Текст книги "Decision at Thunder Rift"

Автор книги: Уильям Кейт

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

Sinvalie turned to the Combine commander. "This is Renford Tor, Captain – a business partner of mine. He was Captain of this vessel.

"I AM the Captain of this ship, and you damn well better believe it!" Tor gestured again with the gun. "You will obey my commands, starting now."

"Of course, of course. Don't get excited, friend. Ah, may I produce some identification?"

The MP-20 hovered within centimeters of the merchant's nose. "Slowly. Very, very slowly."

The man's smile deepened, and he reached inside the folds of his thickly draped outer tunic, then brought forth a square of translucent plastic. Tor found himself looking down through layers of color to symbols that floated unsupported within the square's depths.

"ISF, Captain," the man said. "My name... my REAL name, is Captain Yorunabi. Perhaps you've heard of us? We are the investigative arm of the Draconis Combine."

Tor felt totally out of his depth. The ISF was well known, with an evil reputation that extended far beyond the Combine's borders. "I know you, yeah. Kurita's secret police."

"As you wish. I can tell you, Captain, that I am on a highly important mission, that I must get to Luthien as quickly as possible."

"That is NOT where we're going," Tor snapped.

"Captain, please. I understand you are upset over the requisitioning of your vessel. Frankly, you have shown considerable resourcefulness in taking it back." Yorunabi flourished the card. "I think you will grant that I am... shall we say... in a position to reward you well? Take myself and my companions to your starship, and from there, guide us to Luthien. Think, Captain. This one commission could pay you and your crew enough for you to retire in comfort! Such an oportunity does not enter a man's life twice..."

All Tor's life, it seemed, had been a struggle for one more cargo to earn just enough money to pay his expenses or to bribe the next customs agent. The payment this ISF man was offering him for a single passage would make Tor wealthy. His men, he saw, were looking at one another rather than at their prisoners. The offer was tempting. What chance, after all, did the rebels have? Or Grayson Carlyle?

Tor remembered his interrogation, the biting cold as Singh battered him with questions. He remembered Grady, Moran, and Lathe, and his own bitter guilt at having left them behind, the pain at learning they'd been killed. What chance? What chance? The machine pistol wavered, its muzzle dropped toward the deck...

. . . then whipped upward in a grey blur, smashing Torunabi's cheek with a red-smeared slash that tore a scream from the fat man's throat.

With the toe of his boot, Tor nudged Yorunabi, who lay rolling and moaning on the deck. Then he gestured to his men. "Take these characters below... number one hold. Strap them in and watch 'em." He brought the MP-20 around to cover the pilot and deck officers. "You go, too. I'll take us up."

His men cleared the Combine men from the bridge, and Tor proceeded to check out the ship. There already were prisoners below – Trell soldiers who were being taken elsewhere for their technical expertise,. Among them was General Varney. Vamey and his Militiamen had agreed to join Tor's crew readily enough, once the plan was explained to them.

Then Tor was able to sit down again at the familiar console, letting his hands run across the instruments. Everything was set and ready, the hydrogen tanks topped off, the fusion pile hot and running. A computer display showed that the DropShip was scheduled for launch at dawn, a little more than three standard hours from now.

They'd not come aboard a moment too soon. He pulled out his hand transceiver and clicked it on to another little-used frequency. "Ready... ready... ready," he said.

Then Tor sat back to wait.

28

As Grayson entered the Vehicle Bay, the insistent clamor of the Castle's general alarm began its raucous shrilling. Men and women broke into trotting runs this way and that, NCOs and warrants bellowed orders, and a squad of black-uniformed Combine infantry began forming up on the ground outside the hugh double doors. His first thought of seizing a hovercraft in the Bay and making off with it into the near darkness outside wasn't going to work. He'd be burned down before he got 50 meters.

They'd be rounding up the Trells next. Grayson looked down at his green dress uniform and grimaced. The only thing to do was to stop being a Trell. He made his way back into the Castle's heart, moving through familiar passageways in the general direction of the Repair Bay. What he needed was to find... ha!

A solitary Draconis soldier was hurrying toward him down the hallway, his laser rifle slung behind his shoulder. The man paid no attention to the Trell Green Coat who stood aside with proper deference to let him past, but seemed bent on hurrying up the passageway toward the Vehicle Bay. Grayson's foot swept out and caught the soldier across the shins as he trotted past, and the man went down in a clatter of rifle and cumbersome backpack power unit.

The soldier came to his knees with a snarled, "You clumsy bastard..."

Then Grayson's foot caught him just below the point of his chin, his head snapped back, and he clattered to the floor once more, his anger scattered into darkness. Grayson felt for a pulse, but found none. He hadn't intended to kill the man, but his own fear and anger had charged that kick to the man's throat. The soldier's neck appeared to be broken.

He dragged the soldier into an adjoining room, a small storage area for office forms and clerical supplies. Working swiftly, he stripped off the man's uniform and replaced it with his own, struggling to shrug the heavy power pack onto his shoulders and get the straps adjusted securely. As a final touch, he crouched beside a metal shelving case stacked with ream upon ream of requisition and supply forms and tipped it over across the soldier's body on the floor. There was a ringing crash, then a silence broken by the rustle of skittering papers. That should at least cause a bit of confusion if the trooper's body was found. Any delay at all would win him a few precious, extra minutes.

Next he checked his laser. It was a Marx XX Starbeam, a Combine model he knew from weapons texts but not by personal experience. Still, it shouldn't be too difficult to figure out. Beam intensity would be controlled there. Power on by pulling down the handle on the backpack. A grip safety under his hand. It looked as though he could work it. Checking both directions before he stepped out of the storeroom, Grayson then moved at a trot toward the Repair Bay.

The Shadow Hawkwas there, standing upright on the repair platform.

The 55-ton 'Mech dominated the cavernous Bay, a vast, humanoid shape of gray and rust-streaked metal and faded paint surrounded by the metal scaffolding that had been raised around it.

Grayson appraised the 'Mech with expert eyes. From the look of things, they'd been remounting its backpack and autocannon, both of which had been removed to facilitate the trap that had nearly killed him and wiped out his entire assault force in this very room. The backpack housed the 'Mech's primary heat exchangers and the cockpit's life support systems, as well as mountings, ammunition, and the control circuitry for the 90 mm autocannon that was now set in the rest position, aiming straight up. The back unit could be removed for maintenance and repair operations, but the 'Mech would not be fully combat ready without it. The BattleMech certainly looked combat ready now.

The Shadow Hawkwas a 'Mech of older design, and had a transparent canopy much like that of an atmospheric aircraft. Console screens gave the pilot a full range of IR through UV vision. In practice, however, the pilot generally relied on his eyes rather than the 'Mech's optical sensors, with a holographic heads-up display to project targeting information and combat intelligence above the console. The canopy was open now, and Grayson could see someone – possibly the pilot or a Tech running a final check – moving about in the cockpit

Though the alarm was silent, troops were forming up on the Repair Bay deck, with officers pointing and yelling orders. They had gathered a milling herd of green-coated Trells at gunpoint into a far corner of the room. The round-up had begun.

Grayson thought fast. The Bay doors were open, but with all those soldiers lined up near the opening, he'd be stopped or shot down before he got very far. His eyes travelled back to the Shadow Hawk.He had piloted that 'Mech several times during his training. It had been Lieutenant Hauptman's machine, and Grayson could still make out the name "Hauptman" in faded script across the leading edge of the 'Mech's left foot He had spent a good many hours piloting Hawksin the simulator, too. If he could get into the 'Mech's cockpit, he would have a good chance of escaping.

There were several potential problems, however. The 'Mech might not be as combat ready as it looked. Worse, the neural impulse helmet could have been set for the parameters of another pilot, and would have to be quickly reset if he was to have complete control. The only way to find out was by sitting in the cockpit lumself.

Perhaps the biggest dilemma was one of tactics. Once Grayson started climbing the ladder up the side of the scaffolding, some NCO or Combine officer was certain to see him. Without some kind of diversion, he would never make it higher than the Shadow Hawk'sknee joint.

* * * *

Lori set her jaw and shifted frequencies. "All units, I have the signal. Let's move!"

The Locustlurched forward, its flat-clawed feet grappling for purchase on the sandy bank as it scrambled to the top. On either side of her, the Waspand the Stingercrawled out of the wadi and stood upright. On both flanks, the hovercraft weapons carriers hummed into life on the rim of the arroyo where the Wasphad carefully set them moments before. Then they began drifting toward the spaceport on eddying clouds of dust

"Just a fast raid," Lori reminded her command. "In and out No duels! Let's see if we caught them napping!"

They had maneuvered through the wadi to within three kilometers of the spaceport, which left a long, open firelane through which the various machines had to move. The 'Mechs thundered forward at their top speeds, which quickly put the Locustwell into the lead. Dust raised by their charge and by the fans of the hovercraft swirled and billowed to create a screening cloud.

Lori brought her laser to bear on the nearest of the Combine DropShips, targetting on a laser turret in the vessel's bulging flank. The sky was just light enough for her to pick out her target optically, and the flash when the turret exploded was dazzling against the twilight

White smoke trails arced and twisted through the sky from the pair of missile-firing hovercraft. Flashes of light erupted among the grounded ships, across the curved roof of a barracks, across the side of a storage shed. The cracks and booms of exploding rockets rattled across the field.

"PBIs at 270!" Lori recognized Enzelman's voice in the Wasp.Garik tended to get shrill in battle as the adrenalin started flowing, and his emotions came through even the electronic filtering.

She shifted her imaging sensors, and saw a twinkle of movement. PBIs – MechWarrior slang for "Poor Bloody Infantry" – were boiling out of the stricken barracks. Many wore only bits and pieces of uniforms in the still-cold chill of early morning, but they all appeared to be armed.

"O.K.," she transmitted. "Don't worry about them. Go for the storage tanks at 180. Hit "em!"

The target was a tank farm, four rows of squat, massively armored storage tanks at the far side of the port. The Stinger'slaser probed the base of one of the tanks, searching for weakness. The blue flash of a particle beam lanced out from a DropShip and caught the Stingerin its glare. Lori noted with approval that the Stingtr'spilot, Yarin, one of Grayson's Trell recruits, held his fire steady on the stubborn armor of the tank. She targeted her Locust'slaser on the same spot, adding her own weapon's white fury to where the armor was softening, to where the network of pipes and conduits for fuel transfer were melting.

Those tanks held liquid hydrogen, reaction mass for the fusion impulse drives of the DropShips that called at the port. In two seconds, the valves at the tank's base slagged down, vaporizing hydrogen gushed out into the cold air, and the explosion sent a fireball mushrooming into the sky. The shock knocked Yarin's Stingerto its knees, and Lori fought the Locust'scontrols to keep her machine on its feet. The impact of the blast was a palpable blow, savage and deafening. The fireball climbed higher, devouring the sky. Its light illuminated the whole area, while flaming chunks of white hot metal rained onto the field and clinked across the Locust'shull.

"That's it," Lori said. "They'll have the cavalry out any moment now! Fall back! Fall back!"

* * * *

The diversion Grayson prayed for came as a shout from a soldier by the doors. "Hey! They're attacking the port!"

Discipline broke as soldiers turned in their ranks, craning their necks at the laser fire starkly visible against the darkened expanse of the spaceport below Mount Gayal. Several astechs ran out onto the parade ground to get a better look.

Grayson knew it was now or never.

Starting up the ladder of the gantry, he kept his eyes fixed on the Shadow Hawk'shead. His greatest fear was what would happen if the Hawkwas fully powered up and ready and the pilot should spot him halfway up. When Grayson had reached the 'Mech's waist, the pilot removed his helmet and stood in the cockpit, stretching up to see past the bulk of the 'Mech's chest to the battle outside. Grayson climbed faster then to the Hawk'schest. He was level with it when a vibration in the gantry attracted the pilot's attention. He looked down, eyes widening. At the same instant, there was a shout from the deck eight meters below. "Hey! You up there! What the hell do you think you're doing?"

Grayson had been spotted. Above him, the pilot reaching for his sidearm.

29

Grayson climbed faster, scrambling out onto the narrow framework of the scaffolding walkway that ran across the bulge of the 'Mech's chest, just below the cockpit. The Mech Warrior had his pistol out, aimed at Grayson's head.

"Drop that gun!" The man's voice was shrill, and a bit unsteady.

Grayson dropped his rifle, which clattered on the scaffolding. Then, he began unfastening the buckles that held his powerpack straps in place.

"This is restricted up here, fella," the warrior said. "No one comes up here but Techs and..."

The last buckle slipped open, and Grayson brought the heavy laser backpack up and around in front of him like a shield. He rushed the MechWarrior, and the scaffolding jumped and rattled under his boots. The pilot fired once, his shot missing both shield and Grayson as he fell backward into the cockpit

Grayson threw the bulky power unit, catching the pilot in the chest. Then Grayson was on top of him, wrestling for the gun as his feet scrabbled for a firm grip on the slick surface of the 'Mech's upper chest armor. The two men grappled for a moment, the powerpack with the rifle dangling from its cable getting between them in the scramble. The pilot stood up, his pistol still in hand. Grayson lashed out with his foot, caught the MechWarrior on the knee, then watched as the man toppled over and fell backward with a shriek and the clatter of metal scaffolding.

The stammer of an assault rifle echoed through the Bay, and bullets whined and cracked past Grayson's head. He stooped and retrieved his rifle, checked the power, then snapped off three quick shots at the soldiers advancing toward the ladder. The laser fired with a warm hum. The bolts of coherent light were invisible, but two of the soldiers below crumpled to the deck with their uniforms smoldering.

As other troops sought cover, Grayson ducked back into the Shadow Hawk's cockpit. He found the handle and pulled the canopy down into place, then gave it a twist to seat and seal it

The canopy itself was heavily layered with reflective materials that transformed it into a one-way mirror, an added safety factor that prevented the pilot from being blinded if the cockpit was hit by an enemy laser beam. It darkened the cavern outside somewhat, but Grayson could still make out the scurrying shapes of Combine soldiers.

Quickly now, he told himself. His hands reached out to flick on row upon row of switches along the consoles to the right and left of his chair. Instrument readings showed his power plant active and full power available, his weapons loaded, armed, and linked to the controls.

Grayson pulled the neural impulse helmet down on its trailing tangle of wires and feed cables and made it snug against his head. With power on, he cautiously opened the feedback test circuit. First, there was the familiar wash of vertigo as circuits tuned to unfamiliar brainwave patterns fed dissonant patterns back through the nerves of his own inner ears. He found the vernier knobs that adjusted the helmet's tuning, working them back and forth as the dizziness ebbed. Out-of-step traceries on an oscilloscope resolved into a single standing wave, and he knew the Shadow Hawkwas now set to his alpha wave patterns.

He gave the board a last scan. Green... green... all green. His left hand took the conning stick, his right the weapons grip. His foot kicked off the leg locks that held the Hawkbraced against the scaffolding, and the machine took a step forward. The gantry scaffolding exploded outward in a cloud of spinning shards and fragments. The 'Mech took another step, dragging twisted strands of aluminum alloy across the deck with a screech of tortured metal.

The Bay doors were grinding shut. Grayson twisted around, searching. Sure enough, the control booth was there, the stairway back in place. He could see an astech inside the booth, frantically speaking into a microphone. Grayson brought the Hawk'sright arm up, bringing the 6 cm laser mounted to the forearm into line. His right hand tightened on the trigger. White fire burst from the booth, which spouted a stream of glass splinters and shattered metal. Half the booth twisted away and fell to the deck, trailing black smoke and a tangle of shredded braces and metal from the stairway.

Still partly open, the Bay door froze in place.

Grayson turned and strode for the opening. Men scattered before his feet, most throwing away their guns and fleeing without looking back, a pitiful few standing their ground to blaze away at the thundering 'Mech with assault rifles and pistols. Grayson ignored them, increasing speed as he moved away from the Castle. The laser and missile batteries mounted around the wall packed more than enough firepower to bring the Shadow Hawkdown. His only hope was that the weapons were not yet manned and ready.

He didn't dare cut in the 'Mech's jump jets for the descent from the parade field. After piloting the Locust,the Shadow Hawkfelt wildly different – huge, massive, and clumsy, as though he were attempting to walk with lead weights strapped to hands and feet and torso. It would not take long to get used to the heavier 'Mech, but Grayson was not about to risk any tricky maneuvers until he had the machine thoroughly broken to harness.

The terrain below the parade ground was broken and rough, gouged by erosion gullies and made treacherous by loose stones and gravel spills. Grayson found he had begun his descent further north than he'd intended. To the south, toward the lights of Sarghad, the slope was gentler, flat enough for hovercraft and solid enough to support running 'Mechs.

He opened his combat frequencies, and got a rasp of static and a rapidly speaking voice in his helmet phones.

". . . freighter DropShip, demanding immediate clearance!"

"DropShip Alpha, this is tower. We have an emergency on the field and must deny your request for clearance."

"You idiots, it's the emergency I'm trying to avoid! Look... Captain Yorunabi, ISF has given me orders to launch immediately. Do you read me?"

Grayson strained to catch the words, which were fuzzed by static. As these were electronic transmissions and not voices, he couldn't tell if the speaker was Tor or not. But he knew Lori would not have launched the attack on the port unless she had had word from Captain tor that the DropShip was secure.

When they'd made their plans, they'd not known the DropShip's launch schedule, and could only guess from the preparations around its base that it was ready to lift. DropShips were not loaded with their liquid hydrogen reaction mass until just before launch. The H had an unfortunate tendency to diffuse through unshielded tanks if it were left sitting for more than a very few hours. It was generally cheaper and more efficient to store the fuel elsewhere, and load it aboard just before burn time.

That was how they knew the DropShip was nearing launch time when they'd seen the astech teams fueling it, but they hadn't known how close it was. Rather than have Tor and his squad risk detection by sitting in a secretly captured DropShip for hours – possibly a standard day or more – the attack was planned to give the freighter Captain an excuse to launch at once.

The DropShip pilot's frantic request was according to plan, but Grayson wondered about the presence of an ISF Captain aboard. Was that Tor's bluff? Or had something gone terribly wrong?

"Alpha, this is the tower. You have clearance for immediate launch."

If it was a bluff, it had worked. A flare of light spread across the still-darkened field, and the Invidious'DropShip rose on a flickering pillar of white fire, moving slowly at first, then accelerating at what must have been a bone-cracking three Gs into the pearly sky.

If Tor's assault had failed somehow, there was not a thing in the universe that could be done about it now.

Grayson switched frequencies, and found the battle channel he'd assigned the Lancers.

"Lancer One, this is Grayson." They'd not arranged radio codes, because Grayson hadn't expected to be coming out of the Castle in a BattleMech.

There was a pause. "Grayson? This is Lori."

"Lori! I've liberated us a Shadow Hawk.I'm on my way down the slope toward you. Any opposition?"

"Heavy fire from the ships, as expected. Their ‘Mechs are not manned, and so far they've not been able to scramble any against us. They'll be on us soon, though. Ground troops are moving to set up heavy static weapons on the field."

"Right. Stick with the plan. I'll see you at the rendezvous!"

Fire and shattered earth rose around him as missiles from the Castle sought across the rocky ground for the lumbering Shadow Hawk.Twice Grayson turned, dropped the autocannon down across the 'Mech's left shoulder, and opened a rolling barrage of explosive shells against the launchers that were tracking him, but with no noticeable result. The range was already too great for accurate placement of shells or rockets.

On the plain below, he could make out the specks of three BattleMechs retiring north toward the mountains, shielded from the grounded DropShips by the ruin of a liquid hydrogen tank. And in the sky above, a brilliant star moved rapidly toward the lightening east, trailing a white contrail plume. Success or failure?

He would learn soon enough. For now, the plan required radio silence with the spacecraft, and the pretense that Tor's part of the plan had worked perfectly.

If it had not, success would turn to failure in two short days.

* * * *

JumpShips were ungainly beasts, restricted by their design and by physics to slow and extremely gentle maneuvers about that invisible abstraction in space known as a jump point. Jump points were areas spanning several tens of thousands of kilometers, depending on the mass of the star that generated them. Every star had two, the zenith point at the star's north pole, the nadir point at the south. These distances varied, of course, depending on the size of the star. With their Kearny-Fuchida drive, JumpShips could maneuver into the point, energize their drive systems, and reappear at the jump point of a star up to 30 light years away.

Energy for the jump came from the vessel's jump sail, a disk of metal fabric less than a millimeter thick and up to a kilometer wide that captured and transmitted the light and particulate radiation from a star to shipboard storage cells. Designed to absorb every photon of every wavelength that fell upon it, jump sails were black – a black so profound that an old pilots' joke told of space appearing white in comparison.

Though complex in the details of operation, the basic simplicity of jump point transitions had given men the stars. Even though the war-torn civilization of the Successor States could no longer build new vessels in any quantity, ships continued to ply the lanes between stellar jump points. The Invidiouswas at least three centuries old, her drive guide laid in during the years just before the Succession Wars.

No one knew how long the power core of a starship would remain charged and vital. It was a question that troubled the philosophers and warlords of every world in the Human sphere.

A JumpShip's reliance on the jump points and on the huge yet delicate black jump sails meant that no ship could travel far from the point at which it entered a planetary system. The sails had to be unfurled for considerable periods of time to soak up the energy necessary for a jump, and the dust and meteoric debris that littered the orbital plane of every star could shred a sail within a few passages. Though some ships had secondary drive systems that allowed them to maneuver through a system with their sails furled, most JumpShips remained at the jump point, using their DropShips as shuttles between starship and world.

This posed another problem, however. At the jump points of any star, that star's gravity is still very much in evidence. A ship in orbit around a star would not fall, of course, but it would not remain near the jump point either. Rather, it would follow its orbital path around the star and eventually through the dust-laden plane of the system. For this reason, JumpShips mount ion or plasma/fusion stationkeeping thrusters. These provide a steady, gentle thrust carefully calculated to precisely counter the pull of the star, and to maintain the spread of the jump sail at the same time. A starship parked at a star's jump point is positioned with its prow aimed outsystem and the sail spread perhaps ten kilometers aft, between the star and the ship. The stationkeeping thrusters are angled aft and outboard, so that their streams of charged particles will not damage the fragile sail.

Needless to say, starships parked at a jump point could scarcely maneuver at all, for any lateral acceleration would distort, then shred the sail fabric. There were several starship-to-starship battles on record, ponderous affairs that had taken weeks of maneuvering to complete. Generally, when ship-to-ship combat was called for, heavily armed and maneuverable DropShips, or lighter, faster, and more maneuverable aerospace fighters were used. JumpShips are armed as a matter of course (including radar-directed lasers to defend against meteors), but a single DropShip provides enough threat against any unsupported ship that a ship captain would usually surrender immediately rather than risk damage to his precious, irreplaceable vessel.

It was a fascinating problem in space combat tactics, Tor decided. He had never paid much attention to space tactics, though any freighter captain knew enough to enable him to counter the maneuvers of a possibly hostile starship at an unfamiliar jump point. His problem here was to approach the Invidiouswithout giving away the fact that the DropShip was no longer under the control of the same people. There might be passwords or approach codes that he knew nothing about, though a search of the DropShip's operations programs revealed no new computer codes in the docking sequence. It lookedas though the pirates had left everything as they'd found it. Tor could only hope that that was the case.

The tactical complication for this mission was the Draconis Combine JumpShip parked 12,000 kilometers from the Invidious.While this distance was great enough to keep either vessel's stationkeeping thrusters from damaging the other's sail, twelve thousand kilometers was practically next door, by space navigation standards.

Tor could feel that other ship out there. It was too distant to show optically, but he could visualize it. He was certain that the warship was the same one that had stopped him en route from Sigurd to Trellwan in the first place. If it picked up even a hint that something was wrong aboard the freighter, a pair of UnionClass DropShips – or worse, a flight of aerospace fighters – could be positioned off the Invidious'sail within 30 minutes.

This particular hijacking had to be carried out with complete secrecy, or it would end almost before it had begun. Grayson and Tor had worked out the details in their walk on the shores of Thunder Rift's lake. The key to the plan was the knowledge that each JumpShip would have its directional antenna centered on Trellwan, but they almost certainly would not have them aimed at one another. Two ships at stationkeeping by a jump point, particularly a military vessel and a warship, would have little to say to one another, though the warship would keep the freighter under observation as a matter of course. An attacker like Tor would be able to tell if the Invidiouswere talking with the warship, but not if her crew were in communication with the port – and through them, with the Combine ship.

Tor's problems would begin if the Invidious'crew was able to alert the spaceport to the fact that he was boarding their ship. The spaceport would alert the warship, and the warship would have armed DropShips alongside almost at once. That warning would also spell trouble for Grayson on Trellwan. He was planning another raid on the port, and word that the freighter had been captured would put the spaceport defenses on their guard. That might make the attack impossible, or worse, lead it into an ambush.