Текст книги "Decision at Thunder Rift"

Автор книги: Уильям Кейт

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4

"PXH, PXH..." Riviera's voice cracked. "Boss, are you there?

"Control, this is Xiang." The words were blurred by static and the thunder of continuing battle explosions. "The Skipper's had it. Nothing we can do. Those light 'Mechs are closing on us. We're pulling back."

The silence in Control dragged for several long seconds. Then Riviera leaned over the mike. "O.K., Rama. Fall back on the Castle. We're under heavy attack here."

"We'll try, Control, but they're between us and the Castle."

"Damn!" Riviera muttered. "Damn! Okay, fall back to the shuttle. Try to form a perimeter. I'll alert the Wasps."

A hand fell on Grayson's shoulder. He shrugged it away, looked up when it fell on him again.

Griffith's face was streaked with smoke and sweat, his uniform crumpled. The hand gripping the Gunther MP-20 was dripping blood from a nasty gash.

"We've got to go, Gray. Quickly."

"He's...dead." Shock had left Grayson feeling cold and dazed, with a hollow in the pit of his stomach.

"I know. Come on."

Riviera said, "Where's the Lieutenant? The... the Captain said he was to take charge, pull us offworld."

Griffith jerked his bullet head past his shoulder. "Downstairs. We're holding, I think, but there're too many of 'em."

Griffith turned and raised his voice to address the entire control room. "All right, listen up! We're going to move out down Corridor A to the Vehicle Bay. Lieutenant Hauptman is holding a perimeter for us there. Well be able to board HVTs and make it to the shuttle from there!"

"What about our families?" The lone voice cracked on the question that was reflected in the eyes of many of the technicians and soldiers around the room. Wherever stationed, Carlyle's Commandos carried with it a small army of support and technical people, including the wives, husbands, and children of many of the unit's members. Most of them were also members of the Commandos' support company, serving as medics, cooks, maintenance personnel, orderlies, or tutors for the childred.

"Already on their way," Griffith said. "Don't worry. We won't leave anyone behind. The Commandos take care of their own!"

There was a muffled cheer, then men and women began switching off their monitors and comgear as they filed toward the door.

Vogel stepped up beside Griffith. "Warrant, I will want a special escort and a hovercraft for myself, at once."

"Yessir, we'll take care of you. You'll come with the rest of us. I don't have the men for a special..."

"I expect my orders to be obeyed. Mister!" Vogel then pointed out a group of troopers standing awkwardly by the door, TK assault rifles in their hands. Their faces were grease-smeared and hollow-eyed beneath their large, plastic-visored battle helmets. "Those five. They'll do."

"They're with me, my Lord. They'll protect all of us on the way to the Vehicle Bay."

"Now listen here..."

The Gunther machine pistol came up, small and wicked-looking in Griffith's blood-streaked paw. "My Lord, SHUT THE HELL UP! And get in line with the rest of them! MOVE!"

The party passed into the corridor, the uneven echoes of their running feet filling the passageway with sound. The hallway took several turns past now abandoned and debris-strewn rooms, twisted down stairs to the Bay level two floors below, and angled across toward the Vehicle Bay. Grayson stayed by Griffith's side in the rear of the column, with the five young troopers. Vogel, he saw, was with Riviera and Ari up near the head of the group, but scowling at his offended dignity.

That'll mean trouble for Griff, Grayson thought. Trouble for all of us. His mind spun back to the explosion that had taken his father. How and why had it happened? The thought of his father's BattleMech lying in a twisted ruin out on the spaceport apron, tomb for whatever remained of Durant Carlyle's body, tore at Grayson's mind. He suddenly began remembering odd little moments. His father presenting him with apprenticeship orders when he was ten and the surge of still-remembered pride. His father's ashen face at his mother's funeral just before they'd come to Trellwan five years ago. His father discussing Grayson's education schedule with Ari and Griff in the officer's lounge here in the Castle just after they'd arrived.

Durant Carlyle had been a permanent, unchanging fixture in Grayson's life. Though always busy with the never-ending business of outfitting, supplying, and leading a House Steiner BattleMech Lance, the smile and the steady warmth in those eyes had always been there for his son.

Now they were no more. Grayson had taken them for granted, and their loss tore a wound so deep and so telling that he could not yet feel it. He could only repeat inwardly, numbly, "Dad..."

The Vehicle Bay was crowded with men, women, and children waiting to board the HVTs, transport hovercraft capable of carrying 25 or 30 people at a time. The plenum chamber fans were already turning, filling the room with the high, warbling hum of many engines.

A sergeant saluted Griffith as they entered the room "We've set scouts out down the road. It appears clear."

"IR and motion scans?"

"All clear, Weapons Master."

"Good. Maybe they didn't expect to be this successful. The road to the port may not be covered yet But I want the convoy covered by every HVWC we have." The weapons carriers were already moving, small hovercraft mounting missile launchers or beam weapons and carrying five or six soldiers each. The keening of hovercraft engines rose in pitch, and the first machines skimmed off their heavy rubber skirts and drifted through the open doors into the cold darkness outside.

Vogel was there. He seemed to have lost some of his bluster, but not his scowl. "I've had enough of this foolishness, Weapons Master. I want a hovercraft, a pilot, and a guard. And I want them now."

Griffith waved him aside with the machine pistol, then called out "Brookes!" Sergeant Brookes! Are you ready to move?"

A harried, red-haired man looked up from his humming scout It was a tiny hovercraft, a four-seater. A pair of soldiers were wrestling a lightweight laser onto an aftdeck pintle mount "Yeah, Griff! Any time!"

"Take Master Carlyle with you."

The realization that Griffith was sending him on ahead cut through Grayson's numbness. "Griff, no! I..."

"Go on, lad. I'll catch up with you later. Quickly now!"

Grayson didn't hear Griffith's answer. The Weapons Master had turned away from him and was facing Vogel, speaking quietly. Vogel's face was turning red.

"C'mon, Master Carlyle. Old Hattie here’ll have us back t' the shuttle at light speed. Here. You'll be wanting these." He handed Grayson a hooded, cold weather jacket and goggles. The scout had an open well deck, and a high-speed run would be dangerously cold in this weather.

The sharp crack of an ear-stunning detonation smacked across the Vehicle Bay, and smoke boiled from the door across the room. Grayson whirled, wide-eyed. Vogel was lying on his face, with Griffith crouched above him. The five soldiers were fanning out toward the smoking door.

Just then, several black-clad figures burst through the smoke, spewing the savage white bursts of automatic weapons fire. Griffith was on one knee now, the Gunther balanced in a classic one-hand brace right out of the BattleMech Manual. He fired in short, precise bursts, centering each burst on an attacker's chest

More attackers swarmed though the door. Grayson realized with dull shock that each wore a heavy mask, the goggles insect-like in the Bay's dim red lighting. They plunged into the Bay in headlong dives that brought them rolling up to one shoulder, subguns chattering in sharp, short bursts before the milling crowd of Techs and staff personnel could respond. Grayson saw Riviera sagging back against the skirt of an idling hovercraft, tiny scarlet explosions blossoming across his torso from right thigh to left shoulder.

One of the soldiers beside the Weapons Master pitched back, his face a streaming mask of red. Two more crumpled where they stood, and the two survivors turned and ran for the nearest hovercraft

"Griff!" Grayson screamed. His fingers were on a handhold on the hoverscout's side. "Come on!"

"Let's go, son!" Brooke laid a hand on Grayson's shoulder, urgency in his voice. "We've got to leave!"

Grayson shook free of the hand and dashed back toward Griffith. As long as he had known his father, he had also know Kai Griffith, with whom he had probably spent more time from day to day.

"Grayson! Come back!" Sergeant Brooke was close behind. Grayson dodged in front of a hover transport that was just rising from the ferrocrete, its skirts rattling in the overpressure of screaming fans. Air whipped Grayson's pants against his legs, and the keening fans drowned out the rattle of small arms fire from across the Bay. Black figures continued to pour from the passageway door.

Grayson spotted a TK rifle lying on the ferrocrete, close by the outflung hand of the soldier who had been carrying it, Grayson had never fired one in combat, but he'd practiced with them often enough on the firing range under Griffs sharp eye and tongue. He checked the seating of the 80-round magazine in its slot in the stock behind the trigger hand grip, checked that the safety was off, leveled the barrel at the oncoming black figures, and squeezed the trigger.

TKs fire caseless, 3 mm slivers of soft metal and high-velocity explosives that balloon on impact into miniature, tissue-destroying suns. Almost noiseless, almost recoiless, and on full auto, it hacked through the enemy ranks like an HP laser through soft tin. Grayson hosed the weapon's flare across the attackers, saw them pilch back into the yawning doorway or forward into untidy heaps on the ferrocrete.

His finger slipped from the trigger, and the gun snapped upright Added now to the bewildered, conflicting emotions Grayson was feeling was the realization that he had just killed for the first time.

Griffith turned and seemed to see Grayson for the first time. "No, son! Go ..."

As he spoke, a stream of bullets caught the bald Weapons Master in his side and from behind, lifting him, spinning him around, and slapping him onto the pavement in a sprawl of arms and legs.

"Griff!" Grayson screamed.

There was a soft, plopping sound, and clouds of white smoke geysered from exploding gas grenades. Grayson tasted the numbing tang of paralytic gas in his throat, choked on the acrid fumes. The next thing he knew, he was lying on the ferrocrete deck of the Vehicle Bay, his muscles locked in a rigor that could not be broken. He could scarcely see now, though the departing whine of the hovercraft convoy was audible. Around him, he heard the coughs and hoarse yells coming from people in the hovercraft that had not made it away in time, as masked troopers swarmed aboard and cuffed gasping prisoners into submission. Then Grayson saw nothing more.

* * * *

He decided later that he must have lost consciousness. When he opened his eyes, the air was clearer, and he could move again. The muscles in his legs and arms trembled uncontrollably, though, and Grayson felt so weak he could scarcely lift his head from the pavement.

Black uniforms moved among the few remaining hovercraft, herding small parties of prisoners toward the door to the main passageway. Cold air was pouring in from the open Bay doors, and as he gulped it down, Grayson's mind and vision cleared, and the muscle spasms eased. He pulled himself upright.

Kai Griffith was nearby, propped against a grounded hovercraft. The Weapons Tech appeared to be alive, though his uniform was drenched with blood and his skin paler than that of a native Trell. His chest was moving in a short, jerky rhythm, his breathing shallow and rapid. It took a moment for the realization to sink in. Griff was alive!

He also became aware of one of the attackers in particular, a tall man all in black, his face masked by a metal sensor mask. Grayson did not need to see the silver starburst at his throat to know this was the warleader of the enemy assault force. The man was attended by a small band of sneak-suited soldiers, and he seemed to be interrogating the ragged handful of prisoners. A pair of attackers hauled one prisoner to his feet, thrusting him before the warleader.

When the man said, "I am Viscount Olin Vogel," Grayson started. The prisoner was dirty, dishevelled, and unrecognizable. His hands were tied behind him, and he was not wearing a cloak or other finery. "I am a Commonwealth representative, and as such, expect to be ransomed. I'm sure my principals will be able to make a generous offer for my exchange."

The warleader paused, as if considering, though it was impossible to read expression through his blank sensor mask. It was common practice for important prisoners to be ransomed. The custom was lucrative and prevented the out-of-hand slaughter of captured nobles or wealthy businessmen.

"I have been in close communication with your king," Vogel continued. "He will be delighted to see me. In fact..."

The warleader drew a machine pistol from the holster slung low on his hip, held it to Vogel's chest, and pulled the trigger. There was a ragged burst, and the man snapped backward in a spray of blood. Through ringing ears, Grayson heard the thud of the body and a last, strangled sound from Vogel. The man's feet scraped aimlessly at the pavement for a moment, then jerked and were still.

The sight of the casually murdered Vogel froze Grayson as effectively as had the paralytic gas. Why had the warleader done that? Vogel would have been worth millions to this pirate...

A hand grasped his forearm, hauling him up off the pavement, setting him on unsteady feet. Grayson stared into the smooth metal of the warleader's mask.

"That's the Captain's kid," someone said. Grayson's eyes shifted. It was the astech speaking – Stefan was his name. Grayson recognized him despite the grotesque mask the man wore. He'd seen him about the Castle after the latest batch of astech recruits had arrived from Sarghad.

So, this was the betrayer, the traitor. An astech, one of the workers inside the Castle, had opened the Repair Bay gates and let the attackers in. And they would be in league with the 'Mechs that had inexplicably descended from the freighter DropShip. All of it had been part of some monstrous plot to take the Castle, destroy Carlyle's Commandos, and kill his father.

The warleader's machine pistol was coming up, and Grayson thought that now they were going to murder him as well. His foot lashed back, crumpling the kneecap of the man holding him and breaking his captor's grip. Then he lashed out again, striking for the warleader's face. The shock as his opponent blocked the kick with a down-stabbing first nearly knocked Grayson from his feet. He whirled and lunged close inside the man's reach, using his hands to smash and grab at the helmet's blank visor.

His opponent yelled as connections broke free with a soft, sucking sound, and the faceplate hinged up and back from the chin and came away in Grayson's hand. The inner surface of that plate was lined with receptors and a high-tech enhancer that projected images directly onto the wearer's retinas. For an instant, Grayson saw an angry, black-bearded face, whose features were vaguely-familiar and whose eyes seemed to promise sudden death.

A blow to Grayson's chest sent him staggering back against the ruined console, where the warleader held him with the muzzle of his pistol held steady and level one meter from Grayson's left eye. "Singh! You animal!"

The shout had come from Grayson's right. Grayson turned, saw horror and anger and a death's-edge determination burned into Griffith's face five meters away. The Weapons Master was supporting himself on one blood-smeared arm, was holding a small automatic pistol in the other.

The warleader's gun fired first, three quick shots that split Griffith's straining face and opened new rivers of blood from the Weapons Master's throat and gaping mouth.

Grayson screamed mindlessly and threw himself forward. The warleader swung back to cover him, the machine pistol centimeters from his head. Grayson lurched to the right as the weapon struck him with a hammerblow of thunder and white pain. His body hit the floor an instant later.

5

Grayson was aware of sound before he felt the pain. There was a low and steady roaring in his ears, like surf against a rocky coast, but with a steady, rhythmic pulse that was maddening until he recognized it as the beat of his own heart. Somehow, though, the pain had lost its knife's edge. He hurt, but not as much. Not as much as what? He struggled with the idea, a vague sense of passing time, of horror and wrenching loss, but could not remember.

The pain receded somewhat. Encouraged, Grayson opened his eyes. He winced at the sudden glare, but managed to get them open and carefully survey his surroundings. He did not recognize the room. Bare plaster walls with chipped patches high up by the wood-beamed ceiling were close around his bed. A table, a clothes chest, chairs, and a mirror completed the list of furnishings. A narrow window let him see a patch of orange sky beyond dust motes dancing in a shaft of bloody light.

Light. It must be... daylight! The long night was over!

He sat up suddenly, then sagged back onto the bed, hands clasping his dizzy, pain-wraeked head. His head was wrapped in bandages, he found. Someone had carefully tended what was obviously a fairly serious head wound.

A door opened somewhere behind him, and Grayson sensed someone enter the room. "So, awake at last! I thought I heard you yell."

Grayson didn't remember yelling, but decided anything was possible with his head feeling as it did. He turned slightly, and focused on the speaker.

The man was a young Trell, somewhat shorter than Grayson's lanky stature, and stockier, with wide, stubby-fingered hands that were stained with grease. He had the pale skin of a native Trell, which looked even paler next to the unruly black hair and deep, dark eyes. He wore a casual, knee-length tunic, white except for a triangular shoulder panel that caught the red light in shifting patterns of warm color.

Grayson's eyes went back to the Trell's face. Recognition clicked somewhere behind the ache in his skull. "I know you! Ah... Claydon, isn't it? Right! Senior Astech Claydon. You were on Riviera's team!"

Claydon inclined his head with a wry smile. "At your service, Lord, though I can hardly admit to the title anymore. That's not exactly healthy now."

"Not... what? Why?"

Claydon jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward the window. "It's not safe to admit to being one of the offworlders' pets. Not any longer."

Grayson wrestled with that concept for a while, then let it go. He decided to concentrate on more immediate questions. "Where am I?"

"My father's house, of course. I brought you here after the attack."

"Your... father?"

"Yes. Berenir is his name. He's a merchant. He's done business with you folks. Doesn't share the local prejudice against you offworlders. He's the one who got a doctor to come in and tend your wound."

Grayson touched his bandaged head. "Then I have you and your father to thank for saving me."

Claydon grimaced. "You'll be able to show your thanks by getting well and out of this house and away from here. If the neighbors knew we had YOU here.

"What makes me so unpopular all of a sudden?"

"All of a sudden? What have you been using for eyes, Lord?"

Grayson ignored the bitterness in Claydon's voice. "Is it because of the Pact?"

"You ought to know that most Trells think Captain Carlyle was betraying them to Oberon. When word of the Pact got out, offworlders stopped being welcome around here."

Claydon's casual mention of Durant Carlyle brought tears to Grayson's eyes. Memories flooded back unbidden, memories of the battle with running, black-clad figures in the smoke-filled Vehicle Bay, of the horror of that instant as an enemy Marauderpainted with the slit-eyed emblem descended toward his father's 'Mech.

Emotions clamored within him, a mix of grief, shock, and loss. "My father is dead," he mumbled.

"I know. I think they all know... now."

"It wasn't his idea... the Pact, I mean."

Claydon shrugged. "It's all the same. He was the leader up there in the Castle. The people looked to him, and when word came that we were being given over to those filthy bandits..."

"Who told you about that, anyway?"

Claydon shrugged again, and said nothing. Grayson couldn't tell if he didn't know or wasn't telling.

Betrayal. And more betrayal. There had been enemies among the Castle workers, that much was certain. Grayson remembered the astech Stefan standing at the black-garbed warleader's side, pointing him out to the enemy. Perhaps Stefan had been the one who had leaked word of the Trellwan Pact to the people of Sarghad. Grayson remembered now that the first anti-Commonwealth student riots had begun shortly after the last batch of astech recruits had arrived at the Castle, and Stefan had been among them. Grayson had been one of those assigned to guide them through their physicals and indoctrination lectures.

Grayson felt a cold, growing resolve. That was ONE traitor he would find before he left this dustbowl planet And after he found the man, he would kill him. If the Trell had set up the attack on the Castle, he must be involved with Durant Carlyle's ambush and death as well. It begged too much of coincidence to think that the pirate landing at the spaceport and the assault on the Castle were unrelated.

There were still so many unanswered questions. Who had laid this extensive plot? If it had been Hendrik of Oberon, then why? His thoughts circled back to a groove in his memory. Who was responsible for killing his father?

Grayson held his voice rigidly in control. "So? Why'd you save me?"

Claydon went to the window and leaned against the sill, his face and tunic catching the red-hued sunlight. He spoke quietly. "I went up there looking for Sergeant Riviera. He was... a friend. A good friend. He taught me everything I know about teching."

"I know he spoke highly of you," Grayson lied. Master Tech Sergeant Riviera had been a hard man to know, and Grayson had never been very close to him. Certainly, the Lance's senior Tech would not have discussed the performance of a member of his staff with anyone but the Captain, not even the Lance Captain's son. Grayson did remember a scene he had happened to witness one day in the Repair Bay. The dark-skinned Riviera stood with his hand on Claydon's shoulder, an expression of complete and relaxed patience on his face as he explained some arcane twist of 'Mech circuitry to his protege. Most of the unit's staff Techs relied on the astechs as raw muscle power and little more, acting the part of overseers more than mentors.

Evidently, Sergeant Riviera had subscribed to a markedly different philosophy.

The astech paused, then turned to face Grayson. "I wasn't in the base when the attack took place. That's what saved me. I was here, at home, on a 60-hour pass. But we could see the battle at the port even from down here, and pretty soon we could tell the Castle was under attack too.

"We knew the Oberon pirates had cleaned out the Castle. We watched what was left of your Lance heading down the Avenue Coraza toward the spaceport. But by daybreak, it looked like the pirates had pulled out of the Castle and followed them. There was a lot of gunfire going on at the port.

"I figured the pirates would be back to the Castle soon, but I thought I might find out what happened, and maybe find out if the Sarge had gotten away."

Grayson saw Riviera in his mind's eye once more, kicking back in slow-motion horror across the well deck of a hovercraft transport, blood geysering from half a dozen shocking wounds. "Sergeant Riviera... he was killed. I was there."

"I know," Claydon said softly. "I found him in the Vehicle Bay. And then I heard you groan, and saw you were still alive.

"There was an awful lot of blood on your head. The doctor said scalp wounds bleed a lot, and I think that's why they left you. They must have thought you'd been shot clean through the head, and left you for dead. But the bullet just creased your scalp." Claydon touched the left side of Grayson's head. "Here."

Grayson repeated the gesture, and felt the burn of the grazing wound under the bandages. He remembered the sight of the attacher's submachine gun leveled at his face, and suppressed a shudder. The man must have fired only a single shot and not checked the results closely. If he'd fired that deadly little weapon on full auto...

"I put you on a skimmersled I found undamaged in a storage area and brought you out. Doc Jamis said you have a slight skull fracture, but that there was no brain damage, and youll recover."

"Thank you," Grayson said, feeling how inadequate were the words.

Again, Claydon shrugged. "I couldn't very well just leave you there." He paced away from the window, passed close by Grayson's bed. "Like I said, if you want to thank us, you'll hurry up and get better and then get out of here. If the anti-Commonwealthers find out we're keeping you here..."

Grayson remembered the riots, the burnings, the screaming mobs of people when rumors first circulated through the city that Trellwan was being turned over to Hendrik III. "Yeah, I can imagine."

"Can you? I doubt that!" Claydon's bitterness was fully visible now. "This city, this entire planet is wide open to Hendrik's pirates now... and it's YOUR fault."

"Hey! Not MINE. I didn't have anything to do..."

"Your people then, same difference! Look, I thought Trellwan was a protectorate of the Commonwealth! Why abandon us? Why hand us over to those monsters?"

"Are they that bad?"

"I don't remember much of their last raid," Claydon said. "Just confused pictures of people running... a night sky on fire... a cave crowded with scared and screaming people... I was pretty young at the time. But I remember my mother. She was killed when they burned Sarghad... killed or carried off as a slave." He shook his head. "I prefer to think she was killed."

Grayson was silent for a long moment, eyes shut. He'd had no idea that such angry, bitter feelings ran this deep among the people of Sarghad. Finally, he opened his eyes. "Why did you help me, Claydon?"

The astech paused before answering. "I don't know. Maybe it was because of Riviera. If ithadn't been for him, I'd still be working a stall on the Street of the Merchants, maybe dreaming of following my father someday as a prosperous Sarghadian merchant. For a time... for a time... there was something better. I can't put it into words. It's gone now... all gone. But I figured I owed the Sergeant this much, at least"

"Do you hate me... for what's happened?"

"Hate you? Personally? No, I don't think so. I don't even hate the Commonwealth for what happened. I do think your people were stupid for trying to bargain with those devils."

As there seemed no answer to that, Grayson decided to change the subject. "How long have I been out?"

"Seventy hours or so. The Doc had you on something to make you sleep."

"Seventy?" That was three standard days. "It's the morning after the attack?"

One of Trellwan's leisurely days was 30 standard days long. He'd returned to the Castle perhaps ten hours before Thirday dawn, which meant it must now be early morning.

Claydon nodded. "Thirday, fourth morning period. You understand our timekeeping?"

"Pretty well." Carlyle's Commandos had stuck with their own routine based on a standard 24-hour day divided into three watches. The Trellwan day-night cycles were somewhat more complex, with each 732-hour day divided into night and day segments called "Firstday,” “Firstnight," and so on, with three days and nights equal to two of the planet's years. Each segment was divided into 12 periods of IS and a quarter hours each.

Grayson still had trouble converting from standard hours to Trell time, but had taught himself enough so that he could match his schedule with Mara's. Trells alternated work periods with periods for sleep or recreation, but which daily period was for what was a matter of personal choice. The city of Sarghad was always awake, whatever the hour.

Numbers clicked into place. Three days!

"God!" What happened to the Lance? You say you saw them moving toward the spaceport?"

"That's right. Most of them got aboard their shuttle and took off just before dawn."

"They're... they're gone? You're sure?"

The Trell nodded. "Sure. I've pulled duty at the port. I know what your shuttle looked like – huge, blunt-nosed, stubby wings, with the bridge perched 'way up high above the prow." He held up a clenched fist, imitating the graphic symbol of House Steiner. "I saw the unit patches on the 'Mech exit panels. It's a good thing Hendrik's people didn't have any fighter's handy. The pirates took some shots at them from the ground, but I think they got away clean. They passed almost directly overhead, jets full out, and the sonic boom when they boosted to hi-G rattled my teeth. The firing stopped down at the port then, though I saw lots of the bandits running around putting out fires after that"

Grayson sagged back into the pillow. He felt a quiver of relief in the knowledge that the shuttle had gotten away. Lieutenant Hauptman must have organized a good enough defense to keep the enemy off the shuttle, or maybe Rama Xiang had managed to hold a perimeter until the Castle forces had reached him.

His relief was quickly overwhelmed by a rising despair. If Claydon was right, Grayson had been left for dead. Though still alive, he was alone and far from safe on this hostile, god-forsaken world.