Текст книги " The Price of Glory"

Автор книги: Уильям Кейт

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"Roget!" Grayson yelled into his mike. "Get your people off that crest!"

"I can't!" Her reply was faint over the searing hiss of static. Her antennae or her transmitter, or both, had been damaged. He could barely hear her over the roar. "I can't leave Sylvie!"

Sylvia Trevor must have still been up there trying to get her 'Mech functional. Missiles were raining onto the ridge now from at least a dozen launchers. The Marik infantry must have trained shoulder-launched missiles on the recon lance's position as well as five BattleMechs. Implosions tortured the landscape as mortar fire began drapping from the sky.

Grayson was halfway up the hill when a Marik Centurionrose to face him, battle scars carved gruesomely across its torso. He recognized the machine that he had exchanged fire with earlier in this longest of days, and triggered a burst of PPC fire at it.

It skipped aside as he fired, unleashing its own laser and autocannon salvoes at the same time. Tracking quickly, Grayson snap-fired a laser at the lighter machine, then pushed ahead. He didn't have the time now to exchange shots with a suicidal Centurionpilot.

More shots were slamming home into Grayson's Marauder.Blue electric discharges danced and snapped from his Marauder'shull into the ground as his instruments went wild under the momentary surge of an electrical overload. Another PPC bolt struck him from behind. He heard a grating crash from behind his head as a chunk of his rear armor was torn away. Lights flashed on his console, warning of damage to his electrical system and the loss of two of his heat sinks.

This was damage he couldn't ignore. He pivoted his Marauderon the hillside. The enemy's Warhammerstood fifty meters downslope, stepping from behind a boulder. In a flash, he realized that the Centurionmust have been bait, that the Marik had expected him to engage the Centurionin order to destroy the machine he had damaged earlier. In doing so, he would have exposed himself to a crippling, close-range attack from the rear. His decision to move on had upset the Marik pilots' timing, but they had gone ahead and sprung their attack anyway.

Though the Warhammerwas still at long range, Grayson fired on it, more to discourage it from coming closer than in hopes of damaging it. Then, closing his eyes to better sense the input from the neurohelmet through his middle ears, he leaned the 'Mech into a spinning turn, ducking as he moved. PPC charges flared brightly overhead. Three quick steps and he had closed the range on the Centurionto thirty meters and brought the enemy machine between his Marauderand the distant Warhammer.He discharged his own PPCs then, one after another. Great, flaming holes opened up in the Centurion'storso armor. A strike in the left torso must have landed squarely in the Centurion'sammunition stores of 5 cm SRMs, because the first flash of light from Grayson's PPC shot was followed by a much brighter flash of exploding ordnance . . . and then another . . . and another . . . and another. Rockets arced skyward on aimlessly twisting trails of white smoke. A final explosion gutted the Centurion'storso, blasting away huge chunks of armor and leaving the machine's hull a flaming skeleton, an empty framework of struts and half-glimpsed masses of machinery behind the remaining fragments of armor plate. For an instant, Grayson held an image, burned into his brain, of the Centurion'spilot smashing wildly against the inside of the plastic transparency of his cockpit. Then another explosion sent a gout of flame hurtling into the air, fragmenting the cockpit into tiny, glittering slivers as it burned a gaping hole between the 'Mech's shoulders. Burning wildly, the 'Mech fell forward to the ground, its fall marked by a dense contrail of black smoke.

The pillar of smoke boiling from the wrecked Centurionformed a screen almost at once. Turning his back on the enemy Warhammer,Grayson resume his race up the slope.

There he found disaster.

Trevor's Wasplay sprawled on the ground, its left leg still missing, its head crumpled as though by a multi-ton swing of an armored BattleMech foot. Vandergriff's Commandohad exploded. Nothing remained but scattered limbs and a hull as torn and gutted as the Centurionjust dispatched by Grayson. Francine Roget had her Pantherfifty meters further along the slope, firing gamely at the 'Mechs that were closing in on her. Through the smoke, Grayson could make out the monstrous forms of the damaged Thunderboltand Wolverine,as well as three smaller 'Mechs. Roget scored hit after hit on the advancing army until the Thunderboltreached her position and raised one massive, black fist.

Grayson heard Francine's scream over the taccom line as the fist descended.

BOOK II

13

For Grayson, the retreat from Cleft Valley was a nightmare of pain, loss, and the knowledge of total defeat. Not since the night of his father's death in a Kurita surprise attack had he known such desolation.

The BattleMechs of the Legion's command and fire lances, the 'Mechs that had had warning, were able to regroup below the western ridge. The Marik 'Mechs had come thundering toward them from three sides to meet the unerring fire of the now thoroughly aroused mercenaries. Twice they had charged, and twice their charge faltered under that hail of laser, PPC, and missile fire. With several of their 'Mechs limping or showing blast-cratered scars and metal wounds leaking smoke, the Marik forces drew back to the valley where the Drop-Ships maintained silent vigil.

In that respite, Grayson got his troops away.

The infantry went first, with the seriously wounded crowded aboard a trio of cargo skimmers, and the rest walking or piled onto the turtle backs of a small menagerie of scout cars, hovercraft weapons carriers, and APCs. The fire lance moved with the column, providing cover from enemy infantry or AeroSpace Fighter raids. The command lance remained in place, a rear-guard against further Marik treachery.

No more came, however. It seemed that the Marik forces—Graff and Colonel Langsdorf included—were content to allow the Gray Death to escape. At least for now.

The problem was that the Gray Death Legion was in serious trouble. All of their reserve 'Mechs, and much of their infantry equipment and heavy weapons, had been aboard the two DropShips. At least three-quarters of the Techs who had returned with the Legion from Sirius V, all of the ship's personnel, both ships' doctors, and most of the regiment's logistical personnel had been captured. Even the regimental cooks had been taken.

Nor did the Legion have any food beyond a few days' worth of emergency rations aboard various 'Mechs or vehicles. It was certainly not enough to feed the survivors for more than a short time. There were both wild and domestic animals on Helm, but it would take time to find them, to hunt or gather and slaughter them. The meat would have to be processed, a way found to preserve it. Salt? Was there salt? Salt for preserving meat could be found along the shores of the dry sea bottom some fifty kilometers to the south, but ways would have to be found to separate sodium chloride from the various other salt compounds that encrusted the rocks along the long-dead beaches there.

And water. What would the survivors use for water? There were springs up in the hills, and the Araga River wound its way through the wooded valley where most of the Legion's survivors were already encamped. Grayson knew that an encampment of hundreds of people uses huge volumes of water, and can easily ruin what it does not use through poor waste management or hygiene. Water was not a serious problem, at this point, but it was another worry in a growing list of them. The water in the tanks aboard the Deimosand the Phoboswould have lasted for months, and the recyclers continuously produced more from wastes and the moisture in the air.

And ammunition. The infantry was down to a few tens of rounds per man for some weapons. Just after a major battle, special rounds such as inferno warheads were vanishingly scarce. The shortage ran right up to the projectile weapons of the various 'Mechs. Grayson himself had fired fourteen "rounds" of a hundred 120mm shells each. That left him with eleven ammo cassettes—enough, if he conserved his shots, for one battle. He had already checked with Davis McCall and found that the Bannockburn,the Scotsman's Rifleman,was down to six cassette rounds—600 shells—for each of its autocannons. And the way a Riflemanwent through AC ammo . . .

And the wounded. Fifteen men and women, including Captain Ramage, were too seriously wounded to walk. Without a doctor, without medical supplies, antibiotics, plasma, or blood, without even clean bandages, their chances for survival were not good. Another twenty-one had less serious wounds, but their fighting efficiency would be impaired unless they could be treated, and soon.

Grayson almost yielded to the impulse to call Langsdorf and ask for terms. The only thing that stopped him was the chilling knowledge that, for whatever reason, he and his men were being treated as outlaws. To surrender would not mean the usual repatriation by an employer, or a ransom posted by a patron. To surrender to Langsdorf would most certainly lead to a trial for some crime or crimes for which the Legion had apparently been found guilty already.

What crimes, though? And who was accusing them? The Legion had fulfilled their contract to Janos Marik on Sirius V! Why were the Marik forces now persecuting them?

Outwardly, Grayson had remained calm. He'd given the orders that set the column moving rapidly toward the north until the sophisticated D2j tracking system aboard McCall's Riflemaninformed them that the last of the Boomerangspotter planes had returned to the Marik encampment at Helmdown. Presumably, they were now leaving the task of shadowing the column to ships or satellites in orbit. Grayson had then led his people into the forest that blanketed much of the land fringing the North Highland Plains, and begun moving toward the northeast. In the foothills of the Aragayan Mountains north of Durandel was the Valley of the Araga, the river valley to which he had directed Lieutenant DeVillar and the rest of the survivors from Durandel. The place was well-hidden and secure. There they could rest and make their plans.

No matter what the outward show, Grayson carried with him a growing certainty of his own failure. What he had dreaded for so long had now finally come to pass. It was inevitable that a 24-year-old regimental commander would eventually come face to face with his own limitations through errors of judgement so serious they brought the entire regiment to ruin.

The column raced northeast, as Grayson thought of the soft and inviting comfort, the sweet oblivion, of suicide.

* * *

The House Marik JumpShip Mizarmaterialized at the Helm jump point. Nearby, the other ships of the squadron hung motionless, poised on the gentle, invisible streams of particles from their plasma station-keeping thrusters. Orienting under gentle shoves from her thrusters, the Mizarmaneuvered until her stern pointed toward the orange glare of Helm's star. It was then that the vast jump sail, absolutely black in order to absorb every stray quanta of energy possible for the starship's converters, began to unfold from the Mizar'sexternal sail lockers. Light from the sun streamed through the sail's central hole, an adaptation that allowed the Mizar'sstation-keepers to maintain thrust without damage to the delicate fabric of the sail.

On board the ducal DropShip Gladius,in the almost palatial suite of rooms assigned as his personal quarters, Precentor Rachan strapped himself into the chair behind his desk, and touched the key that ran his personal decoder program through the computer mounted on his desk. The Mizar'sparabolic antenna had trained on Helm IV almost from the instant the JumpShip had emerged from hyperspace into the system; within the handful of minutes necessary for speed-of-light communications to bear news that the Mizarhad arrived at Helm, a coded message from Rachan's brothers in Helmdown was on its way skyward.

The Mizar'scommunications operator noted the receiver's code and routed the stream of meaningless garble to Rachan's screen. There, the decoder turned garble into meaning, and a printed message flowed across the monitor. As he leaned forward to read, the screen lit his features with its phosphor glow. Rachan began to smile as he read, for the news from Helm was good, very good, indeed.

* * *

Under the shelter of darkness and trees, the endless rows of bubble tents were nearly invisible. Inside one of them, two people shared closeness . . . and pain.

"Well, Lori, I've made a real a mess of it this time."

Hearing past the lightness in his tone, Lori knew that Grayson was worried sick—and that he blamed himself for their current predicament. Her feelings for this man had flip-flopped so many times in the four short years of their comradeship, but love him or hate him, Lori had come to know Grayson Carlyle better than anyone in the Legion did. No one else saw the sorrow in his eyes now. Neither Ramage, who'd been working for Grayson the longest, nor Renfred Tor, who had known him longer, could read him so well. Only with Lori did the young mercenary commander let down his guard, and even that was rare.

"Gray." Lori's soft voice was pleading. "Gray, it's not you. We were betrayed. That damned Graff! There's nothing you—"

"Nothing!" He turned to face her, grey eyes flashing. Even in the dim light from the tent's glow panel, she could see his torment. "Nothing I could have done? I've made mistakes, grave mistakes, every step of the way! And now we've lost . . . everything ..."

Lori reached out, touched his arm gently. He grabbed her, clung to her desperately. "Lori, Lori, what're we going to do? What in God's name can we possibly do?"

Lori held him, grateful for his outburst. It wasn't often that he showed his need for her, and she knew it wouldn't last long. Soon they would be making love and he would be passionate and strong. By tomorrow, he would have figured out what they should do next, once again the courageous leader of the Gray Death Legion. But now, for just these few moments, he was vulnerable, and he needed her, not just as his Exec, not just as a fellow Warrior, but as a woman. And oh, how she needed that needing!

As happened so often when she was in his arms, Lori remembered the first time she'd seen Grayson Death Carlyle. If anybody had told her back then that one day she would be in love with the man who was aiming an inferno launcher at her . . .

As a 'Mech apprentice in the Sigurd Defense Forces, she'd been working for the Bandit King Hendrik of Oberon. A difference of opinion with her training sergeant got her assigned to a Special Expeditionary Force that was actually under the command of a Kurita noble. After they'd set down on the first planet of a star called Trell, she'd gotten her first taste of real combat. Piloting a fast but lightly armed Locust,Lori had been assigned to attack the palace of Sarghad, but she and her comrades couldn't even get through the city. Wes had bought it, his Wasp'shead smashed, then Garik had fled, asking her to cover him. Well, she had, and he escaped. Then Grayson Carlyle stepped out from the cover of an alley and threatened to set her already-overheated 'Mech on fire.

Lori shuddered. Ever since her parent's death in the fire that destroyed their home, she had been deathly afraid of fire. As a MechWarrior, the thought of death in combat was all part of the job, but the prospect of death by fire had broken her, shattered her nerve. There had been no choice. She hadto surrender when faced with Grayson's inferno launcher.

And then Grayson had made her first a Tech, and ultimately a MechWarrior under his command. They'd managed to win on Trellwan, through a combination of superb tactics and sheer luck, and had then gone on to form an independent mercenary unit. Already the unit was something of a legend. Against unbelievable odds, the Gray Death had helped the rebels on Verthandi win their independence, and at the same time, Lori had won a personal victory. In the torture chambers of Regis, she had finally overcome her fear of fire. More, she had come to realize that she did, indeed, deeply love this young, sometimes exuberant, sometimes exasperating man beside her.

Gently, she rubbed Grayson's back and felt his trembling subside. She reached up and stroked his blond hair, moving stubborn wisps away from his rugged face. At her touch, he roused, lifted her face to his, and kissed her with a sudden, desperate eagerness. She responded ardently, fiercely glad that of all the women in the Legion, she was the one to whom Grayson turned for love and comfort.

Strange. She still wasn't entirely sure that he loved her, nor if he was capable of loving any one woman. For now, it was enough that he needed her.

The early morning sun filtered through the trees, creating mottled shadows on the ground that the bubble tent's camouflage pattern mimicked closely.

It's a lot like Sigurd here,she thought, cupping her hands around a hot mug, and taking occasional careful sips. Cold . . . rocky . . . mountainous—but beautiful. There were mountains to the south, she knew, three thousand meters tall, the tallest spires capped with eternal snows, with endless glaciers. So much like home.

She stood up abruptly and strode to the edge of the clearing behind Grayson's tent. Home! She hadn't thought of Sigurd that way for a long time. Yet Helm reminded her so much of the land of her childhood, reminded her of a time before Hendrik of Oberon's troops had arrived in fire and fury and death to force that isolated planet to join his confederation. After her parents were killed and she had been orphaned in a conquered world, Lori had joined the Defense Forces partly as a way of combating her intense loneliness. She had found friends—comrades– that helped replace her lost family, only to see them torn from her, too.

It had been harder to make new friends in the Legion. At first, on Trellwan, the men hadn't trusted her, didn't respect her; she'd had to maintain distance in order to retain authority. Then, by the time they had begun to accept her as a fellow warrior, everyone assumed that she was the Chief's woman and so avoided getting close to her all the more. It wasn't until Janice Taylor joined up on Verthandi that Lori really found someone she could talk to.

Lori looked back at the encampment. There were signs of stirring now in the other tents, though Grayson apparently still slept. As one of the early risers this morning, she had enjoyed the solitude. In a close-knit community like the Legion, it was sometimes difficult to find a private moment. She walked back to the fire, refilled her mug, and sat down on a log, hoping that a good night's rest had refreshed Grayson's mind as well as his body. She, too, was wondering how they would get out of this fix, yet felt confident that Grayson would find a way.

A soft rustle and a low moan from the tent told her that he was waking up. A moment later, he poked out his head, sleepily trying to focus his gray eyes. Seeing her, he pushed some recalcitrant strands of straw-colored hair out of his eyes, and grinned.

"Morning, woman," he drawled. "Is that coffee I smell?"

"It sure is, Gray." Lori smiled back. "If you're good, I might even have a mug for you by the time you get out of that sack."

"Oh, I'm good, Lori, I'm real good." He pulled his head back into the tent and a moment later, emerged fully dressed. He sat down on the log next to Lori to pull on his boots.

"Did you sleep well?" she asked.

Grayson stretched luxuriously and then took the proffered mug from Lori's hand. "As always, after one of your delicious . . . ah . . . treatments, my love." He rested one hand on her thigh. "You're good for me, Lori. You know that?"

She smiled, but felt an inward twinge. She was not as free with endearments as Grayson was, and somehow could never fully believe his tender words. Few relationships in the Legion, or in any similar combat unit for that matter, lasted as long as theirs had already. She kept expecting Grayson to grow tired of her one day, but the thought always brought a tiny, distant chill.

"Do you have a plan, Gray? Do you know what we're going to do next?" She took a last sip of coffee and tried to steer her own thoughts away from matters personal.

The tall, blond leader took a deep breath, held it, then let it out slowly. "Yes," he said finally. "I know what I've got to do next."

Lori looked at him sharply. He had said "I," not "we." Whatever Grayson planned, it was something he planned to do himself. She knew that he still tended to view every action too personally, blaming himself if anything went wrong. Lori's own position as the Company's Executive Officer was endlessly complicated because Grayson had never learned to delegatehis responsibility.

At times, the burden of command seemed far too heavy for those broad twenty-four year-old shoulders. At others, he acted as though he might take on the universe and win. Lori didn't know which attitude exasperated her the most.

"So?" She reached for the battered coffee pot on its self-powered hotplate, and poured herself another cup, more for something to do than anything else. Coffee was already in short supply, but thatwas certainly the least of their worries. "So . . . what's your plan?"

Grayson's studied cheerfulness was another of his masks, one she had come to know well in four years. He knew she wasn't going to approve of whatever it was he had in mind, and so he assumed this outrageously cheerful facade. Of course, he couldn't assume the facade if he wasn't truly sure of which course of action to pursue, but following his shifts of mood could be frustrating.

"First and foremost, Lori, we need information. For one thing, do this Colonel Langsdorf and our friend Graff really represent the Marik government?"

"You still think we could be caught in a civil war?"

He shook his head. "I doubt it, but it's a possibility. We've got to know where we stand with these people, and with Janos Marik, before we take another step. Then, we must contact our friends."

"Friends? What friends do we have here on Helm?"

"Oh, you'd be surprised, Lori. Back in the old days, governments kept embassies in one another's countries. The idea was to have people there to keep an eye on what was going on in the other fellow's backyard, and to have someone convenient as a mouthpiece to that government when the need arose." Grayson sipped his own coffee, and scowled at its bitterness. "No sugar? Well, never mind. There's not much sense in embassies today, of course," he went on, "not with everybody fighting everybody else half the time, and with the Great Houses controlling so many worlds."

"There are embassies : . . and ambassadors. That negotiator on Sirius V, the Steiner Special Envoy ..."

"Right, but they tend to come and go only as they're needed, say, when a trade treaty or a defense pact has to be negotiated and signed. A world like Sirius V would probably have a regular envoy from House Steiner, and House Davion, and Kurita and Marik, just because it's a fairly important world on the Liao trade lanes. But an out-of-the-way rock like Helm wouldn't have anything like that.

"Still, every one of the Great Houses has to keep tabs on what's going on in everybody else's backyards, even including backwaters like Helm. You never know when something big is going to pop in an unlikely spot."

"Spies."

"Well, sure, but there are spies . . . and there are spies."

"What do you mean?"

"Everybody uses spies, of course." His mouth tightened, and his eyes regained some of the wintry bleakness she had seen in them the night before. "Like Graff. He must have been planted on us at Galatea. God only knows why he turned on us ... or was turned on us.

"But nearly every world has a resident agent or two from one or another of the Great Houses. They're nothing like an official ambassador, but then, they're not required to perform a regular ambassador's duties. They're just there to make a report once in a while, and maybe to provide help, advice, or maybe communications to someone who might ask for it."

Lori's eyes widened. "House Steiner!"

"Exactly. The Lyran Commonwealth government has got to remember what we did for them on Verthandi. Hey! We beat Kurita and won free a world that had been stolen by the Dracs a few years before . . . then set up things so that House Steiner could regain some lucrative trade rights there. Yes, I think Katrina Steiner's government remembers that and I think they'd be glad to help us."

"Do you know the Steiner . . . ah . . . ambassador?"

"The Steiner spy. I was told, lives at an address on Hogarth Street. It's a local merchant firm that deals in off world trade."

"So, how the hell did you find out about him?"

"One of Janos Marik's aides told me back when I signed the contract that gave us Helm. He gave me the address of a House Davion agent, too." He grinned. "Hell, he even offered me addresses for agents for Kurita and Liao as well, but I turned him down. I didn't figure we'd be wanting to talk to thosepeople, much!"

"I should think not." Lori's voice betrayed her surprise, and her amusement. The so-called civilized peoples often acted in ways that continued to amaze and confound her. There were many things in life for which distant, cold Sigurd had not prepared her. "And Marik's people actually know about this guy?"

Grayson shrugged. "Hey, like I said, he's just a merchant with ties to the Lyran Commonwealth. Nothing flashy . . . and nothing illegal. It's just that his merchant connections give him a means of sending messages off-world unobtrusively from time to time, and so House Steiner pays him a little on the side to keep an eye on things that might interest Katrina here."

"Like a Marik invasion of the Lyran Commonwealth? That could be a dangerous job."

"It has its rough points. Of course, I doubt that Janos Marik's generals would tell this guy about their invasion plans. It's the spies you don'tknow about that can cause you trouble."

She saw his jaw tighten again. "Like Graff," she said.

He nodded. "Like Graff."

"So why you?"

"Eh?"

"Why do you have to go? Any of us could make contact with this guy. Give us the address, and we'll do it.”

“No."

"Ah. Grayson Carlyle against the universe . . . once again?"

"It's not like that, Lori. But it issomething I have to do."

"Is it, Gray?" She stood suddenly, her eyes flashing in the early morning light. "Is it? Or are you tripping over your damned pride again?"

He started to answer, but she had already turned and crawled back inside their tent.

She didn't know whether to feel happy or furious that he did not crawl in after her. When Lori heard his boot-steps moving away from the tent after a time, she felt the loneliness from long ago welling up inside her once again.