Текст книги " The Price of Glory"

Автор книги: Уильям Кейт

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20

Then the night exploded with a brilliance far exceeding that of a burning BattleMech. Flame mounted into the sky, consuming the mobile headquarters. DeVillar and Grayson rolled face-down, covering their heads. A hurtling wall of flame belched from the open door like the blast from a flame thrower, searing the night just above their heads. A chain of explosions ate its way through the van as DeVillar's munitions erupted in a succession almost too quick to follow. Then the reserve of diesel fuel sealed in a tank underneath the cab blew off with the force of a high-explosive bomb.

The Thunderbolt,standing with its back only meters from the explosion, was thrown to the ground like a toy. The fact that that toy weighed sixty-five tons made the ground tremble, and the crash competed with the roar of the exploding van. One outflung metal arm whooshed through the air as the BattleMech toppled forward, its fist gouging into the soft ground three meters from Grayson's feet. Grayson and DeVillar were on their feet again in an instant, racing for the woods.

By the time the Thunderboltpilot regained his senses enough to bring his machine to its feet, the two men had rejoined their unit in the woods, and the Gray Death assault force was already slipping away to a rendezvous many kilometers to the east.

Once the immediate danger was past, Graff changed his piteous air for defiance. Perhaps the fact that his captors had bound and gagged him instead of killing him outright had made him bolder. While the assault team was racing back to their new encampment in the hills above the Dead Sea Flats, southwest of Durandel, they had kept Graff under close guard. They had him now inside the large bubble tent Grayson had been using as a headquarters, tied to a chair in the middle of the floor.

Grayson could see calculation glitter in the man's eyes, and knew precisely what he was thinking: If the commander of the Gray Death Legion is keeping me alive, it's for a good reason . . . probably his own survival! He won't dare hurt me if he thinks he can use me to save his own skin!

Graff's words confirmed Grayson's thought. "So, what makes you think I'll tell you one damned thing? You're history ... all of you. You must know by now that the Duke of Irian is almost here. He'll arrive in another day, and then your pathetic force will be hunted down and crushed!" Suddenly, his tone turned conspiratorial. "Of course, if you want to make a deal, maybe I can help you! There's still time, you know, before the Duke gets here with his army! I can talk to Langsdorf, you know."

Grayson felt sick as he listened to the man's attempts at manipulation. McCall stood behind Graff, his arms folded, his normally smiling features twisted into a frown. Clay paced by the door, darkness etching his features. Khaled sat on a stool in a far corner, cool and unexpressive as ever. Lori sat behind the table they had set up nearby, and rubbed at her eyes.

"Are we going to step on this worm, Gray ... or what?"

"I vote for 'Or what,' " Clay said. "A slow, lingering 'or what.' "

"Aye." McCall added. "Colonel. Just gi' me thirty wee minutes wi' tha' laddie, an' . . ."

"Quiet, all of you," Grayson said. He leaned forward until his gray eyes were level with Graff's brown ones. "Graff, to tell you the truth, I don't think you could buy me a ride into town, much less any kind of deal." He reached forward and flicked one of Graff's collar rank tabs. "What kind of pull does a Captain have over a Colonel?"

"More than you'd think, Colonel," Graff twisted against the ropes that held him, then managed a shrug. "There are things in this that even the Duke doesn't know ... As for Langsdorf, he doesn't know a damned thing!”

“And you do, I suppose?"

The man smiled nervously. "Like I said, Colonel. I'm valuable to you. Play things right, and you might even get off this dirtball alive!"

Grayson allowed scorn to color his voice. "Well! Gentlemen . . . and Lori! It seems we have captured ourselves someone important! The mastermind of the whole operation!"

"Laugh all you want! Tomorrow afternoon you'll be laughing at Duke Irian's assault BattleMechs!"

Grayson considered the bound man. He was a mass of contradictions. Boastful, yet secretive. Unwilling to help Grayson, yet desperate to prove that he could be valuable. Above all, there seemed to be the driving need to appear important, a powerful figure, someone his enemies would have to contend with.

It was this last motivation that Grayson sought to use against the man now, in combination with Graff's own fear.

"Gray ..." Lori began, but Grayson silenced her with a wave of his hand.

"I'd hoped we would be able to capture Colonel Langsdorf," he said, despite the fact that the object of the attack had been to destroy the mobile headquarters, with Langsdorf's death or capture a minor goal. "You know, Lori, I think we missed the one we really wanted. That man who came out just before we attacked . . ." He turned on Graff. "That was Langsdorf, wasn't it, Graff? The man in the old leather jacket, with no rank insignia?"

Graff nodded slowly. "He was there. He left a few minutes before you came in. He doesn't care much for the protocol of rank."

"You know, I think we could have talked with him. It's a shame that all we came up with was . . . this."

Graff snorted. "You don't know what you're saying."

"No? You're honestly claiming a Captain knows more about the mission than the Colonel in command of the whole planetary expeditionary force? Come off it, Graff! You're nothing . . . nothing! And you're worth less than that to me."

McCall came to stand next to Grayson, where Graff could see his face. He was smiling warmly through his beard. "Shall ah takit tha' wee beastie oot for a lit'le walk, Colonel sair? A one-way walk?"

Grayson sighed. "No, Davis. He's not worth it."

"We're not taking him with us!" Lori said.

Grayson shook his head. "No." He gave a calculated pause as he looked at the trembling quisling. "No, I think we'll let him go."

"What?" Lori was first to voice the outrage all of them shared.

"You can't do that, Colonel!" Clay said.

Grayson started to speak, but he was interrupted by Hassan Khaled, who had not moved or spoken during the entire interrogation. When he spoke now, it was with the measured, emotionless tones of Death itself. "I think the Colonel has made an excellent decision," he said. "Somehow, sir, I did not expect you to be so . . . inventive."

"Thank you, Khaled—I think. Davis, cut the man loose."

Davis hesitated, then caught the look in Grayson's eye. He drew his combat knife from its boot scabbard and went to the back of Graff's chair.

"What ... are you doing?" Graff said as he stood, rubbing his wrists. His glance shifted from face to face around the tent, and the uncertainty in his eyes was rapidly becoming sheer terror.

"You are free to go." Grayson said. "You know nothing we need to know. We can't afford to take you along, not when our food is short, and we need every man free to fight. And despite the stories that are being circulated about me, I am not a bloodthirsty killer. You will not be executed." Grayson allowed himself to smile, though the effort turned his stomach. "At least . . . Iwill not be your executioner."

Graff's eyes widened until the whites stood completely revealed around the brown of his irises. "You . . . you want me to go out there; in the middle of this camp? But if I'm seen ..."

Grayson shrugged. "You might not be seen. At least, not right away."

"I wonder how far he'll get," said Khaled, measuring Graff through narrowed eyes.

"Wait . . . Carlyle! You can't do this! If your people catch me, they'll . . . No! Wait! You can't do this! It's not human! You know what a mob can do . . ."

"Do I? Well, maybe I do. I've been accused of murdering twelve million defenseless civilians. For a man like that, a little mob violence is nothing. Get out of my sight! We'll let your former comrades-at-arms, the ones you betrayed, decide your fate."

"No!"

"There are a lot of people who liked Francine Roget a lot," he said thoughtfully. "And Sylvia Trevor. They were good people, and they died because of you. And there were the DropShips ..."

"Wait! You don't understand!" Graff was pleading openly now. "You can't send me out there! They'll tear me apart."

"Slowly," Khaled added. The single, cold, drawn-out word made Graff begin to shudder uncontrollably.

"You don't understand," he said again. "It's true that I'm only a Captain in the Marik House Guard, but I'm also . . . much more!"

"You haven't told me anything I care to hear, Graff. Out."

"No! ComStar! I'm ComStar!"

The word caught Grayson totally and completely by surprise. He had not been sure what revelation he sought to break from Graff, but of all possible revelations or confessions, he had not expected thatone.

Grayson stared hard into Graff's eyes. The man was purely, starkly, and openly terrified. There was no sham to his trembling.

Somehow, Grayson made himself dissemble. He smiled. He let the smile grow into a chuckle, and then into a laugh. "You? A ComStar agent?"

Clay smiled. "Maybe he wants to send a message just now, eh, Colonel?"

"Look, Colonel, you've got to listen to me!" The words came tumbling forth now. "I was approached months ago by someone . . . someone very high up in ComStar! His name is Rachan, and he's a Precentor. A high-level one! Do you know what that means? He's a high-ranking administrator within the ComStar organization! They say he's a confidant of the Primus himself, on Terra! It was Rachan's idea to disgrace you ... to disgrace the Gray Death Legion!"

"Why?" Grayson's lips formed a hard, tight line. "Why would ComStar want to do that?" He was genuinely baffled.

"Yeah, what the hell does ComStar have to do with it?" Clay asked. "That bunch of superstitious cowl heads and their ..."

"Gently, Del, gently. Let's not insult the gentleman. Tell us, Graff, what interest does ComStar have in us? ComStar's neutrality in inter-House disputes is proverbial."

Graff looked from face to face, bracing himself. All of the MechWarriors had drawn closer, ringing Graff in.

"It's . . . it's because there's a storehouse ... an old, old Star League storehouse, here on Helm someplace."

"A storehouse," Lori said. "Of weapons?"

"Weapons," Graff nodded. "And BattleMechs. And spare parts. Ammunition. Heavy equipment. Repair gantries. A whole Star League naval base storehouse, and it's someplace near Freeport."

"Someplace," Grayson said. "In other words, you don't know where it is.

Graff shook his head. "It's like this. There are records, old, old records from Star League days that talk about the naval depot here. It was actually located in Freeport."

Grayson nodded. "I've heard. And chances are, it's still someplace close by. There was no way for the local garrison commander to ship so large a cache offworld."

"You've heard?" It was Graff's turn to look surprised. He seemed to fold back into himself, his sudden animation failing. "Well Colonel, your military intelligence is better than I gave it credit for."

"Is that all you can tell us? That Marik wants to find the League storehouse?"

"It's not just House Marik. That'swhat I'm trying to tell you! It's ComStar!"

"So what's ComStar's interest?" Lori asked.

Graff shrugged. "ComStar has access to old records . . . including Minoru Kurita's reports on the Helm raid."

"The reports to the Council back on Luthien."

Graff nodded. "The Council on Luthien could accept his report at face value, for they weren't actually hereto put things together, you see. But when ComStar researchers read those reports, they had plenty of time to wonder. That cache must have been huge!Where could so many BattleMechs, so much war materiel, be hidden? ComStar maintains armies too, you know, to defend its own interests. Such a large, secret installation . . . that is of enormous interest to ComStar.'

"Hmm." Grayson studied Graff intently. "All very interesting. But none of it explains why this Precentor you mentioned wants to disgrace my regiment."

Graff hesitated until McCall said, "Come, laddie, speak up, or will ye be takin' tha' walk we mentioned a wee bit ago?"

"It was Rachan's idea ..."

"So you said."

"You, Colonel . . . you and your people, were in the way."

"Of what?"

"Of ComStar. This planet, Helm, is divided into administrative districts. Your contract with Janos Marik specified that the landhold of Durandel would be yours in exchange for your service to Marik."

Grayson nodded. "Yes."

"As Lord of Helmfast, you are, in effect, the governor of the whole stretch of territory from the Araga Mountains southwest to the sea. Governor, in fact, of everything on this part of the continent, except Helmdown itself, which is a special reserve of the Duchy of Stewart, under the planetary title."

"I am familiar with the legal aspects, Graff."

Graff shrugged. "Precentor Rachan was bringing his plan along. Durandel was to have been given to Garth for . . . oh . . . services to the Commonwealth. Helmfast had been vacant for some years, its last landholder gone . . . disgraced. Perhaps that was ComStar's doing, too. I don't know. Rachan had been maneuvering for a long time to get the legal title to Helmfast."

"Which would give him legal title to the lost cache."

"Mostly it was a matter of timing. Rachan figured that it might take years, perhaps decades, to find the lost cache. It has to be within a few tens of kilometers of the ruins of Freeport– hasto be—but he didn't expect the search to be easy. It could be anywhere in an expanse of thousands of square kilometers. One guess is that it's in the Dead Sea Flats. That vast, empty depression was filled with water until quite recently. It's possible that the mining efforts to create a hidden chamber for storing the weapons resulted in the sea's draining into cracks in the bedrock. Another possibility is that the cache is still buried under Freeport, but deep under meters of ferrocrete and steel, where it can't be found. It would take years of drilling and probing just to check all the possibilities in just that one location. And there were other cities in the area. You see what a task it is? Rachan expected the search to take years."

"And when he found it," Clay said, "He'd need a small fleet to move it. That meant the cooperation—and the silence—of the Lord of Helmfast."

"He figured I wouldn't be cooperative."

Graff smiled wanly. "You were studied quite closely, Colonel, for some time before the decision was made to disgrace you. It was determined that your personality was not . . . suitable to their purposes. Lord Garth met their criteria perfectly."

Lori tossed her head. "Well, Garth is a lot fatter than Grayson ..."

"He is also more malleable . . . and he has a certain handle that allows others to manipulate him."

"Which is?”

“He is greedy.”

“Ah."

"In any case, Helm was to have been given to Garth, not you. But in order to get you and your Legion out of Durandel ..."

Grayson closed his eyes. "The ... the people on Sirius V .. . Was that for real? Or is it just a story that's been circulated?"

"Oh, it's quite real. Lord Garth was in charge of thataspect of the operation." As Graff saw the expression hardening on Grayson's face, he grew more agitated. "That wasn't me! I ... I told you! I was a Captain in the Guard! Rachan approached me almost a year ago. He told me about the cache and asked me if I would help him. I was . . . flattered. ComStar Precentors rarely have dealings with merc Guard Captains!"

"And what, exactly, did he want you to do?"

"I was to join your regiment as a MechWarrior. The contract assigning the Helm landhold to you and your regiment had not been signed at that point, but Janos Marik and his staff had been discussing it. Rachan didn't want that to happen. But if it did, he wanted someone already in your regiment, someone who could keep him informed of your movements, your plans."

"A bloody spy," Clay began. "As well as a traitor."

"I'm no traitor! I was in the service of ComStar . . . for the good of humanity."

"Ah, it's the good of humanity now!" Grayson said. He was suddenly angry. "Millions of people slaughtered . . . and it's for the good of humanity!"

"That wasn't me ..."

"Wasn't it? I wonder ... I happen to remember that last day on Sirius V. You had the duty, on patrol in your Assassin. "

"Well . . . yes ..."

"And you swapped around with Vandergriff," Lori said, her eyes widening. "There was some comment about it, I recall . . . that you would prefer standing sentry-go to enjoying the fleshpots of Tiantan."

"Why did you wantto stand duty that night?"

Graff compressed his lips and shook his head. "I didn't blow up that dome."

"No, but two sentries were found dead, killed at close range by laser fire and vibroblade. Do you remember?" Lori shook her head slowly, as if she couldn't quite believe what she was saying. "We questioned you about it because it happened on your watch, but we assumed it was the work of Liao soldiers who didn't want to turn in their arms. But there was someone else there that night, wasn't there? Someone who had to steal a pair of hovercraft in order to move in and . . . and what, Graff? Plant explosive charges on the domes? Charges that could be detonated once we were away, but before most locals would realize that we had gone ... to make it look like wehad done the deed?"

Grayson said. "They had to get past you, didn't they?"

Graff nodded, his expression one of lost misery.

' 'And you stand there and claim you didn't kill those people? The responsibility was yours!"Grayson turned from him in disgust. "Del! Get him out of my sight!"

"No!" Graff cried. "You promised ..."

Lock him up in the stores tent, Del."

"Yessir. C'mon, you."

As Clay took Graff by the collar and hustled him from the tent, Lori stood up and walked around the table to Grayson.

"It still doesn't help us, does it, Gray? I mean . . . knowing who and what we're up against. I don't see any answers."

"I wonder ..." Grayson said absently.

"It's late," she said. "Or early, rather. Daylight in another couple of hours. Why don't we get some sleep."

Grayson shook his head. He had pulled a small, black computer clip from his jacket pocket and was looking at it thoughtfully. "You all go ahead. Get some sleep."

"What's that?"

"Something I picked up tonight. You go on," he told her. "I've got some studying to do."

21

Lori found Grayson four hours later, after two infantrymen on perimeter guard told her that he had checked out a hovercraft and was last been seen heading down the road toward Durandel. She had taken a skimmer herself and followed.

When she found him, Grayson was sitting inside the ruin of the briefing room in Helmfast. The ceiling was open to the sky, and shafts of early morning sunlight sliced through the gaps in roof and wall, brilliant in the mist of plaster dust that Grayson's activity had stirred up during the night.

He had maneuvered the hovercraft inside the room through the hole in the south wall. A pair of power cables snaked their way from the idling generators in the rear of the powerful little vehicle across the rubble-covered tiles. Then he had connected a pair of large computer display screens to a terminal and to the impromptu power supply aboard the skimmer. As Lori watched, it seemed that Grayson was intent on bringing up the magnification on the orbital maps he had displayed on the computer screens. He would study one or another of the maps closely, then tap out new commands on the keyboard in front of him. While he typed, the display on one of the screens would shift, change, or suddenly expand as he increased the magnification factor.

A charred piece of wood fell with a clatter when Lori brushed against it, and Grayson spun suddenly, obviously startled. His eyes were sunken and shadowed by exhaustion and had a wild look about them.

"Lori! What are you doing here?"

"I might ask the same question. Grayson, what do you think you're doing?"

He gave her a thin, tight-lipped smile. "Learning some things, for one thing. Graff told us more than he knew."

"He was holding something back from us?"

"Oh, no. I think he was scared enough that he was telling us everything he knew. No, I meant that literally. He told us more than he, personally, knew about."

"How did he do that?"

Grayson pointed to one of the maps displays.

"Remember how the map works?" She nodded, but he continued talking anyway. His words were slurred to the point where, at first, she thought he had been drinking. Then she realized that he must be at the point of utter and complete exhaustion. "We can key in the desired magnification at the terminal and study any part of the terrain we want. We can increase the magnification a tenfold step at a time and zoom in to where we can resolve objects about a meter across."

"Grayson . . . why don't you come and get some sleep?"

He continued as though he hadn't heard her. "This"– he indicated the left-hand screen—" is the map that was here in Helmfast . . . remember?

She nodded.

"It's out of date, based on data recorded . . . oh . . . three centuries ago. Things have changed a bit since then. For one thing, the Dead Sea wasn't dead." He used a screen pointer to indicate the pale green body of water south of Durandel, running hundreds of kilometers almost to where the Nagayan Mountains hooked to the east.

"It's shallow," Lori said. The difference between the two bodies of water on the photographs was startling. The West Equatorial Sea was mostly a deep, royal blue, except for the light-green or green-blue streaks where sandbars rose near the surface along the coastland or surrounding islands.

"Calculating the Equatorial Sea at sea level, what we call the Dead Sea Flats, and what they called the Yehudan Sea 300 years ago, lies at almost 200 meters above sea level." Grayson slipped the pointer to a gray patch on the Yehudan Sea's western shore. "That is Freeport, before Minoru Kurita came calling. And yes, I've looked for the original Star League weapons complex. I think it must be inside a number of monstrous warehouses north of the city, but I can't tell for certain. Obviously, the cache would have been hidden from orbital observation."

"Obviously."

"Right here"—the pointer moved again—"is a river. The Vermillion River.”

“It's red."

"Pretty much. There's some kind of pollutant, or maybe algae or some other plantlife that grew very thickly along here." He indicated the coastline near Freeport. "It concentrated in the river enough that they named it the Vermillion.

"Now, Vermillion empties out of the Yehudan Sea at the site of Freeport. It flows this way, toward the west, and vanishes . . . here."

"Vanishes?"

"Goes underground. Watch." He typed in new commands. In response, the river flashed into extreme magnification, so that the view looked like a photograph taken from an aircraft only a few hundred meters up. The river wound across a level plain crisscrossed by the dark ribbons of ferrocrete highways. As it approached the mountains, it gradually sank into a deepening valley, until it took a sudden twist and vanished under a massive boulder.

"Rivers don't generally flow toward the mountains, Lori," he said. "But this is a special case. The Yehudan Sea is quite a bit higher than the West Equatorial sea over there. The mountains between them are raw and new, the result of mountain-building along the border between two tectonic plates, I imagine. As the plates collide, they're in the process of punching up these mountains. That means the area is not entirely stable. There must be earthquakes here from time to time, really big ones."

"Interesting. But so what?"

Grayson returned the left-hand view to the first magnification. "Now. Look over here." He indicated the right-hand map display. It showed the same view as the first, but changed. The area of the Yehudan Sea was cast in ochers, grays, and the stark white swirls and splotches of mineral incrustations.

"This is the copy of the map I took from the mobile headquarters van last night. The program notes show that it was made by a DropShip—the Assagai—in orbit over Helm five days ago."

"Before we got here."

"Right." Grayson used the screen pointer again. "Here's Freeport ... in ruins, of course, courtesy of Minoru Kurita. Up here is Durandel . . . not in ruins yet." His voice sounded brittle. Lori knew what he was thinking: that aerial view of Durandel was of the village before the Marik forces had come.

He leaned back in the chair, rubbing his long, bony fingers down across his eyes and face. He sat there for so long, head thrown back, eyes closed, that Lori thought he might have fallen asleep while talking her. "I came here last night," he said at last. "This morning, rather . . . because what Graff said was nagging at me. We'd heard about the Star League cache from King, of course. I confess I was curious about its never having been found . . . but I had other things on my mind at the time, and I just didn't think about it long enough. Then Graff said that ComStar had that same information, and was . . . interested."

"Interested enough to try to turn us out in disgrace."

"Damn it, Lori . . . interested enough to coldly arrange the murder of millions of people, just to establish a legal pretext! God, Lori ... do your realize what that means? ComStar has billed itself all this time as the perfect neutral, above any of the petty politics and squabblings between the major houses! Mercenaries out of every Successor State use ComStar's services as broker and banker in arranging contracts! They control the communications services on every world in their net from Apollo to the Pleiades! Now they callously condone– arrange!—the murder of ten or twelve million civilians . . . to establish a legal pretext!''

Lori had trouble finding her voice. She had not followed the reasoning behind Graff's words as far as Grayson had, and the meaning was only now dawning in her. "They . . . ComStar . . . must want Helm very badly . . ."

Grayson looked at her. The dark circles under his eyes were alarming. "It makes me wonder how many other political pies they've had their fingers in during the last few centuries. I have this . . . this picture ... of ComStar as the sixth Great House, unseen, invisible, but working behind the scenes, manipulating the other Houses toward its own ends."

"What ends?"

"God, but I wish I knew. Or maybe I don't! If they can order the deaths of twelve million innocent people ..."

Lori stepped across to a point behind Grayson's chair and circled his neck with her arms. He leaned his head back against her breasts, his eyes closed.

"It's possible," he said at last, "that this Rachan that Graff kept talking about is operating outside of ComStar authority.''

"A renegade? An outlaw?"

"Something like that. But it's also possible we've stumbled across something much larger than the scheming of one man."

Lori heard the certainty in Grayson's voice, and knew he had already arrived at a decision. "What are you going to do?" she asked.

"The first thing we have to do is guarantee the security of the regiment. But after that . . .I'm beginning to think we might be able to upset Rachan's ... or ComStar's . . . plans."

She caught the excitement in his voice. He swiveled the chair around so that he could face her. There was a fire behind those cool, gray eyes that she had never seen in all the time she had known him.

"Lori! I think I know where the Star League cache is!"

She looked into his eyes for a long moment. Their feverishness worried her. Is he grasping at any hope ?she thought. He's desperate to save the Legion . . . and so tired! He can't so quickly have found what others have been seeking for so long!

It was impossible that he, working for a few hours, and without sleep, should solve a puzzle that had apparently been occupying ComStar scholars for years.

"Gray ..."

His exhaustion made him vulnerable. She could clearly read the disappointment in his face.

"You don't believe me, do you?"

"Gray, you're wiped out . . . exhausted."

And then she realized he was laughing at her.

"Think I've punched out, do you? Well, so did I, when I first saw it. Look."

He swung his chair back to face the terminal and began pecking at the keyboard. Both map displays shifted slightly, expanding to show the broad sweep of plain from the Nagayan Mountains to the shores of the Yehudan Sea. On the left, the Yehudan Sea was green and blue-green, the gray sprawl of the city on its shore an obviously live and growing entity. The faintly red-tinged Vermillion curled across the landscape toward the mountains. The thin, black streaks of ferrocrete roads and skimmer pathways crisscrossed the land.

On the right, the Yehudan was dry and mineral-encrusted. The city was still an untidy grey sprawl, but it had been rearranged, with a distinctly circular pattern where Kurita's weapons had vaporized the central area and reduced everything beyond the crater to rubble. Sections of roads were still visible, but broken by stretches where dirt had covered the pavement and grass had covered the dirt. The river was visible as a faint ocher track winding west from the ruined city, as dry and empty as the dead sea bottom itself.

"Now . . . see the difference?"

She studied the maps, her eyes shifting from one to the other and back again. "The Yehudan Sea is gone."

"Of course. What else?"

"Freeport is in ruins."

"What else?"

Lori started to say she was too tired to play guessing games, but the words froze in her mouth. "The river," she managed at last. "The river east of the mountains is dried up.”

“Exactly."

She stepped over next to Grayson, leaning forward to study the map more closely. "When Freeport was nuked, perhaps the river was blocked off.”

"Possibly. There is evidence here of some sort of massive construction across the mouth of the river right on Freeport's waterfront, but the blast destroyed whatever it was. But look. The Vermillion River used to flow out of the Yehudan Sea, here." He traced the course with a display pointer on the screen. "The Yehudan is quite a distance above sea level, up here on the North Highland Plains. It flowed toward the Nagayan Mountains and vanished underground, probably into a subterranean cave system. It re-emerges here, on the western face of the mountains and drops—here—nearly 2500 meters to the West Equatorial Sea.