Текст книги "Decision at Thunder Rift"

Автор книги: Уильям Кейт

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16

 

Sarghad's Near Passage came and went. However, the sullen red sun appeared no larger to the eye than it ever did. Trellwan was only a few percent nearer its primary at its closest point than at its farthest, but that few percent was enough to briefly bring the temperature to 40 degrees C. and higher. Within 20 hours, the Firstday storms had begun.

Now that the sun was directly overhead, the air over the Nerge grew warm, then hot. Low-lying air masses from the Grimheld Sea area moved across the desert and exploded skyward in a towering column of hot, moist air. From Sarghad, the column looked like a white pillar lifting beyond the mountains to the west. Its rise was so rapid that the naked eye could perceive its movement second to second across almost 2,000 kilometers.

When the column of hot, wet air hit the subzero air of the stratosphere, clouds billowed out in all directions, blocking the sun and turning the green sky white, then grey, then roiling blue-black. It was then that the hail and rain and lightning began.

During the seven-standard day period known in Sarghad as the Summer Storm, people stayed indoors in a holiday commanded by the weather. To venture outdoors would have meant wading knee-deep in yellow mud while becoming soaked to the skin, at best. At worst, to leave the shelter of Sarghad's buildings on some errand usually meant being struck dead by lightning or head-sized hailstones. The wind from the east blew steadily across the city toward the Nerge. Even during those periods when the sun was still above the horizon, the landscape was plunged into complete and unrelieved darkness, save for the lightning that flashed brilliantly against the sky.

With the driving rain a constant rattle against sealed windows and eaves, with the wind thumping against outer walls like something alive, Grayson set up his headquarters in the city Armory, a squat and dismal ferrocrete block building with a warehouse interior in the mechanic's District across the Hub from the Palace Grounds. Seated there at an old desk salvaged from some government office and using an old, black plastic compad tied into the Military Records Library in the District Headquarters Annex, he began his job of recruiting and training Trellwan's first BattleMech Lance.

His assistants were Sergeant Ramage of the Militia and Lieutenant Nolem of the Guards, both of whom held the tide of Adjutant. Their primary job was to take all the military theory and training that Grayson could put into words and writing, organize it, and then teach it to the men and women who were selected for Trellwan's anti-'Mech unit. Grayson's little team had been given the rest of Firstnight, another fourteen standard days, to organize the unit General Adel wanted it ready for combat by the end of the Secondnight storms, which gave them just about one local year of 45 days to do the job.

* * * *

"Sergeant, I don't think you understand the precariousness of your position." Lieutenant Nolem's flat, nasal voice became even more grating when he was being unpleasant.

"Sir!" retorted Ramage. "My understanding of the line of command is that the Militia troops in the special unit will be accountable to Militia HQ through Lance Command. General Varney would never have consented to placing Militia personnel under the direct command of the Guard!"

"And I, Sergeant, question whether you have any understanding of the line of command at all! The Guard clearly takes precedence over the Militia in the special unit as it does in all military matters. You meddling Militiamen..."

"Gentlemen, please!" Grayson sat between the two, fingers working at his temples. He was tired and couldn't think of much else except getting back to the officers' quarters General Varney had arranged for him. There was so much to be done, but he was beginning to regret ever hearing of a Trellwan special unit

"If you two don't stop bickering, you can forget about the generals. You'll have to answer to the new government!"

Nolem raised a querying eyebrow. "What new government?"

"The one the bandits are going to establish in the Palace if you don't drop the petty quarrels over pecking-order and help me get some work done!"

"Really, Lieutenant. My position here..."

Grayson's voice was weary but firm. "Your position here is subject to MY approval, Lieutenant, do you understand?"

"You don't rank me, youngster!" Nolem was all of four standard years older than Grayson.

"I'll bloody well rank you if I have to prove it by tossing you out in the rain!" Grayson's fist came down on the stack of requisition forms on the desk. "I was put in charge of the unit, so just because your friend Adel slipped you in to pull rank on Sergeant Ramage doesn't mean I'm going to let you get away with it!"

Nolem bristled. Grayson decided the only way to break through the man's stubborness was to change the subject.

"Now, what's the status of the damaged Wasp?”He demanded.

The question took Nolem by surprise. "Ah... uh..."

"We still don't have a Tech who can supervise repairs."

"But what's the 'Mech's status?"

"Uh... the head's smashed."

"I know that, Lieutenant. I smashed it. Can it be repaired?"

"The officer in charge says we'll need a trained Tech to tell us one way or the other." He shrugged. "We don't have much in the way of spare parts for 'Mechs, either. I gather the supply officers are having to dismantle second-line weapons carriers just to get scrap armor to plug the holes in the torso."

Grayson sagged back in the chair. "Maybe I can get down there next period and have a look." Mech Warriors knew as much about a 'Mech's workings as did Techs. But the time... God, the time!

"You have a meeting with the Military Council next period," Ramage reminded him.

"Damn, you're right. I..." Grayson paused, thoughtful.

"Sir?"

"There is an alternative... possibly."

Ramage looked at Nolem questioningly, then at Grayson. "I don't think there's a qualified Tech on the planet. Not this side of the Castle, at any rate, and I don't think THEY'RE going to lend us one!"

He was not about to discuss his wild inspiration with these two. Nolem would resist the idea, he knew, and even Ramage was certainly doubling as a spy for the Militia staff. He wanted to spring this idea on the generals himself.

Three periods later, Grayson descended the cold stone steps of the Military District Headquarters. It was still raining outside. He'd made the trip from the Armory in a GEV, skimming over the treacherous mud. The water pooled on the stone floor as he handed his compad to the brown-uniformed corporal sitting behind the desk at the bottom of the stairs.

The corporal entered a code into the terminal on his desk, then leaned back to await clearance. "Wet out, Sir?"

"A bit. Getting colder, too." By the middle of Firstnight, the temperature outside had dropped nearly to freezing. The week-long Near Passage storms acted as a gigantic heat sink for the planet, and during the long, long night following Periasteron, the heat of the Passage was rapidly dissipated. Soon the storm winds would die, and it would begin snowing in the mountains.

Grayson thought of Thunder Rift. The ice would all be gone now, the waterfall dried up. When the ice roof was gone, you could see stars up through the rift from the shore of the cavern floor lake, even during daylight.

"Clearance, sir. You can go through." The corporal operated a control, and steel bars slid to one side.

"Thank you," Grayson said, and entered the long, dimly lit passageway. The cell he was looking for was at the end of the hall.

Lori Kalmar sat on the bench in her cell, leaning back against the wall with knees tucked beneath her chin, staring at the opposite wall. She was wearing a long-tailed fatigue shirt and trousers someone had given her, but still had the light slippers she'd worn aboard her 'Mech. Tall, long-legged, and slender, the girl was quite attractive, Grayson thought, but her expression was sullen and bitter.

Grayson approached the bars of her cell and spoke her name.

Kalmar's eye flicked across him, then back to the wall. "Oh," she said dully. "It's you." Though there were dark circles under her eyes, the girl's hair was carefully brushed, so blond it looked almost silver in the pale light

"Are you O.K.? Are you being treated all right?"

"Why should you care?" she snapped.

What she didn't know was that Grayson had been feeling guilty about the Locust'spilot ever since he'd turned her over to the Militia headquarters. After all, he had promised that she would not be hurt The last he'd heard, she was being put through interrogation. From what he'd been able to learn, the Militia's questioning methods were more psychological and chemical than physical. The Guards, on the other hand, were rumored to take positive pleasure in inventive and enthusiastic physical interrogation, and that was what had triggered Grayson's own panic when he'd faced the sentries at Mara's house. But interrogation in any form was brutal, leaving the prisoner exhausted, haggard, and feeling very much alone.

"I'd like to talk to you," he said.

"That's nothing new," she snapped. "That's all people want to do around here... is talk to me."

"Would you like to get out of here?"

Kalmar's head whipped around to face him. Her eyes, he saw, were very blue. "What is this? More interrogation?" Her voice was hard, but Grayson heard the tremble of tears hidden in it. "We've been through it all, O.K.? I've told you people everything I know!"

Grayson had learned Lori's story from the security dossier compiled from her long hours of interrogation. She had been born and raised in Sigurd, a bitterly cold and isolated world that was one of twelve in Hendrik's confederation. Her parents had died during one hellish night of fire and horror when the government forcibly convinced dissident forces on Sigurd that confederation with Oberon VI was in their best economic and social interests.

Lori had been saved by a neighbor, but only after seeing her parents die in the fire that gutted her apartment habitat. About a year after becoming a state ward (at age eight, or about thirteen by standard-year reckoning), she had applied to the Sigurd Defense Forces as a 'Mech apprentice and had been accepted.

Apparently, Hendrik's confederation did not have a combined military force. Individual worlds reserved some local defense forces for themselves, an arrangement that created the feeling of greater sovereignty. Lori's unit had been the Sigurd Independent Light Assault Group, operating directly under the command of Vice Regent Alisaden, a warleader who was also Sigurd's Defense Minister.

Lori had been an apprentice for over three Sigurdian years, which made her almost 19 standard years old now. Though well along in her training, she had not expected to go on active combat duty for several years yet. One night while standing duty as officer of the watch in the 'Mech center, the sergeant in charge of her school section had tried to persuade her to engage in extracurricular training on the floor. She'd resisted, he'd insisted, and she'd given him a final and definite "no" with a knee driven into a sensitive target.

One week later, her orders had come through. She was being assigned to a "Special Expeditionary Force" with three other Sigurdian trainees, under the command of a Harimandir Singh.

The circumstances were peculiar. Singh's JumpShip was unlike any she knew within the Confederacy, and the expeditionary force seemed to be part of a deal cut between Singh and Vice Regent Alisadren. So far as she could tell, the operation had nothing to do with Hendrik or Oberon VI at all. Singh himself served someone named Duke Ricol, whom she also heard referred to as the Red Duke.

Singh. Grayson had stiffened when he'd read that name. It was the word on Griffith's lips when he died. It was obvious the Weapons Master had recognized the bandit leader, probably from a biog data entry in the Castle computer. As for Duke Ricol, Grayson drew a blank.

Neither Lori Kalmar nor her companions, Pvts. Enzelman and Fitzhugh and a Corporal named Hassilik, had ever heard of Singh or the Red Duke before being assigned to their command. By the time the ship had rendevoused with a freighter at some nameless, worldless sun and they'd transferred across, Kalmar had learned only that Singh's mission was to gather mercenaries for an operation against a world she'd never heard of. It's name was Trellwan.

She was surprised to suddenly find herself a mercenary MechWarrior. She'd been too busy to think much about it, however. Lori Kalmar and her comrades had been kept hard at work moving and installing heavy weapons aboard the freighter's DropShips. Soon after that, the vessel had resumed its mysterious voyage across the stars.

During the trip, the three Sigurdians met and learned to fear their Lance commander, a Lieutenant Vallendel. Early in the voyage, they'd delegated Corporal Hassilik to go to Vallendel and protest their virtual kidnapping. They were homesick by that time, and utterly bewildered at being transported across tens of light years in the company of utter strangers. Ten minutes later, the assembled company had watched young Hassilik, naked and tied hand and foot, go out the airlock into space.

There were no more protests. They spent most of the passage working in the cargo Bay where the 'Mechs – a Marauder,a Stinger,and a Locust– were stored. They practiced what tactics they could on holographic map tables under Vallendel's critical eye, performing maintenance checks, and going over 'Mech operating systems. When the time came for the drop onto the night side of a world close by a mottled, dusky red sun, however, the unwilling mercenaries had not been included in the assault team. They'd watched from the freighter's DropShip as Vallendel and two of Singh's Techs had disembarked into a night of fire and terror.

They'd also watched Vallendel's Maraudersmash to pieces an aging Phoenix Hawkalready savaged by the weapons they'd helped install in the DropShip's hull.

"Why did they bring us here, anyway?," she'd asked. But no one was giving any answers.

Once the crew transferred to their new Trellwan base in an imposing black stone edifice built on a mountainside, her new masters had begun allowing Kalmar and her companions to exercise with the Locust,and with a pair of 20-ton Waspscaptured from the yet unidentified enemy. They were closely watched by the other 'Mechs; the Stingerwas generally detailed to keep a close eye on the Sigurdian's activities during patrols. It was clear that they were not trusted.

Kalmar's initiation into battle had come shortly after the first successful raid on the enemy city, where a number of prisoners had been captured and specific targets identified. It had also been her last

Her target had been the Palace. She'd received an accurate map of the Palace layout and the location of shelters where important members of the enemy government were expected to be hiding during an attack. She and her two companions were to attack the Palace, flush the ranking officers and members of the Royal Family, and, if possible, to capture them.

It all had gone wrong. Wes Fitzhugh had been killed in a battle with unarmored troops in the street, and Enzelman's Wasphad been damaged at the Palace Gates. Lori had been moving up from the rear to support them when Enzelman had limped past, heading north. "They're after me," he'd cried over the combat pircuit. "Cover me!"

She tried and succeeded. Garik Enzelman had escaped to the Castle, and now she was awaiting death at the hands of her captors.

"You can drop the pretense," she told Grayson. "I know you're going to kill me... eventually. I only surrendered because... because I didn't want to burn." She shuddered. "It's a horrible way to die."

"I didn't know about your parents," Grayson said gently. "I wouldn't have threatened you like that if..." He let the words trail off, acutely aware of how foolish he sounded.

"Look," he continued. "There is no trick. I'm not going to hurt you, and I'll do my best to see that no one else does either. And I'm serious about getting you out of here. I need a Tech to supervise the repair of a damaged Wasp."

"That's ridiculous. I'm an apprentice."

Yeah, right, he thought. But so am I. He wasn't about to admit it, however. "Which puts you way ahead of everyone else in Sarghad. Will you help?"

Her eyes were guarded. "What's to stop me from slipping off to my friends up the mountain? Or wiring a C-90 charge into your 'Mech's primary power circuit?"

"Oh, there'll be safeguards." He thought of his conversation with Varney and Adel, of the arguments he had mustered, and the promises he'd had to make. Kalmar was to be considered an enemy agent. She would be guarded at all times, and the astechs assigned to help her would have training enough to know if she were deliberately sabotaging the work. They'd finally agreed to Grayson's plan only because there seemed to be no other way to get the job done.

Grayson had accepted their conditions, and prayed that the girl would agree to work with him under such restrictions. There seemed to be no alternative, for any of them.

"You'll be watched, but at least you'll be out of this place. Do you owe some oath of fealty or service to the people who brought you here?" Many peoples in the near-feudal culture of the Successor States strictly observed fealty vows and oaths. In the shifting tangles of allegiances among the states, individual warriors needed a focus for their loyalty.

Lori Kalmar closed her eyes. "No. There's... nothing. A slave's vow to her master, perhaps, nothing more.”

“Will you agree?"

There was a long silence. When she spoke again, it was in a very small voice. "Yes. And... and thank you."

BOOK II

17

 

Harimandir Singh drew the collar of his cold weather jacket closer about his face and ears and leaned into the wind. The storms had ended, but the long dark of Firstnight continued. With the coming of the storms, temperatures had fallen. There were patches of snow across the ferrocrete apron of the spaceport, and the wind eddied small whirls of dry snow through the pools of light cast by vapor lamps on the poles overhead. At last report, it was snowing heavily in the mountains nearby. He thought what a dismal, brooding planet was this Trellwan, a place he would be glad to leave when the mission was complete. Perhaps... perhaps after this, he would see again the crystal skies and gleaming salt flats of his home deserts.

The guards at the door to one of the squat, sheet metal storage buildings lining the main port area came to attention with the slap-crack of a weapon salute. One of them took the paper Singh handed him, studied it, and unlocked the door. The air that poured from the dimly lit room beyond the door was sour with the stench of unwashed bodies, and the odors of vomit and human waste.

"How many do we have, now?" Singh asked his aide.

The soldier consulted his wristcomp. "One hundred eighty-two prisoners, Lord."

Singh nodded and tried to keep from covering his nose and mouth to block the stink. These prisoners, many of them skilled workers, were soon to be slaves, sold among labor-hungry worlds with crumbling technologies. For now, they were a source of sometimes useful information as well as a major problem in logistics. His expedition's food supplies were limited to what was left aboard the DropShip and what little had been raided from the agrodomes north of Sarghad. If they did not quickly find more food, their prisoners would have to be shot – and hang the waste. Singh believed the primary mission had to take priority over minor economic concerns.

The guard returned, leading a shambling, ragged man with a face bruised and caked with dirt and dried blood.

"Captain Tor! How are you? Have you decided to tell us what we want to know yet?"

"I can't tell you anything." He spoke carefully through swollen lips. The beatings had produced great, puffy bruises about his eyes and mouth.

"Oh, but you can tell us a great deal, like why you were snooping about the spaceport perimeter and what you know about mercenary activities in Sarghad. You'd be saving yourself somuch trouble by telling us what we want to know."

Tor was shivering, his arms folded tightly in front of his body, but he managed to snap, "Go to hell!" As he was wearing only the rags of his tunic and light trousers, the cold was doing the work of a torturer's knife.

Singh frowned. "I've offered you money. I've offered you your freedom. I'm afraid all I have to offer now is a quick death."

"You murdered my men."

"Ah... the three crewmen aboard the DropShip. That was a tragedy, I admit It's always a tragedy when skilled workers must be killed. But you made that necessary, my friend, by escaping in the first place."

"You were going to kill me anyway." Anger flashed for a moment over Tor's cold-numbed face. "You didn't have to kill them!"

"My dear Captain, you don't think I wanted to have them killed, do you? We prize men trained for starship work, especially a man like you, who is skilled in interstellar navigation. We are not barbarians!"

Tor's eyes closed, his lips trembling. "Whatever you say."

"But this mission is highly secret, Captain. So secret, I don't believe you appreciate its importance. If you did, I would have your throat slit now. When you escaped, we had to take steps to insure that no more of your people on Trellwan escaped. The rest of your crew aboard the freighter are still in good health, of course. At least, for now."

"More threats?"

"I don't threaten, Captain." He reached out and pulled Tor's head up by the hair, looking into the man's glazed eyes. "Now, let's begin again. You were in the city for a time."

Tor's voice was weak, barely audible.

"What was that? Come, come, Captain. I'm getting cold standing here talking to you."

"Yes... I was in S-Sarghad."

"And you are a military man?"

"I am a trader. I pilot a starship."

"Ah, but you know as well as I that the most important commerce between the stars today are the arms and armor of military units. You must have some grounding in the military arts."

Tor remained silent, and Singh continued. "What sign did you see in Sarghad of a mercenary cadre?"

"I d-d-don't understand."

"Outsiders, Captain... offworlders. A military unit... perhaps training the locals to fight."

"I didn't see anything like that... no."

Singh believed the man was telling the truth. He also knew this particular method of questioning could not go on for long. Tor would reveal no information after being frozen to death. Singh gestured to the guard, who swung Tor around and led him back into the warmer prisoner's quarters.

Though Tor might not know about it, Sarghad was definitely getting help from somewhere. Singh would have to learn the source of that help before it seriously compromised the Plan. Not only would he need to learn of it, but the mercenaries would have to be eliminated once and for all.

* * * *

The wind grew colder as the long dark of Firstnight dragged on. A cadre of experienced troops, including both Militia and Guards, had been gathered, trained, and drilled, and they, in turn, had been set to training and drilling the volunteers who would make up the main body of the unit King Jeverid himself attended the unit's first mustering ceremony, and it was he who bestowed upon them their name: First Trellwan Lancers.

Grayson could not help but compare his new unit with his old. The Lancers were raw and ungainly, with neither the precise snap and polish of a well-trained unit nor the easy professionalism and camaraderie of an experienced one. Carlyle's Commandos had had both the polish and the professionalism. As a boy, Grayson had admired the absolute precision of the unit's response to parade-ground orders, the snap-crack of two hundred boots clicking into place at the same instant He'd admired too that bond of absolute trust betwen each man and his squad mates, and each man and the officers and NCOs above him.

This lot was eager, Grayson decided, but that was almost all he could say for them. All were volunteers from either the Militia or the Guards, and many had years of experience, including combat experience. But they were not yet a unitin the sense of belonging and working well together.

The bitter rivalry between Guards and Militia continued within the ranks. In one of his first decisions, Grayson directed his sergeants not to separate the services into different companies, but to form squads and platoons without regard to the men's original affiliation. If the Lancers were to have any identity of their own or any of the pride that identity would encourage, they would have to start thinking of themselves as Lancers rather than as Guards or Militia. There were eighteen fistfights during the first standard week and three knifings. The fact that each man still wore his original green or brown uniform, with only a blue armband to distinguish him as a Lancer, didn't help.

Grayson was learning that there was far more to organizing a 'Mech Lance than teaching thumb-fingered recruits how to pilot a BattleMech. The details of the unit's T.O. & E. threatened to drown him in extra work hours and a deluge of paperwork. The T.O. & E – the Lancer's Table of Organization and Equipment—make or break the fledging unit, and Grayson was becoming aware of the importance of staff paperwork in a way he never had been. Always before he had wondered why his father's staff included a small army of civilian secretaries and military orderlies, and why one of the Lance staff officers, Lieutenant Hanesly, had been designated as personnel officer. Now he knew why a personnel officer was needed for a 120-man company.

Grayson's days had been one fifteen-hour work period after another, with short naps grabbed on the cot behind the office in Sarghad's armory building that had been set aside for his use. Mara had called him repeatedly on the small visor installed in the office, but he had lost count of the standard days since he'd seen her. There was simply too much to do.

A BattleMech Lance is much more than four ‘Mechs and the men who con them. T.O.'s generally list only the pilots and Techs assigned to a particular unit, but, in fact, even a small scout Lance requires a platoon-sized body of support crew.

First and foremost in the Trellwan Lancer's make-up was the infantry, the groundpounders Grayson was training to take on the enemy 'Mechs. Not all 'Mech units had foot soldiers attached to them, however. Carlyle's Commandos had had ground troops because it was a garrison force, and there were garrison duties that would have been impractical for a ten-meter-tall 'Mech. The Lancers were to be ground troops trained in anti-Mech warfare with 'Mechs for support, which reversed the usual role for a combat BattleMech unit.

The idea had been General Varney's. Grayson's skill during the Battle of Sarghad had proven to the Military Council that ground troops could be used against 'Mechs. Grayson's ten years of training supported the idea. Ground forces couldface 'Mechs and win, but it took a remarkable blend of skill, training, and courage to do so. This combination did not occur naturally even in elite units. Grayson faced a daunting task, and he still questioned his ability to carry it out.

The Lancers' T.O. called for two combat platoons of 60 men each. Though there were more than enough volunteers available, so far Grayson had only two short platoons of 40 each, scarcely more than a pair of platoon sections. After some work and several false starts, he had decided that the experienced sergeants on his team were able to handle no more than those 80 men. Untrained and leaderless soldiers would be far worse than no help at all.

Also in training were 35 men with various degrees of technical and mechanical training. This was the beginning of what Grayson hoped would be a 60-man technical platoon, astechs able to work under the direction of the Lance's Techs to keep the BattleMechs armed, patched, and functioning.

Finally, there were five men in training as MechWarriors. They were under Grayson's direct command and he worked with them for hours each day, familiarizing them with the Locust'scontrols and drilling them in tactics and procedure. One of them, a young Trell named Yarin showed an intuitive sense of balance and motion that might produce a MechWarrior – in about ten years. Grayson thought this part of the program was worse than useless. It would take years to bring these five up to any kind of proficiency in 'Mech operations, so it seemed absurd to spend so much time training new pilots when the unit had but a single light 'Mech on its rolls. But Grayson's own orders from the Military Council were clear on that point. What good was a 'Mech unit without MechWarriors?

His work was made easier by two experienced sergeants... Sergeant Ramage from the Militia, who had fought Hendrik's raiders as a private ten years before, and a Guards Corporal named Brooke, whom he had promoted upon learning the man had worked in a machineshop before joining the army. Another Militia sergeant named Larressen had no combat experience, but he seemed sharp, intelligent, and unafraid of speaking his views. Ramage and Larressen became platoon leaders for platoons A and B, while Brooke was placed in charge of the Tech platoon.

With three good men in the topkick slots, Grayson had hoped that the Lance would begin to run itself. That did not prove to be the case. The single worst problem he faced was equipment procurement. Quite simply, there was either no equipment to procure or else the available material was tied up in bureaucratic red tape and inter-department squabbling.

The lists of what he needed were endless: portable power generators, tools ranging from laser cutters to microwrenches, portable and desktop computers and access to the military data files, visors and portable communications units, weapons for the combat platoons and ammo to go with them, portable and stationary lights, gantries and 'Mech repair cocoons, power feed cable, 'Mech spare parts ranging from servoactuator relay circuits and a portable laser to a new head and cockpit assembly for the captured Wasp.HE also needed food, drinking water and wash water, quarters and mattresses for over one hundred men, vehicles...