grayson gathered that he spent much of his time playing the Loyalist landowner who paid his taxes and who maintained a small, private army on his own plantation to guarantee the loyalty of those who lived there. In reality, his island had become the headquarters for the largest rebel army in the region, for reasons geological as well as political. The grip of his handshake was strong, and when Grayson admitted he'd heard much about the man, Ericksson's laughter was hearty and genuine.

James "Jungle Jim" Thoryald was another descendant of Verthandi's Norse settlers. Tall, blond, and broad, his politican's smile had won him a seat on the Council of Academicians before the coming of Kurita's legions. Outlawed for anti-Combine agitation after the New Order was proclaimed, he had fled to the jungle plantation. When Kurita forces levelled Thorvaldfast and poisoned the water, he had became General Thorvald. He vanished into the Silvan Basin, emerging only to raid Kurita camps for food and supplies, and eventually gathering an army in the lowland regions north of the Bluesward. Fox Island became his alternate headquarters, the storehouses and barracks on the northern fields his army's secret camp.

The tall and lovely Carlotta Helgameyer was scarcely more than a girl, but one of those rare individuals able to convey an air of aristocratic elegance while clad in grease-stained Tech coveralls or camouflage fatigues. She was, in fact, on the academic staff at Regis and still maintained her teaching post there. She explained that the Kurita masters commanded that life go on as it always had to foster the illusion that life wasnormal now, that the rebels were nothing but misguided bandits, and that happier memories of self-government were the warped maunderings of ungrateful malcontents. Academician Helgameyer was the rebel alliance's link with rebel groups within the city of Regis itself. There were, she assured Grayson, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of brave men and women within the walls of the University, only waiting for the chance to join the uprising that would drive the Kurita conqueror off Verthandi forever.

Doctor Karl Olssen was from a plantation village further to the east, in the Vrieshaven District, and represented one of the largest and best-organized of the rebel bands on the planet. He said little but admitted to Grayson that his own son was among those whom the mercenaries were expected to train.

Grayson already knew much about Devic Erudin. Born and raised in the city of Vyomess several hundred kilometers west of Regis, he had been elected by his fellow rebels to represent them when the Revolutionary Council was formed. Quiet and retiring to the point of timidity, he resembled nothing so much as an owlish university professor. Though he might not resemble a rebel leader, Grayson knew that Erudin was the one who had volunteered to board a DropShip under the guns of Kurita troops and then to take passage on a freighter to another world where he could find and hire mercenaries. It had been Erudin entrusted with vanadium stolen from Kurita convoys to buy supplies the rebellion needed, and Erudin who had found and hired the mercenaries needed to forge an army capable of fighting against Kurita ‘Mechs. Grayson found himself admiring Devic Erudin more than any of the other Verthandians he had met so far.

Sitting with the five leaders, drinking the bitter local coffee and rich Verthandian tea in the library of the Ericksson mansion, he realized that this was a revolt of the world's aristocrats. With the possible exception of Erudin, every one of these rebel leaders were members of what Brasednewic referred to as the "Old Families", descendants of the Scandanavian settlers who had come to Verthandi six centuries before. Grayson had learned earlier that Brasednewic’s family had arrived two centuries later, emigrants fleeing the devastations of the Succession Wars on planets deeper within the Inner Sphere. There was a subtle tension between the Old Families and the late-comers, the ones still referred to by people of Scandanavian heritage as "refugees". Private animosities and feuds had been set aside for the duration of the revolution, or so it was claimed. Grayson wondered how long this state of affairs could last.

"We certainly appreciate your coming here to Verthandi, Captain," Ericksson said to him by way of welcome. The others nodded agreement, but the atmosphere remained reserved, slightly formal. A copy of the contract between the Council and the Gray Death lay unmentioned on the elegant white cloth that covered the table where they sat. Grayson's eyes widened slightly when he saw that a small, flat plastic case lay beside the contract printout, a case with the lone, glowing red eye of a power indicator light at one end. It was a pocket transcriber, and it was recording their conversation.

So, he thought. This is for the record, just in case there's a dispute later, and we must go before the bonding authority. These folks are cautious.

Ericksson continued, smiling. "We have long recognized the need for...for outside help in our struggle against the Combine."

"We'll do what we can, sir," Grayson replied, then gestured at the printout on the table. "Our contract specifies that we are to form a training cadre and drill your people in the fine points of anti-Mech warfare. I gather, too, that you have a small nucleus of BattleMechs and want our help training pilots."

"Precisely," said Helgameyer. "We have a large army, weapons, and the support of most of the people. But without special training and equipment, soldiers are no use at all against BattleMechs."

"It's the training more than the equipment, ma'am," Grayson said. "We'll do what we can for you."

"There is one small point," Olssen said, but he seemed nervous, ill at ease. His eyes strayed to the recorder.

"Yes, sir?"

"Well, a couple of points, actually.”

“Yes?"

"One is the matter of command. Another is your participation in combat here."

Ah!Grayson thought. So that's it!

"There should be no problem there," Grayson said, his voice mild. "The contract specifically places my unit under the direct command of your Council. In short, you give the orders, and we obey. At least so far as those orders don't put my own command unnecessarily at risk."

"That's just it," Carlotta said. "Your actions upon landing at Hunter's Cape have already put your command at risk. Captain, we did not hire you to engage in battle with the enemy!"

"Eh?"

"Citizen Erudin has explained the terms of the contract he worked out with you," Ericksson said, "To be frank, we cannot afford to pay for your participation in combat"

"I understand that, of course," Grayson said. "We also have an obligation to defend ourselves."

"When the enemy ships landed," Olssen said, "you could have slipped away into the jungle. Kurita forces rarely track our people far under the forest canopy."

"That's fine...for your people. We had certain equipment that had to be off-loaded, including the military supplies your agents purchased offworld. I also had to see to the safety of the DropShip.*

He did not add that the Phoboswas by now well on its way to Ostafjord. He wondered if he should also caution Brasednewic not to mention the fact. The strain in Grayson's new relationship with these people was a tangible presence in the room, and that strain bred distrust. "We couldn't let all of that to fall into enemy's hands."

Thorvald spoke for the first time. "So long as you understand, merc. If your people get killed and your ‘Mechs get shot up, we're not paying your bill. That's for the record!"

"Understood," Grayson said, keeping his voice carefully neutral. "That's our responsibility. I do hope your...hospitality extends to your ‘Mech maintenance facilities and repair shops. We took some damage at Hunter's Cape, and—"

"And you expect us to make it good?" Thorvald was openly hostile.

"The contract specifies 'routine resupply and maintenance'."

"Routine,Captain, routine."Helgameyer looked from one face to another of those gathered around the table. "We are not unreasonable, Captain Carlyle, and certainly you are welcome to use our facilities. But we do want it clear from the start—" her eyes indicated the recorder "—for the record, Captain, that we have brought you here to train our people, not to fight for us."

"That is clearly understood. Citizen Helgameyer."

Thorvald appeared mollified, but was still gruff. "We can't expect offworldersto understand our struggle. We fight for freedom, not money."

Thatagain. There was no point in arguing. "I understand. General. But I must make it clear, for the record,that the Gray Death Legion will defend itself in any way that I, its commander, deem necessary. If that means we take on the whole Kurita army, we'll do it." He spread his hands. "After all, it's not as if you hired yourself an army to fight your revolution for you. Half a dozen ‘Mechs and less than a hundred men and women can do a splendid job training your cadre, but we would look pretty foolish taking on the entire Kurita garrison. I may be a mercenary...but I'm not crazy!"

Thorvald did not look convinced by that final statement, but the others smiled and seemed to relax a bit.

"Well, now that that'sout of the way," Ericksson said, "let me extend to you and your people the hospitality of my plantation. If there's anything we can do."

"Thank you, Citizen. I have to see to my people, and you'd also better show us where to park our ‘Mechs out of sight. I don't imagine you'd care to have a Kurita recon satellite scan show them sitting on your front porch!"

Ericksson nodded. "Quite right. There's nothing to fear, however. I'll have some of my people lead you around to the Caves."

"The Caves?"

He smiled. "At the north end of Fox Island. You have to understand that the polar depression we call the Silvan Basin is the remnant of an ancient collision of a massive asteroid with our world perhaps tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of years ago. The Basin Rim cliffs are the rim of the crater.

"The impact gouged out the crater, and turned the floor molten. Later, as the molten rock cooled, cracks developed. Some of those cracks became the paths for streams and rivers running down from the cliffs. Vast cave systems were opened up, and one of the largest lies beneath this island. The first Scandanavian colonists to Verthandi found them, and discovered that they would provide a convenient source for all the heavy and industrial metals they could use. It seems that the asteroid had concentrated various metals up close to the surface, within easy reach.

"My grandfather founded Verthandi's largest AgroMech company, and he started it here in the Fox Island caves, where shelter was free and various metals easy to obtain and smelt. Most of the forges, casting equipment, and the big ‘Mech rigs and cradles are still there, too big to move and too useful to junk. The main manufacturing center is in Regis now, but there is a sizable ‘Mech facility still in operation on, or rather under, the island. Of course, we've seen to it that records of its existence 'vanished' in a tragic fire, just about the time the Combine moved in. This is the primary facility for all of the rebellion's ‘Mechs and heavy machinery now. There are facilities there that your people can use as a barracks, and I assure you that your ‘Mechs will be well hidden."

"Sounds ideal," Grayson said, fascinated by the description.

"I doubt that we could have kept our operation secret as long as we have without the Caves. The concentration of metal ores in the surrounding rocks help screen us from enemy spy satellites and instrument probes."

"Well, that being the case, there's only one thing more I need.”

“And that is?"

"About twenty hours of sleep. I've been on my feet...or on my ‘Mech's feet, ever since I got to Verthandi, and that was about this time yesterday. I can't even remember how long it's been since we pushed past the Kurita blockade that I've had more than a catnap. If you'll have someone show us to those quarters, Citizens, I think my people and I are due for some down-time."