Текст книги "Decision at Thunder Rift"

Автор книги: Уильям Кейт

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10

 

Ten-meter-tall death machines now stalked the narrow avenues of Sarghad. Though Grayson knew how to find the Third Street of the Merchants, four times he and Tor were forced to leave streets suddenly blocked by throngs of panicked people or by the striding nightmares of attacking 'Mechs. Grayson tried to keep track of the types he saw. There was one Locust,he knew, and another that looked like one of the Commando Wasps,now bearing the animal's eye insignia of Hendrik III of Oberon. Once he saw the Marauderagain, wading through the splintered rubble of buildings. A pall of oily smoke hung suspended above Sarghad, and the air was heavy with dust from plaster turned to brick rubble, and crumbled slabs of ferrocrete.

At the mouth of an alley opening onto the Third Street of the Merchants, Tor held back, motioning Grayson behind him. Peering past the freighter pilot, Grayson saw another Wasp,this one leading a string of perhaps fifteen Trells toward the city borders.

"What are they doing?"

Tor looked grim. "Taking hostages, possibly. But those people don't look all that well-to-do. Slaves, more likely."

Grayson remained silent. He'd heard stories of the slave trade among the bandit kinglets of the Periphery, but had not given them much credence. Even Claydon's lingering fear that his mother might have been taken by Hendrik's raiders as a slave to Oberon, that was easy enough to dismiss as the xenophobic fears of an untravelled, nearly uneducated native who had never been beyond the fringes of his own world's atmosphere. The brutal truth was that among the shards of a civilization where machines and the products of technology were treasures, human labor tended to be cheap and easily harvested.

"Where will they take them?" Grayson wondered aloud.

Tor shrugged. "The spaceport, perhaps. They won't be able to use them here. Most likely they'll be coralled somewhere offworld." His voice was curiously level and remote. "They might even load them aboard the old Invidious."

A rumbling crash from farther down the street caught Grayson's attention. He crawled forward, slipping his head past the shelter of the wall close to the street. What he saw shocked him to the core. Standing there was the Marauder,encased in the rubble of a building in flames. A knife twisted cold in Grayson's gut. That building was the house of Berenir the merchant

The Marauderlurched forward into the street, completing the destruction. The front wall of the house rippled and collapsed inward, sending a galaxy of red sparks into the smoky pall above it.

Tor was watching Grayson's face. "That was the house of your friends, I take it."

"Yes... yes, it was. But I don't understand.. Why did they destroy just that one house?" Berenir's house had been eliminated with surgical precision, but none of the other buildings on the block had been touched. Grayson wondered if Claydon had survived. As the Maraudermoved on to the north, leaving rubble and flames behind, Grayson thought it was unlikely. He watched grimly as another wall of Berenir's house collapsed in a shower of sparks.

Grayson and Tor edged back away from the street. "Sorry about your friends," Tor said.

Grayson nodded acknowledgment. He felt curiously empty now, drained of all but the need to strike back against the bandit 'Mechs. But how? How? A feeling of helplessness weighed heavily on him now.

"I'm heading for the port," Tor said. "Technicians are always in demand, and I've got enough ship teching skill to find me a billet. You can come along as my assistant and we'll find a way to dye your hair. Then you won't have to take mud baths, right?"

Grayson thought for a moment, then shook his head. "Go on without me, Captain. I've got something else to do."

Tor was taken back. "What?" he wanted to know. "Where?"

I've... never mind," Grayson said, distracted by his own musings. "I've just got to do some thinking, is all. I'll find you at the port later."

"When?"

Grayson shrugged. "I don't know." He glanced down at his hand, wondering why it was not trembling. His legs and arms felt weak, as though the surge of emotions that had drained away at the sight of the Marauderhad left him a husk, scarcely able to stand. The adrenalin high that had kept him going till now was vanishing, leaving him exhausted.

He turned to face Tor. "Just go. I'll join you when I can."

Tor grinned, but worry showed in his eyes. "Don't take too long. Us aliens have to slick together now, right?"

Go to hell and leave me alone, Grayson thought with a viciousness that surprised him. He said nothing, however, but nodded and turned away. He was going to have to find transportation to the mountains, and was not entirely sure that he had the strength to manage it.

* * * *

The junior officer stood stiffly at attention and felt the sweat pooling in the collar of his black body armor. "No, Lord, he is not here," the man reported. Looking up from the paperwork on his desk, the seated man regarded his officer with a cold and level gaze. "He must be. I shot him myself. I saw him fall, right at the spot I marked on the map of the Vehicle Bay I gave you."

"He was not there, Lord." There was fear in the young man's face. His commander had a reputation for ruthlessness. "We have searched the Castle, and checked all the bodies. There... there is evidence that someone was moving about the Castle after our departure. Perhaps this is the boy you seek. A storage compartment door that Sergeant Wynn remembers seeing closed after the battle was open when we returned, and the manifest for that room shows a hovercraft missing. Carlyle's son must have taken a machine and escaped."

Captain Lord Harimandir Singh considered himself a just man – ruthless, yes, and demanding – but not given to whims of raw emotions. He had fired the single shot that had hit the enemy commander's son in the head. It had been his order that had led the attacking party and its prisoners out of the Vehicle Bay,to follow the surviving Commandos to their spaceport perimeter. If Grayson Death Carlyle still lived, it was Singh's responsibility, and not that of the Lieutenant trying so unsuccessfully to mask his terror.

So, the fault is mine, Singh thought. I should have sealed the matter with a second shot, or at least had someone stay and check for wounded in the Bay.

But things had been happening so fast down in that Repair Bay. Only rapid decisions and swift movement would have accomplished the mission.

And the mission HAD been accomplished, had it not? Carlyle's Commandos were broken, the survivors fled, and their base in Singh's hands. If this one boy had managed to escape to Sarghad, could that seriously jeopardize the grand plan? Singh's specific orders had been to make certain of the death of Carlyle's senior Tech, Riviera, of all Mech Warriors remaining in the Castle, and of Carlyle's son. The orders had been carried out, except for the very last.

Singh considered the matter carefully. The boy had not escaped with the surviving members of Carlyle's Lance, of that he was certain. If he lived, he could only be hiding somewhere in Trellwan's desert wilderness, or in that sprawling refuse heap at the foot of this mountain the indigs called Sarghad.

If he hadmade it to the wilderness, his time was running out. Periasteron would bake those deserts with killing heat in only a few more standard days. And even if the boy survived THAT by hiding in a cave somewhere, the -50 degree weather of Trellwan's brief winter would finish him by Secondnight.

That left the city. There was no way to search the entire city for one boy, and no real reason to attempt it. Young Carlyle would not be able to get off the planet, would not even be able to approach the spaceport without being challenged by the perimeter guards. He was effectively marooned on Trellwan. The rest of the Plan was proceeding smoothly, and it seemed that Carlyle's son would pose no obstacle to its final stages.

Besides, there was always the chance that he would be picked up by a patrol unit. Singh decided that it would be best to issue a patrol order requiring that he be notified if anyone of Carlyle's approximate age were taken in Sarghad or at the spaceport. . .no, make that any offworlders, whatever their age. One way or the other, he would learn the boy's whereabouts or assure himself that he was dead.

The officer was still standing at attention before him. "That will be all, Lieutenant You have done well. Thank you for your report"

The Lieutenant sagged visibly with relief, then stiffened and executed a smart right-fist-to-left-chest salute. "Yes, Lord!"

Singh watched the man turn on his heel and leave. No, Carlyle's escape should not affect the Plan at all.

He returned his attention to the work on his desk, a report he was writing for the Duke. A fast courier was scheduled to arrive at the jump point within 24 hours, and Singh's report would bring the Duke and his armada to Trellwan before another local year had passed.

Singh knew that His Grace, Duke Ricol, known throughout the Successor States as The Red Hunter, was eager to begin execution of the next phase of the game.

* * * *

Above Mount Gayal and the brooding, truncated pyramid of the Castle, there rose a series of jagged, cliff-faced peaks, part of the braid of rugged mountain ranges circling Trellwan's equator. The Crysander Mountains were raw and new, shaped by the incessant tidal twistings of Trellwan's very close sun, which continued to fold and refold those uplhrusting layers of igneous rock and, on occasion, literally turned them inside out in lava flows and eruptions. Many of the peaks along the 35,000-kilometer-long range were enthusiastically active volcanos, and mild seismic quakes were a daily occurrence.

Although most of Trellwan was arid, there were two small, snaking, mineral seas nestled among the equatorial mountains. The planet's human colonies had grown in the relatively fertile regions within a few hundred kilometers of these bodies. The slow tidal swell raised by red Trell once each fifteen standard days was too high to encourage seaside settlements. Also, the high sulfur and hydrogen sulfide content of those acid waters made the air for kilometers around heavy with a sour, rotten-egg stench. However, much of Trellwan's power came from unmanned tidal generator plants along the foul-smelling shores of those seas.

Periasteron marked the beginning and the end of each 45-day year. It was the time when Trellwan was closest to Trell in its slightly eccentric orbit about the star, and always occurred over the same two spots on the planet's surface. The Periasteron called Far Passage occurred on the other side of the world in the middle of each Secondnight. It was heralded in Sarghad by mild storms sweeping in from the dayside, and by gradually rising temperatures that marked the beginning of Sarghad's brief spring-summer-fall.

The Periasteron called Near Passage occurred over the Nerge, the Black Desert, 2,000 kilometers to the west of the city, and was altogether different.

Trell was in the sky at that lime, just past the middle of Firstday for Sarghad's longitude. As the local temperature rocketed under the burning heat, water evaporated from the surface of the nearby sea at an accelerated rate. Clouds boiled skyward so quickly that their growth could be followed with the eye. As vast volumes of hot, wet air rushed from ground level into the chill stratosphere, they dragged in desert winds that howled across Sarghad from the mineral flats to the east

Then the rains came, violent, rattling-wind rains that turned the ocher deserts to seas of mud and flooded the streets of Sarghad. As the planet's slow rotation continued, Sarghad gradually descended into continuous night In that long night, the storm continued while temperatures plummeted.

By mid-Firstnight, some five or six standard days later, it was snowing in the mountains above the city. Most of the moisture deposited as snow fell in the mountains, and across the great ergs and glacial plains far to the north and south. The equatorial desert around Sardghad froze solid as temperatures plummeted to 50 degrees or more below zero, and high in the mountains, short-lived glaciers grew.

The snow lay heavy among the jagged range peaks. There were places where seismic shocks and the repeated cycles of snow, freezing, heat, and falling meltwater had cracked open the mountains, laying bare ancient, hidden faults, caverns, and the wellsprings of river leading down to the sea. Hot mineral springs rising within the caves opened caverns beneath glistening roofs of ice. Within these caverns' sheltering heat, there was the steadily echoing plip-plip-plip of snow melting and trickling down the fantastic dagger shapes of stalactites.

Far Passage occurred in mid-Secondnight. There were storms then, mostly wind– and duststorms born on warm winds from the antipodes, and the temperature began to rise. By mid-Thirday, the temperature was above freezing, and still climbing. Whole mountains of rapidly accumulated ice and packed snow began melting.

In places, the melt was catastrophic.

Thunder Rift was the largest and deepest of the network of fault-rifts and caverns in the mountains north of Sarghad. During cold periods, it was completely roofed over by ice hundreds of meters thick. From early Thirday until well into Firstday, meltwater created an icy cataract. The booming, cascading, white-raging waterfall fell by many-branching paths worn through ice and rock into a deep-cleft lake, from which spray rose like a cloud. During warmings periods, that cloud spray hung above the V-shaped notch that marked the Rift as seen from the city plain, and the thunder of the waters could be distantly heard above the incessant murmur of street merchants and vendors.

Grayson had discovered the Rift shortly after Carlyle's Commandos had arrived on Trellwan. It had become a refuge for him from Kai Griffith's demands and criticisms and from the crowded barracks. At times, it had even given refuge from the the gentle but critically sharp eye of his father. Once, several local years ago, he had brought Mara here for a few hours' gentle diversion. He'd hoped she would feel as enthralled with the cavern's beauty as he, and had been keenly dissappointed by her lack of response. The mouth of the Rift was too noisy, she'd told him, the air too wild and wet, the water-worn rock too cold and hard for what they'd planned to do.

He'd not returned for several local days after that episode, but not even Mara could long dim his enchantment with the place. Though Grayson returned many times after that day, he had always come alone.

The Rift was where he needed to be now. It had taken only a few moments to find a Sarghad militia ground effect skimmer parked at the fringe of the churning street mob. He felt little compunction about taking the machine. It was, after all, one of the light military vehicles the Commandos had given the local militia shortly after the garrison had arrived. It had been signed over to the locals as part of the mutual military training and assistance agreement between Trellwan and the Commonwealth government

After what Grayson had been through in the last few hours, he felt the Trells at least owed him some transportation. The skimmer carried him on a swirling trail of dust out of Sarghad and across the irrigated fields north of the city.

There was vegetation there, stubby and stained dark blue by Trellwan's copper sulfide-based analogue of chlorophyll. A single, wide, rust-crusted pipe brought water down from the mountains to the north, irrigating the patchwork of blue vegetation alternating with low, dull silver agrodomes that stretched into the desert beyond the city. Humans could not eat the local vegetation, and so grew fields of imported grains and vegetables inside the temperature and light-controlled shelter of the agrodomes. Local crops adapted to Trellwan's cyclical climate provided the spices (safe if ingested in small quantities) and the shrub-grown mineral-dense hardwoods that were the staples of Trellwan's offplanet trade.

Grayson guided the skimmer across the fields, opening up the little craft's considerable full speed, angling toward the glacier nesting in its V-shaped notch in the mountains to the north. There were a few people about, mostly field workers urging scaly-humped lannics out of low, domed shelters. Now that the attackers had gone, work in the fields and agrodomes would continue. None of the workers took notice of the hovercraft's flight

There were switchback paths up the face of the mountains, but eventually he had to leave the skimmer among a jumble of boulders. From there, he plunged into a network of low-ceilinged caverns that would lead him into the mountain's heart, and then into the vault of the main Rift.

Grayson was aware first of the sound of the Rift, a dull thunder audible across ten kilometers even in the streets of Sarghad. In the caverns, the booming roar rang and pounded through rock channels and drummed at his senses like something alive. The sound rang out only during the time between early Thirday and early Firstday when the icepacks were melting and pouring into the 200-meter-deep hollow of the Rift, but Grayson knew what to do. He used to bring along ear protectors, but then discovered that wads of slick, waxy yellow clay from the cavern floor would work as well to protect his hearing. He carefully plugged his ears, then made his way up the slanting cavern trail toward the source of the thundering roar.

There was a ledge, the remnant of some age-old convulsion of the planet's crust, which ran along the riftwall halfway up between the translucent glow of the ice ceiling and the shadowed dimness of the spray-shrouded lake below. On that ledge, he was surrounded by the mountain's exultant roar and intense vibration. The air was cool, heavy with moisture and alive with the thrumming waves of sound from the cataracts of water. The central void of the Rift was filled with water funnelling from channels and water-worn passages within the ice roof overhead. From time to time, multi-ton boulders of ice would break free and fall 200 meters through spray-filled space, and plunge into the foam and fury below.

Grayson made his way along the ledge to the left. There, to the south, the Rift opened up to air and light, and the ice ceiling gave way to clear sky framed by the surrounding cliffs. Through the opening, he could see the helicopter pad on the roof of the Castle five kilometers out and down. Beyond and below that was the wheel-shaped sprawl of Sarghad. At his feet, the Rift wall dropped straight down 100 meters to the edge of the lake.

That lake was very deep and quite long. Several kilometers farther into the mountain, it fell by cascades and steaming waterfalls through the northern opening of the Rift, flowed by deep and winding channels farther north, then catapaulted a final 50 meters in spray and spume into the murky yellow and sulfur-stinking waters of the mountain-locked Grimheld Sea. The southern shore of the lake, sheltered on either side by the Rift walls, opened to a boulder-sprinkled ravine leading to the arid badlands south of the mountain. The irrigation pipeline was only barely visible from this altitude.

Surrounded by sound, Grayson sat down on a mist-slick boulder. From this vantage point, he could see people on the roof of the Castle, though it was impossible to tell what they were doing or to make out details. As the spaceport lay behind and below the Castle, not much of it was visible from here. Grayson did manage to distinguish part of the control tower, a ground station communication dish, and what might have been the blunt prow of the Invidious'DropShip. He wished he had his electronic binoculars so that he could spy on workers moving among the gantry scaffolding near the ship.

Grayson studied the Castle roof. There were several helicopters there, light scouting machines that he recognized from the Commandos' vehicle depot. As he watched, one of the machines lifted into the air and swung like a huge, gleaming insect toward the port. With their acquisition of the Castle and all the equipment the Lance had not had time to move or destroy, the pirates had made out quite well.

Grayson's thoughts slipped back to his need, his burning desire for revenge. Right now, it seemed like a hopeless quest. Scarcely tried in battle, unarmed, what chance did he have against a Marauder?For vengeance, he would need a heavy 'Mech at least, one that could stand up against that 75-ton machine. He'd also need a 'Mech Lance to go with it – or a small army trained and equipped to fight 'Mechs. After all, that Marauderwas not alone. There were other pirate 'Mechs on Trellwan, and how many hundreds of pirate troopers?

Grayson thought about this for a moment. The attack on the Castle had been so methodical, so carefully timed and planned. It didn't fit the typical slash-and-run tactics of bandit raiders. The more he thought about it, the stranger it seemed. The pirates had had to plan and execute the capture of Tor's ship by intercepting it at one of thirty possible navigation and power bank charging points between Oberon IV and Trellwan. They had to transfer the men and material for the attack to the Invidiousonce they captured her – never an easy task in deep space – and then equip the DropShip with the extra weapons that had surprised and devastated his father's Phoenix Hawk.All of that had been timed and coordinated with what was happening on Trellwan. The pirates must have convinced or bought the astech Stefan's help (and probably others) in bypassing the Castle's security system so that a commando force could get in.

There'd been dozens of them, a company at least, and probably more. It seemed they'd been divided into numerous small units, each assigned a different target within the Castle. Grayson remembered the sight of them entering the Control Center, and knew with cold certainty that those were not native troops. They must have been brought in from elsewhere, probably on another freighter DropShip that had grounded at the port some hours before. That part of the operation had demanded careful preparation and precise timing to allow it to be carried out just as the Carlyle's Phoenix Hawkapproached the Individous'DropShip. The entire scheme suggested a major military operation – and an expensive one. Grayson was sure there was more to it than a mutiny against Oberon by a handful of his own pirate warlords.

Unbidden, the memory of his attacker's face returned to Grayson. That lean, dark face with the trim mustache and beard. The too-bright eyes, the eyes of a fanatic. Grayson believed he had seen that face before, but where?

An important part of any apprentice MechWarrior's training required him to become familiar with other MechWarriors. Not all of them, of course, but the important ones, the brilliant ones, the successful mercenaries and warleaders who had carved names for themselves across the battlefields of a thousand war-torn worlds. Was it in the computer files of known warriors he'd studied in Trellwan that Grayson had seem that dark face? Was it that of a MechWarrior? A ground forces officer? He covered his eyes with one hand. Think... think!

He opened his eyes, blinked into the light, stood and breathed deeply, but the man's identity did not come to him. Grayson knew, though, that if he had seen that face while studying the computer files, the information he needed would still be there in the central computer in the Castle. Somehow, he thought, somehow he was going to have to get back inside the Castle.