Текст книги " The Price of Glory"

Автор книги: Уильям Кейт

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BOOK III

26

The day was still new when the Gray Death Legion found the dry bed of the former eastern half of the Vermillion River, and followed it toward the Nagayan Mountains. There had been an hour's pause on the prairie when Grayson and King had rejoined the column. That had also given their hard-pressed 'Mechs and vehicles a chance to cool, while Grayson explained to the group commanders the results of his negotiations with Ricol.

They had help! Strange and unexpected help, it was true, but help! Among most of the people of the Legion, there was some measure of distrust for warriors of the Draconis Combine, but few hated Kurita's soldiers with the same passion that had driven Grayson Carlyle for so long. A warrior fought side by side with his comrades. The foe might be Kurita regulars one time, a pirate raiding force the next, but most one-on-one combat with the enemy was faceless, impersonal. That made it possible to accept that the faceless foe might become a trusted comrade, at least for a time. Most of the Legion members also trusted Grayson enough to believe that there was good reason for such an unexpected about-face.

Grayson explained that Duke Ricol had dispatched a force of ninety of his troops east toward Cleft Valley. It was possible that the landing of Garth's DropShips had delayed or interfered with that movement, but it was also likely that Ricol would take advantage of any confusion caused by Garth's arrival to move his troops out of Helm-down. He asked for volunteers to form a strike force that would turn around and head north once more. A rendezvous point had been selected in the hills south of Cleft Valley; Ricol's and the Legion's assault teams would join together, attempt to surprise the Marik guards in the valley, and then free the Legion's DropShips. The strike would have to be carefully timed and executed, Grayson told them, because Garth would not likely keep the Dropships prisoners alive beyond tomorrow. By daylight, the Marik command would know that the Legion had not risen to the bait left at Cleft Valley. Lord Garth could easily issue new orders concerning the DropShips and their occupants once he was on the ground at Helmdown.

The rescue would have to take place tonight, or the Deimos,the Phobos,and the Legion prisoners aboard were lost forever.

Again, there was no shortage of volunteers. The MechWarriors of A Company had to stay with the convoy, and Grayson refused Gomez DeVillar's request to accompany the rescue strike team because he would probably be needed to open the door to the Star League cache. The trainees of B Company volunteered to go, of course, and Grayson accepted them. Tracy Kent insisted on going, and Grayson agreed to that, too, knowing how worried she had been about the loss of her Phoenix Hawk.Fifty of the Regiment's infantry were also accepted, with the entire force under the command of Lieutenant Dulaney, the highest-ranking infantry officer that Grayson had. Sergeant Burns would accompany him as senior NCO.

Grayson gave Dulaney and Burns their specific orders, and watched as the strike force disentangled itself from the convoy and whined off on laboring plenum fans northward into the night.

Briefly, Grayson considered replacing the 'Mech technician who was piloting his Marauderon the trek, but he quickly thought better of it. Despite his nap while King had piloted the skimmer south from Helmdown, he was still exhausted. As the convoy formed up anew, now minus the vehicles and men and women who had departed, he was curled up again in the skimmer's passenger seat, and fell fast asleep.

When Grayson awoke at sun-up, he was considerably refreshed, despite the cramps in neck and back. The convoy had made good time. Within two hours, they could see the stark, skeletal remains of Freeport to the east, beneath the orange ball of Helm's sun. Soon after that, they found the dry river bed, and turned west to follow it. The BattleMechs moved with easy, long-paced strides, for the ground was firm and level. Occasionally, the sharpest eyes among them would spot traces of ancient, half-buried ferrocrete roads, and once a soldier kicked over a waist-high mound of dirt to reveal the corrosion-ravaged corpse of a Star League-era floater.

It was then that Grayson learned that Graff had escaped during the night. It was regrettable, of course, and Grayson wondered momentarily whether or not to dispatch a unit to try to track him down. He quickly realized the futility of that, just as Lori had the night before when deciding to wait till morning to tell Grayson. The plains were broad, the night dark. Even moments after Graff had stolen the hovercraft, he would have easily eluded pursuit.

Besides, what harm could the man do? Clearly, he wasn't going to return to Helmdown to face Rachan, not after revealing Rachan's plan to Grayson and his officers! If he returned to face Rachan, it would be with a fabricated story that could not hurt the Legion now. No, the convoy would proceed in force. There was nothing to be done about Graff now.

Fifteen hours after the column first set out from Durandel, the Gray Death Legion stood below the cliff that Grayson had first seen on the satellite map stolen from the Marik mobile headquarters. How much more imposing it was in reality than it had been on a satellite projection!

The river valley itself was perhaps ten meters wide at that point, a gentle depression lined with sand, gravel, and ancient, water-worn stones. On either side, the walls of the river valley proper rose more sharply, fifty meters high and capped by a blanket of heavy blue-green vegetation.

As the dry valley curved deeper in among the trees and rocks, there was a point where the valley walls stopped looking like accidents of nature, where even the most skeptical of the Legion's company could look to left and right and see the crisp lines where rock and dirt had been carved from the valley walls, widening the gap for the Wall.

There was no other name for it. Polished by eons of flowing water, it stood just as carefully shaped and set on end by unknown agencies as it had for the past three centuries. The rain and wind of those intervening centuries had softened the crisp contours of the valley cliffs on either side of the Wall somewhat, but they had not touched the granite structure itself. As Grayson stood before it, letting his hand run across its smooth surface, he could imagine that it had been set in place as a dam across that river valley only yesterday, that the builders themselves might step through some hidden door in that featureless expanse and demand to know what the Legion wanted.

Two hundred meters from the Wall was the lone building that Grayson had noticed on the modern map projection. Viewed from above, it had presented a curious sight. It looked even stranger up close, a squat, truncated, four-sided pyramid of cast ferrocrete and gray metal. Though it had no windows, an inset door opened inward on silent, floating bearings when Grayson set his hand against it. He stepped through quickly, with Lori and King close behind him.

"An engineering station," DeVillar said from the doorway, as others of the 'Mech company gathered outside. "Set up as an office or a construction headquarters by whoever built . . . that." Since they had arrived, most of the members of the Legion had avoided calling the structure across the river valley by name. Some called it "the Wall," but most referred to it obliquely as "that" or "it." The sheer scope of such an engineering feat had a numbing effect on those who saw it, for it would be impossible to duplicate it with present-day technology.

Grayson slowly turned, taking in the room. "Could be," he said. "They didn't leave much . . . except for the computer."

Though roomy enough to have stored a number of vehicles or large crates of machinery, which DeVillar suggested might have been the case, the one-room building was empty except for a table with built-in computer terminal and screen. The table was coated with a thick layer of dust, as was the floor and even the walls.

"You mean the engineers who built it worked here during the construction? Used the computer for their calculations, that sort of thing?"

"Seems likely," King said. He was examining the back of the computer. "Gods, how well they built things back then! This is the same sort of computer as up at Helmfast, but it has its own internal power cells, near as I can tell. You could turn it on right now . . . and it would probably work."

Grayson reached his hand out toward the keyboard, hesitated, then turned away. "Lieutenant DeVillar, let's take a look at that Wall. If we have to open it, I want to do it soon. Garth will be here soon, and I don't like camping in a blind alley like this. It would be too easy to catch us with no way out!"

A close examination of the wall confirmed Devillar's earlier appraisal. The granite block appeared to have been balanced on end, then anchored to the opposite sides of the valley escarpments with struts or bolts on the inside. Plastic explosive charges set at the upper corners of the Wall would shatter those struts, sending the wall falling outward, opening the way over the rubble to the storehouse in the tunnel that would be revealed on the far side.

While DeVillar and a pair of Techs clambered along the escarpments looking for places to implant their explosives, Grayson studied the face of the Wall itself. The smoothness appeared to be completely natural, the result of millennia of action by running water. There was one element of the Wall that was not natural. In two places, some twenty meters apart, Grayson found vertical grooves in the rock. They appeared to go straight up the face of the Wall for perhaps twenty meters, then turned toward each other, outlining a huge rectangle in the center of the stone.

A door? The groove was so narrow that Grayson could not force his knife point between the two sections of rock, but it was deep enough that even with a hand torch, he could not see how deeply it cut into the stone. If it were a door, there would have to be a key of some kind. What that key was, Grayson hadn't a clue.

His hand communicator bleeped. He took it from its belt hanger and opened the channel.

"Carlyle."

"Aye, Colonel, it's McCall. Ah go' a wee bit a' fell news."

"Bad news? What is it?"

"Ah'm trackit a large force ... a vurralarge force, to the north and travelin' south, fast!"

"You're tracking by their radio transmissions?"

"Aye ... ah can ae' hear 'em chatterin' away at one another. Multiple signals ... all in code ... ah dinnae ken how many targets! Sair . . . usually ah' cannae track it tha' beasties across sae far a stretch. If ah'm tracking them noo . . . it's because there's ae' a great, great many a' them."

"Anything about our DropShips?" The strike force should have attacked the DropShips before dawn, though with the communications blackout Grayson had imposed on the entire force, there was no way to know whether the attempt had succeeded or failed.

"No, sair. No' a worrd."

"Right. As of now, you're our tracker. Keep on them. And let me know if you hear anything about the strike force." McCall's Riflemanhad the best long-range sensors and tracking gear of any 'Mech in his command. It made sense for him to be responsible for watching the enemy force's approach.

Now that the Marik DropShips he had seen the night before had landed, the Marik 'Mech forces aboard would have been very busy indeed unloading their equipment and joining up with Langsdorf's forces already on the planet. The Marik DropShips still in orbit would have spotted the Legion force not long after sun-up, however, and possibly long before that if they had the correct and functioning technology for identifying 'Mechs from orbit in the dark.

Whatever their technology, it was certain that Garth's people knew precisely where the Legion was now, and they had to be on their way. He wondered if they had some inkling that Grayson already knew where the Star League cache was, that he was already preparing to blast his way in.

DeVillar began to gather his explosives.

* * *

Duke Garth entered the room, smiling. "All is in readiness, Precentor. The 15th Marik Militia is already moving. What is left of the 12th White Sabers and the 5th Marik Guards have joined with the House Marik Guard elements we have here. They are ready to move on my command!"

Precentor Rachan turned slowly, his face a mask of black fury. Garth stopped when he saw it, knowing that something was terribly wrong. The Precentor sat at a small tactical battlefield computer, an orbital photographic map projection displayed in color on the screen.

"Your command? Yourcommand?"

"Precentor . . . what . . . ?"

"I suggestedthat we would need AeroSpace Fighters in case we had to search for Carlyle, but you said they could not be spared from Irian! I toldyou that we should have landed our ships to the south, near the ruins of Free-port, in hopes of catching Carlyle if his force moved toward the Nagayan Mountains! You refused, telling me that landing at a spaceport at night was saferthan on open ground! I told you ... I insistedthat you set your 'Mechs moving without delay the moment we had grounded, and you found one trivial delay after another, until now the day is almost half gone, and now,only now,are you are ready to set out!"

"Precentor ... I was not aware of any rush ..."

"You fool! You bloody, malfing fool! Look at this!"

Garth looked past Rachan to the computer display. In the center of the map was a miniature galaxy of light pinpoints gathered along what looked like a satellite photograph of a dried river bank. A huge, vertical cliff caught the direct light of the morning sun.

"You see them, Garth? That is the Gray Death Legion enhanced by infrared light . . . Several hundred troops, several hundred civilians, a number of vehicles . . . and at least eight BattleMechs. There is a Marauderthere. That will be Carlyle."

"You've found them? Where . . . ?"

"Camped by a dry river valley, close against the Nagayan Mountains, 500 kilometers south of here."

"Well, he's stolen a march, but he'll be slowed, crossing those mountains. There are mountain passes, of course, but travel through them will be difficult. We can still catch him ..."

Rachan pointed to the cliff and explained slowly, as though speaking with a not-too-bright child. "You see that, Garth? See it? It is a cliff. A sheer, straight, vertical cliff. It looks perfectly natural, does it not? And yet, can you imagine a soldier of Grayson Carlyle's proven battle skill camping in such a place, with no line of retreat . . . no way out should we come down on him from the north or east? No . . . you wouldn't see that, because you are too dim-witted to perceive a trap when you face one! There can be only one reason why Carlyle and his people are camped there . . . only one!" Rachan paused and pounded the table viciously as he spat out, "He has found the Star League cache!"

"Found the . . . but how? How? You told me your ComStar researchers had studied the records for years, looking for some clue."

"I don't know, Garth." The Precentor chewed at his lip as he studied the computer projection. "Maybe something he found at Helmfast. Maybe blind, stupid luck. But now . . . now,looking at where he is, the artificiality of his surroundings is obvious!"

Garth looked closely. "What do you mean? I see a cliff . . . big rocks ..."

"You see what you expect to see. What you don't see is why the river that carved out that valley flowed directly into a sheer, blank rock wall . . . and then vanished!"

"You mean that cliff ..."

"Is a doorway of some sort. It almost certainly leads to what we've been searching for for so long, and Carlyle is about to get it!"

"What's he waiting for?"

"A key, I should imagine. He needs to figure out how to get in."

"And if he finds it?" Garth's face worked uncertainly. "Suppose he turns the weapons inside against us!"

Rachan snorted. "Nonsense. Not in the time he has! Any 'Mechs stored there will not have their weapons mounted, will not be stocked with ammunition. It would take time to power up their reactors."

"Then what's the problem?"

"If he gets in, he will seek to bargain with us." Rachan shook his head, his face set in grim lines. "It is the only thing he can do . . . give us what we want, in exchange for his life and the life of his troops. What he can't know is that we can outlast him. However deep that storehouse is buried, however large it may be, the Gray Death Legion cannot hope to survive in there for long without food and fresh water. Water they may find, if there are underground springs or streams there, but their food problem is going to become critical very soon. There will be no hunting inside the caverns, and his provisions must be running low by now, with that many people to feed."

"So . . .we will starve them out?"

"We will do whatever is necessary. And the first thing that is necessary, Garth, is that you not command the forces against him."

"What? Wait! You can't do that ..."

"You forget yourself, Garth. Iam in command of this expedition, and I alone, remember? Colonel Langsdorf showed excellent judgment, speed, and planning at Clef Valley. Three enemy BattleMechs were destroyed, to a loss of only one of our own . . . and the DropShips were captured!"

"With a spy's help ..."

"That's right, with a spy's help, but it was Colonel Langsdorf who gave the spy his opportunity, who had his troops in the right place at the right time to assist the spy, who managed the battle in a brilliant fashion. I am sorry, Garth, but this campaign is far too important to be left in your blundering, thumb-fingered hands!"

Garth didn't think Rachan sounded sorry at all. "You cannot treat me this way!" He drew himself up taller, trying to look down on the ComStar man. "Precentor or not, you have no right! I amDuke of Irian ..."

"Consider it a . . . promotion.Your Grace. You and I will be on the field as observers only, watching as Colonel Langsdorf closes the trap on our prey.

"But it willbe Colonel Langsdorf who leads, Garth. I have watched you, and you could not lead your nose to your face!"

Garth bristled, but Rachan soothed him with a motion of his hand, and a tired smile. "Peace, Your Grace, peace. I meant no disrespect. Langsdorf is a trained and talented military leader, and you are not . . . but that is not your disgrace." He shrugged. "I have already discussed matters with the Colonel, and he has worked up a plan to overwhelm the Gray Death. Perhaps we can trap him against the mountains, if he does not find the key he seeks. Perhaps we can pin him inside the cache, if he finds a way in. In any case, we must overcome the results of your incompetence." Rachan turned back to study the map, dismissing the Duke of Irian.

"You press too far, Rachan," Garth said.

"Because I have great ambitions, Garth. Ambitions that someone like you cannot even begin to imagine. Ambitions that will not be stopped by someone like you ... or a man like Grayson Death Carlyle!" He stopped then, his eyes aflame. Then, slowly, he seemed to draw back inside himself, to subdue the passion that had gripped him. He passed a hand over his face, looked back up at Garth, and smiled. "I'm sorry, Your Grace," he said. "I am . . . tired. There is much to attend to here. Come . . . consider instead what you will do with your share of the weapons from the Star League cache, when you sit on the throne of the Captain-General, ruler supreme of House Marik and the Free Worlds League!

"Thatshould satisfy even you!”

26

There were rain clouds in the west, piling into the sky above the Dead Sea Flats on the horizon. Bubble tents had sprouted like bizarre, camouflaged mushrooms on either side of the dry river valley. The Legion's non-combatants clustered in the center of the encampment, with the soldiers and armored vehicles around the perimeter. On the outskirts, waiting and watchful, were A Company's surviving BattleMechs.

Grayson stood on a small rise by the river bank, watching the gathering clouds. He had just had the usual experience of speaking by radio with Colonel Addison, regimental commander of a House Kurita special strike force aboard the DropShip fleet. Already inbound, Ricol's DropShips were accelerating toward Helm at a spine-pounding 2.5 Gs. They would swing end for end sometime that night and begin deceleration leg, entering atmosphere above the Nagayan Mountains by late afternoon tomorrow.

Grayson had until then to get inside the cache, find what there was to find, and prepare to leave the planet. There was still no word from the Deimosand the Phobos,which was not good. Addison had not been in contact with Ricol, and that in itself was strange. Dulaney shouldhave joined Ricol's forces long before daylight, and they should have heard someword by now, either reporting success or announcing disaster. Grayson wondered if Graff's escape had spoiled the plan somehow, but decided that, at this point, there was nothing more he could do about it. He would have to take care of his own people who were here with him.

They had worry enough in the "vurra large force" spotted by McCall. Those 'Mechs would be here by nightfall, long before Grayson could hope for help from Ricol's incoming DropShips. Their one hope now was to get inside the cache.

He stared across the river bed toward the Wall. He could barely make out the forms of DeVillar and the two Techs working with him atop the wall as they searched for the best places to lay their satchel-charge explosives.

Their basic strategic problem at this point was the approach of the heavy Marik forces. If DeVillar could blow down the wall, Grayson would be able to move the Legion inside the shelter of the cache itself. A small force of 'Mechs would be sufficient to hold the opening against whatever forces Marik was able to bring to bear.

Unfortunately, if Marik forces were encamped outside the entrance to the cache when the DropShips arrived, how would the Legion be able to even approach and board Ricol's fleet, much less load it with treasure from the cache? Various possible alternatives flashed through his mind. He could lead his eight 'Mechs north and meet the Marik 'Mechs halfway. A Company would be destroyed, but it might buy time for the rest to make their escape.

Or would it? Eight 'Mechs could be destroyed easily by a fraction of the army being brought to bear on them. Garth could afford to deploy enough 'Mechs against Grayson's command to keep them busy, while marching the rest on the cache gate. Another possibility was to pull out now, while there was time. They could slip north and west across one of the passes that breached the wall of the Nagayan Mountains, and emerge on the Vermillion Plains to the west. Perhaps a small 'Mech force could stop the Marik army long enough by holding them at the passes. The problem, of course, was that there were three passes to defend. While Grayson was holding one, Garth could slip a large force past his position and into the rear. Besides, to run now would mean giving up all hope of raiding the cache, and Grayson was not sure what Ricol's reaction would be when he found himself with a plain full of refugees, and no treasure. He had agreed to pick up the Gray Death Legion, even if the treasure were lost somehow, but Grayson would still feel he had cheated on his end of the bargain. There had to be a way to salvage at least something of the cache for Ricol, as well as to keep it from the ComStar and Marik forces marching south on their position now.

The key, Grayson realized, as he stared at that blank, impenetrable wall, lay in the doorway to the cache itself . . . and to the cache's nature. There had been a door there, and so there had to be a way of making it open.

One possibility was that it might require a radio command, modulated a certain way, or on a certain frequency. A spoken code word, an "open sesame" from the pages of ancient Terran mythology was another. So, too, was a literal key, a device hidden somewhere that, when manipulated, would trigger the mechanism of the gate and cause it to open.

The Gray Death Legion could camp on this plain for a year trying various combinations of code words and electronic modulations in an attempt to reach the door's mechanical guardians. They could search the entire Helmfast district for a century and never find a hidden key, which could be anything—disguised as a piece of machinery, or a decoration on a mantle piece, or . . .

Grayson froze where he was, eyes riveted to the Wall, paralyzed momentarily by a bolt of inspiration. The engineers who worked here would have needed to open the door, both when they were setting it in place, and later, when they were transferring the stock of weapons from Freeport to the cache site. They would have needed a convenient way of opening the door, and an equally convenient way of keeping the door's secret safe. They would have created the key in such a way that it could be passed on, from one of the district's military guardians to another, for generation after generation, if need be. Presumably, whoever was in command of the military district would have the key. It might be that the key's purpose, even the knowledge of its existence, had been lost during Helm's struggles to survive, centuries ago. It would take the death of only one man before he could pass the secret on to his successor for the secret to be forgotten, lost forever.

Or the secret could be rediscovered, now!

Grayson turned and began to sprint for the vehicles that carried what had been salvaged from Helmhold. He, Grayson Carlyle, was the modern-day military governor of the district. As Lord of Helmfast, he was the heir to the lost Star League cache and all it contained. No wonder Rachan and Garth had wanted to get him out of the way. He, Grayson, had had the key to the Star League cache the whole time!

He found what he wanted among the headquarters supplies in one of the trucks, then sprinted back toward the truncated pyramid resting on the gravel banks of the dry river. Lori saw his pounding run and followed. She burst into the engine shack moments after Grayson had plunged inside.

"Grayson! What is it?"

"Maybe ..." Grayson was gasping for air, making speech nearly impossible, but he was working now, bent above the ancient Star League computer on its table in the half-lit shack. He keyed the initiate sequence and watched colored bars of light chase one another across the display. "Maybe the key . . . we've been . . . been looking for!"

He held up what he had recovered from the headquarters transport vehicle—the map program from Helmfast. That memory clip had been given to him as part of the investment ceremony in Helmdown months ago, a Star League-era map of his domains on the world of Helm. Presumably, that clip had been handed down, Helmfast lord to Helmfast lord, for three centuries. How many of those lords had known the secret it might hold? None, possibly, save for those who had written the program in the days of Minoru Kurita.

Grayson inserted the map program clip into the slot on the side of the engineering computer terminal.

He didn't realize he was holding his breath.

A computer program, whatever its purpose, however it is designed, written, and stored, is a collection of information arranged in electronic form, a systematic and complete list of instructions that a computer can interpret and act upon, step by step. The map program contained instructions and stored data based on old orbital photographs, which could be displayed as a photographic map that allowed the viewer to examine the mapped area at varying levels of clarity and detail, according to his manipulations on the keyboard.

The list of instructions in a program could be designed to be very flexible and subtle. A very long program, or a piece of a program, could be written and stored on the memory clip in such a way that no one would ever suspect it was there. So far as any casual user of the program was concerned, this new section of the program did not even exist. There was no way to get at it, unless the program were instructed to reveal the hidden information. That code could be a series of letters or numbers entered through the keyboard ... or by uttered voice into computers that responded to voice command.

One particularly elegant solution, though, in cases when the code word might be lost or forgotten, was to build the code into the computer itself. The program might be designed to work perfectly in anycomputer that would accept it. No one would ever suspect the existence of the hidden program section unless the program were run in one particularcomputer, the one that held the secret code. In that computer, the code, set into the computer's own working memory, would be applied against any program run in it. When the program with the hidden program section was run, the code would unlock the electronic door, and . . .

"Colonel! Colonel!" He looked up as a Legion trooper burst into the doorway. "Colonel! Come quick!"

Grayson turned from the terminal. The display had remained irritatingly blank when he plugged the memory clip into the slot. He had not even gotten the ordinary map display, and he was beginning to think that something was wrong with the computer.

"Sir! It's ... the Wall!"

Grayson and Lori both hurried to the door and looked out. Two hundred meters away, men and women were stepping back, looking toward the towering gray monolith of granite that blocked the valley. Grayson could feel a peculiar vibration in the ground through the soles of his boots, and he was aware of small pebbles along the bottom of the dried river jittering and dancing in time to some massive movement of engines or equipment beneath the surface.

The Wall had opened. The section within the grooves that Grayson had noted earlier was sliding back into the rock, exposing a smoothly cut opening in the rock face. When the section had withdrawn into darkness for a depth of two meters, it stopped with an audible thunk.Then there came a grinding of machinery as the rock section slid aside. Ten meters wide, twenty tall, the doorway stood open.