Текст книги " The Price of Glory"

Автор книги: Уильям Кейт

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2

"Well, our part in the contract has been fulfilled," Grayson said.

He stood with Lori on an arched bridge above the Silver Way, the high-vaulted main corridor running across the breadth of the largest of Tiantan's five domes. The other ferrocrete and steel structures housed hydroponics facilities that fed the city-colony's entire population. In this dome was the city proper, a vast, labyrinthine subsurface of warrens that housed twelve million people.

The Way below was crowded with people, citizens of the colony that had just fallen to the Legion's thrust. The Tiantan domed cities were completely encased in ferrocrete and duraplast, warmed and sealed against the frigid poison without. Outside, the domes were a sullen, cold grey. Inside, the walls had been painted in pastel shades that contrasted the crowds clash of color, costume, and noise.

The bridge, too, was crowded. It seemed that all of Tiantan's population had left their quarters today to glimpse the invaders in their midst. The Legion's tireless Captain Ramage had stationed armored security forces at strategic points throughout the main dome, but there seemed to be no need for force of arms. The crowds were not hostile, though Grayson had noted many sullen or uneasy looks among the faces. The defenders had surrendered, and so, under the protocols of war, the city of Tiantan would remain intact. The rulers of the city might be changed or reparations charged that could raise the city dwellers' taxes. All in all, though, the lives of individual Sirians would change little as a result of the recent battles in the icy fields beyond the city's domed walls.

Lori touched Grayson's hand lightly and guided him out of the jostling crowd to the railing above the Silver Way. Blonde hair fell across her eyes as she looked up at him, but she brushed it aside impatiently. "We've done our part, but you don't sound happy about it, Gray."

"What's to be happy about?"

"Home," Lori said, but her voice scarcely carried across the distance between them. "A place to call home ..."

"At least until the next campaign, the next raid."

She took his arm in both of hers and squeezed. Her smile was infectious, but Lori's eyes held a shadow of worry as she searched his face. "Oh, come on, Gray! Aren't you excited about a place to call home? I am." The smile faded. "Sigurd is a long way away ..."

Grayson managed a smile of his own. "I must be an honest-to-God old soldier now, love," he said. "Home is the regiment, and all that ..."

Lori hummed something, low and sad. Grayson ducked his head closer to hear above the crowd roar. She stopped humming then and sang, putting words to the tune.

Home is the regiment, across the sea of stars,

On worlds hot, on worlds cold,

where Warriors tread afar.

Though place of birth and family,

though loved ones all be lost,

Home is the regiment, across the sea of stars.

She stopped, then looked up at Grayson, her eyes bright. "It's all of that, Gray. But the regiment needs a place of its own. All of us do. For us. Helm will be home ..."

Grayson nodded, but he was thinking that the military had been his own home for as long as he could remember. As the son of Durant Carlyle, commander of Carlyle's Commandos, he had lived in a blurred succession of garrison outposts, cantonments on worlds along the marches, fortresses above alien cities. At the age of ten standard, he'd become a MechWarrior apprentice in his father's own company. From that day forward, he had been trained as a MechWarrior, raised in the expectation that one day the father would retire and the son would assume his command.

Things had not worked out that way. The betrayal at Trellwan and the death of Durant Carlyle had left Grayson Carlyle on his own. From the ashes of that loss and defeat, he had forged the Legion almost through sheer will. In the fire and blood of shared combat, he had found a kind of family to replace the one that had been destroyed.

For him, home had alwaysbeen the regiment.

As a mercenary combined arms regiment, the Gray Death Legion was fairly typical, if still small. The Legion hadgrown since Verthandi. The backbone of the unit was still Grayson's BattleMech company, called "A" Company, or the Gray Death. Those twelve 'Mechs were arranged in three lances of four 'Mechs each, with Grayson himself as Captain, the Company Commander. In addition, they had also managed to assemble the better part of a second 'Mech company, which was now designated as a training company and replacement pool for the Gray Death. New recruits were trained in Lieutenant DeVillar's B Company, while older, more experienced recruits were rotated two at a time through A Company's recon lance.

Those who survived would eventually graduate to a permanent lance slot in a second line company that Grayson was planning.

Besides the 'Mech units, there were two companies of line infantry under the command of Captain Ramage. Organized as three 40-man platoons, each company had been unrelentingly trained and drilled by Ramage, a former Trellwanese infantry sergeant who had a knack for special commando tactics. His ability to train raw recruits into commandos able to take on BattleMechs with improvised weapons had been vital to the success of the guerrilla campaign on Verthandi, and so Grayson had promoted Ramage to the rank of Captain, despite his protestations.

A new company had only recently been created and placed under the command of another newcomer signed on at Galatea, Lieutenant Mark Baron. Baron had charge of the Legion's armor company, which consisted of eight Galleon and twelve Vedette light tanks, most of them prizes captured from the Kuritans on Verthandi. Grayson hoped to organize the tanks into recon lance support teams, but for now was more concerned with training tank drivers to handle the balky combat machines.

Then there was the Tech Company, now under the command of Master Tech Lieutenant Alard King. At last count, the Tech Company consisted of over three hundred specialists trained to provide the technical services that kept the unit functioning. The personnel ranged from senior MechTech King, to drivers for the Legion's skimmers, combat medics who cared for the wounded, the weapons Techs, and cooks who prepared the food.

Finally, there was Renfred Tor and the twenty men and woman who crewed the starship Invidious.This former merchantman crew were now the Legion's Transport Division.

Counting MechWarriors, troops, specialists, and Techs, the Gray Death Legion had grown to more than 600 strong. The total approached nearly a thousand when the Legion's "family" was considered. These were the total non-combatants, wives and husbands of warriors or Techs, children, teachers, servants and retainers, barbers, private Techs in the employ of specific families, and the small army of administrators and bookkeepers who kept the business end of things running smoothly.

This minor army was not all on Sirius V, of course. For each of the Liao campaigns, Grayson had deployed to the combat zone only the troops absolutely necessary for the job at hand. A world near the border in Marik space, Graham IV, had served as a staging area. For transport, the Legion had only the one aging freighter and its two DropShips. In these merchanters converted to troop transports, conditions would have been unbearably crowded with even half that number of personnel. Besides, a mercenary unit had to feed itself when campaigning, and that task became logistically complex and devastatingly expensive on a non-Terran and hostile world such as Sirius V. This time, Grayson had with him only the Gray Death Company itself, plus several reserve 'Mechs from Company B, and one of Captain Ramage's infantry companies. The tanks, with their internal combustion engines, would not have worked in Sirius V's atmosphere, and diesel fuel was hard to come by in such places, anyway. The rest of the training company, the support personnel, even most of the unit's Techs, had all been left behind at the Legion's new home at Helm.

The Legion's contract with House Marik had promised them a landhold, a charter granting the regiment a lease on the planet known as Helm. Cold and glacier-locked, Helm was a savage world. Even the habitable equatorial region was raw and largely barren. The entire planet had a population of perhaps fifteen million, divided among numberless villages and small farming communities rather than cities. There were no factories, no mines, no massive industrial complexes, little, in fact, to make it attractive by the standards of modern galactic civilization.

The contract with Marik had been struck a year ago, and the final details of the landhold worked out six months after that. In exchange for its services against Liao, the Gray Death Legion formally received title to a large part of Helm's North Highland Plains in an investiture ceremony at Helmfast Castle, near the village of Durandel. Two months later, the regiment's 'Mech facilities had begun rising from the plains to the east.

The bulk of the Gray Death Legion—the cooks and teachers, spouses and children, the computer and logistics technicians, the army of astechs raised from among the local population, the training company and infantry reserves and Baron's tank company—all were on Helm now, building the Legion facilities at Durandel.

Despite the pessimism that gripped Grayson, he had to admit being anxious to return. Home.

"Uh oh. Recon lance approaching at Sector Front-Center, Colonel," Lori snapped in mock-official tones.

Francine Roget, Harriman Vandergriff, and Sylvia Trevor approached Grayson and Lori arm in arm, forging relentlessly through the crowds of civilians that thronged the Silver Way.

"Ho, noble Colonel!" Lieutenant Roget raised the green glass bottle in her free hand and nodded an elaborate bow to Grayson. All three were well past the limits of sobriety. "A salute, comrades, to Colonel Carlyle, the Victor of Sirius V!"

Grayson saw black glances among the nearest of the civilian passersby, heard a change in their murmured conversations.

"Damp it, Lieutenant," he said, gently disentangling his arm from Lori's. "The celebration is over."

"Aw, Colonel . . ." Vandergriff began, but Grayson stopped him with a look.

"That will be all,Mister!" He glanced at his wrist-comp, noting the time. "Muster with your DropShip Captain, the lot of you."

"Vandergriff," Lori said. "I thought you had the duty tonight, walking perimeter." As the unit's Exec, she was in charge of duty schedules and watch bills.

"Aw, Lieutenant. Graff swapped with me. Said he didn't care for the nightlife here!"

"When he comes in off duty, you can tell him your whole lance is confined," Grayson said. "I'll want to see all of you logged in and ready for boost by the time I come aboard."

The lance commander came to a reasonable approximation of attention, and the others struggled up after her. Hilarity was replaced by sullenness in Vandergriff and evident confusion in Trevor, the newest member of the lance, but they obeyed.

"Is it the Colonel's orders that my lance miss out on the fun, sir?" Lieutenant Roget's words were tightly bitten off, her fists clenched at her sides. "We have been fighting hard . . . sir."

"Boost is in eight hours, Lieutenant," Grayson said. He spoke quietly, but his tone and pitch carried authority with them. "You won't be missing more than a few hours' fun." He leaned forward then, voice lower rather than louder. "And I damnwell am going to see to it that you miss out on causing a riot before we boost! Dismissed!"

The three managed a ragged salute, then turned and made their way with the flow of the crowd. Grayson turned back to Lori.

"I imagine most of our people are . . . ah . . . celebrating. It's been a rough two weeks."

"Maybe. But if they disgrace us now, with the Formal Peace ..."

"I know. But they're good people. Gray. The whole company! They're all good people!"

What was Lori trying to tell him? Grayson wondered. He knew they were good people. The past year had seen them forged together in the furnace of a fast, bloody, hard-hitting campaign. He had watched them come together, watched them become a fighting unit. Some of them had been with him on Verthandi before they'd signed on with Marik. He knewthey were good.

"Are you saying I'm too hard on them? Because I grounded Graff as well?" He shook his head. "A lance stands together. It suffers together. I'll not weaken it by having them resent one another. They can resent me all they want, but not one another!’

"I didn't mean that. You're not as hard on them as you are on yourself, Gray. But they are human. Sometimes, I wonder if youare."

"If I am what?"

"Human . . . or just a Colonel ..."

Grayson suppressed an icy, internal twist at the words. With her characteristically keen inner vision, Lori had seen through to the personal devil that had been gnawing at Grayson more and more.

Full regiments were generally larger than the Legion was so far, but there was considerable latitude in the organizational tables of mercenary units, which only rarely were able to carry full combat rosters. Grayson, who had taken the rank of Captain to justify his command of a BattleMech company, was listed as "Colonel" on the organization charts to justify his command of the entire Legion. He still felt uncomfortable with thattitle. At only twenty-four years old, he was far too young to wear such rank comfortably or gracefully.

As a twenty-four-year-old mercenary who had built the Legion from scratch in the heat and blood and fury of half a dozen hard-fought campaigns, he was beginning to realize that the job was rapidly outgrowing him, that with every order, every command decision, he was becoming less certain that what he was doing was right. In the meantime, so many people were depending on himto make the right decisions.

Had he been too harsh with Roget's lance? Especially Graff, who had not even been party to the lance's drunkenness, the cause for Grayson's explosion. He didn't know. Worse, he was coming to realize that he never knew, whenever he made such decisions.

He looked at his wristcomp again, needlessly. "I'd better head back to the Phobos.”

"Why, Gray? There's time." Lori took his arm again. "The Duke won't arrive for hours yet, and I'd say that you and I are long past due for some celebrating of our own."

Her words caught him off-guard, and disturbed him more than he wanted to admit. "I . . . really don't feel like it, Lori."

"Come on, Colonel. This time it's your Exec who's giving the orders. My spies found this little pleasure place off the Silver Way. Good food. Private rooms with swimming pools for baths ..."

"Lori . . ."

"Damn it, Grayson Carlyle. For once you and I are going to have some fun!"

He realized then that Lori did not know, could not know, how deeply she had touched him. He shook his head and gently pulled his arm free. For the past year, he and Lori had been close, and growing closer. In those months, they'd come to share far more than love and bed and friendship. Born of fire and pain, of death and respect for one another, that sharing had become a sharing of self.

For the first time in that year, Grayson felt that Lori not only didn't understand, but couldn't . . .

"No, Lord," he said, smiling. "The Exec doesn't always get her way. Not this time. I've got too much work to do."

He felt her hurt as they walked back toward the command vehicle that would return them to the spaceport.

* * *

Among the rock crags and broken, ice-crusted terrain beyond the dome wall, shadows rose and moved toward a line of low-slung vehicles resting on the icy plain. An armed and armored sentry glimpsed movement from the corner of his eye and spun to issue a challenge. That challenge died with him as the white-glowing blur of a vibroblade chopped through a short arc, cleaving armor, padding, and flesh with equal ease. Blood spurted, within moments freezing where it splattered on ice and the frost-rimed surface of the guard's personal armor. Other armored figures were climbing among the vehicles even as the sentry's lifeless form slid to the ice.

Working swiftly and silently, the figures flung heavy canvas satchels one after another into the cargo compartments of three of the company's scout skimmers. First one, then another, then a third of the lithe hovercraft stirred from their resting places, then rose, balanced on cushions of air blasted into their plenum chambers by high-speed, fusion-powered fans. As their piercing whine shrieked across the frozen landscape, another sentry scrambled from the temporary pressure dome erected nearby. His voice came across the general communications frequency. "You! Who's there! What . . ."

Laser light stabbed from one of the skimmers, spearing the Gray Death sentry through the dark-tinted plastic of his mask goggles. Polarized filters did nothing to attenuate that megajoule lance of energy. Hydrogen in the atmosphere and oxygen from the mask mingled as the visor shattered, then ignited in the intense heat of the laser light. There had been no oxygen in the tight-fitting inner suit of the first sentry to react with the surrounding atmosphere and the vibroblade's heat. Here, though, the chemical reaction was immediate, and explosive. Goggles, mask, and head burst apart in a fine spray of charred debris, water, and red mist.

Heavily laden, the three hovercraft tilted forward, bows nearly scraping the ice, and raced off toward Tiantan at maximum acceleration. As they swept around a low ridge, a BattleMech, a 40-ton Assassin,confronted them. The trio of hovercraft did not slow but continued to race at breakneck speed across the ice and gravel toward the city looming now on the skyline.

The Assassinstepped aside and raised its left hand in salute as the skimmers passed. Then it turned and continued its patrol.

The Assassin'spilot opened his commlink. "Graff here, on Sector Two. All clear. No activity."

Beyond the ridge nearby, two steaming bodies cooled in the frigid air.

3

Fifty kilometers west of the city dome complex, on the windswept expanse of ferrocrete and poured concrete that served as Tiantan's spaceport, Grayson and his regimental officers waited beneath the port's plex dome while members of the Irian Guard streamed from the lock leading out to the newly grounded DropShip. Captain Ramage, crisp and unaccountably sharp as always in the Legion's dress grays, muttered something at Grayson's left elbow.

"What was that, Ram?" Grayson said. The Irian Guards were forming up in twin lines, facing one another at attention on either side of the purple carpet that had been unrolled across the black ferrocrete deck of the dome. Through the port, Grayson and his men glimpsed a stir of activity in the extension tube that had just been connected to the main debarkation hatch of the towering UnionClass DropShip.

"I was just wondering at his Mightiness arriving ahead of his fleet," Ramage replied, sotto voce."There're three more Unionsto come, and he beat 'em all!"

"Anxious to survey what he's won by force of arms," Lori muttered from Grayson's right.

"Quiet, both of you," Grayson said. "Here he comes."

Lord Garth, Duke of Irian, was a big and florid man. The Marik crest, a stylized bird of prey with wings outstretched, was tattooed on his forehead in the fashion affected by many House Marik nobles. The medals across the gold-trimmed purple of his dress tunic appeared to weigh him down in Sirius V's one-and-a-half gravities nearly as much as did his considerable girth and bulk. Flanking and following him were his senior aides, a minor host garbed in silver, yellow, and violet.

The air temperature in the dome was pleasantly cool, but Lord Garth was sweating heavily by the time he reached the waiting Legion officers. Ramage, Lori, and Grayson executed precise House Marik salutes in carefully rehearsed unison, open right hands to left breasts, palms down. The salutes were acknowledged by a slender ducal aide who seemed to be struggling to hold herself upright against the drag of several kilos' worth of gold aiguillettes.

"His Grace wishes to extend his thanks to the Gray Death Legion for a job well-executed," the aide said. "In the name of House Marik and the Governor General, he declares your mission here at an end, and your contract complete. The 15th Marik Militia relieves you, sir."

Grayson repeated his salute, adding the required formal bow, stiff and from the waist. Even as he did so, his eyes shifted from Duke Irian's moist face to the ranks of brown-and-purple-garbed soldiers behind him. The 15th Marik Militia was a standard Marik line regiment, one that Grayson knew well. The Legion had fought beside them on several occasions during the past year, in missions and raids along the Liao border. Thesetroops, with their red-violet tunics and gold braid, were Irian Guards, the Duke's personal household troops.

"His Grace further directs," the aide continued, "that the mercenary regiment known as the Gray Death Legion board its transport vessels immediately and embark for Marik."

"Marik ..." Grayson suppressed a start. "The Marik system, Your Grace?"

The Legion's operational orders had directed them to report to their leasehold at Helm upon completion of their mission on Sirius V. Marik was the regional administrative headquarters for the Marik Commonwealth, one of the vast, semi-autonomous provinces that made up House Marik's Free Worlds League. Why Marik, instead of Helm?Grayson wondered.

"His Grace reminds you of your duty under the terms of your contract with the Governor General," the aide continued.

"We thank His Grace for his kind words," Grayson said carefully. "And I respectfully submit that we know our duty.May I ask, though, why our regiment is being diverted to the provincial capital?"

"Orders, mercenary,"Duke Irian spoke for the first time. The voice was high and gratingly unpleasant. He kept his eyes on some unseen point above and beyond Grayson's left shoulder, as though refusing to acknowledge him or his people. "I understand the Captain-General himself is planning to meet you there. Perhaps he has further—ah—matters of a financial nature to discuss with you. Or perhaps he seeks to do you . . . honor. I wouldn't know. Whatever the Captain-General's reasons, my forces will relieve you. Now."

"Do you accept relief, Colonel?" the aide prompted.

"Eh? Yes, of course. At your orders, Your Grace." Grayson saluted again. The amenities of ceremony had to be observed. "This world is yours, Your Grace."

* * *

"I don't like this one bit," Lori said. The three of them were in the observation lounge of the DropShip Phobos.The steel shutters normally closed against the threat of enemy attack had been rolled back, opening the small room to a view of the Sirian spaceport and the gray mass of the domes beyond. Sirius had set some hours before, and the Tiantan city domes were marked by the clusters of lights and the steady wink of air navigation beacons.

The field below them encircled the Phobos'sblast pit in blackness broken only by pools of work lights. Each pool revealed steady, hurried activity as the regiment made its final preparations for boarding. Most of the Gray Death's BattleMechs were already aboard, racked and cocooned in their cavernous storage bays deep within the ship. Ramage's infantry company was boarding now, a winding line of pressurized, tracked, all-terrain infantry transports. Pressure-suited traffic marshals directed traffic with circular waves of red-tipped handlights. Small, brightly lit vehicles crawled beetle-like from light pool to pool, bearing technicians intent on disassembling electronics gear still on the field, carrying support grades gathering caches of stacked and crated weapons, carrying officers making final rounds or bearing orders for harried NCOs.

"There's not much about it to like," Grayson said. He stood at Lori's side by the viewport. The lounge was in darkness, and their features were stagelit by the work lights below. "We've got damn little choice, though."

"Orders are orders, then?" Ramage asked. He was seated at a small table set back from the port. A heavy plastic headpiece embraced the back of his head from ear to ear. In the near dark, the com unit glowed and flashed with tiny lights of red, green, and amber at uneven intervals as Ramage monitored reports from his various field NCOs and Techs on the progress of the boarding. He had, in particular, been monitoring the progress of a patrol across one sector of the landing field perimeter. Two sentries had been found dead in the early morning hours—presumably the work of Liao snipers in the wilderness who had refused to surrender.

"Mmm," was Grayson's reply. "There's nothing particularly unusual about the order to report to Marik. Except, of course, that Marik is as far from here as Helm, but in a different direction. That's a long, expensive trip for us, just to pick up a new set of medals."

"If Janos Marik pays the bill ..." Lori began, but she didn't finish the sentence. Nowhere in the contract signed with the Marik government was a provision for the Legion's transportation stated or implied. It had the taste of one of those no-win scenarios the bookkeepers and paymasters for mercenary units dreaded: resources expended to please a client, with nothing in return but the hopeof that client's good will.

"It's not the money that's bothering me, Lori," Grayson said. "There's politics afoot, and I don't like it."

"Anytime a Marik Duke puts his foot in it, there's politics to contend with," Ramage said grimly.

"But this is unusual . . . damned unusual," Grayson said. "You know, at the procession today, all I saw was the Irian Guard, old Lord Garth's personal household troops. I didn't see The Hawk in Garth's entourage, or among the officers that came off his DropShip." Colonel Jake Hawkings, informally known as "the Hawk," was the short, red-haired and irascible commander of the 15th Marik Militia, a man Grayson and his staff had worked with before on several occasions during the Marik contract. According to the Legion's contract orders, it was Hawkings's unit that was supposed to relieve them when the operation on Sirius V was complete.

"You're right, he wasn't there," Ramage said. "I wondered about that, too. I had one of my Techs ask one of theirs about it. The 15th isn't due onworld for two weeks yet. They've only just now jumped in-system, and their DropShip is still in deep-space transit."

"Two weeks!" This was unexpected news, and Grayson wasn't sure how to interpret it. He had been informed that the 15th had arrived with the Duke's forces at the start of the campaign, two weeks before. If the 15th was not with Lord Garth, what unit wasaboard the Dropships that had waited and watched from space during the course of the Sirius campaign?

"Maybe we shouldn't have accepted relief," Lori suggested.

"Yes? And how would you have phrased it?" Ramage said. "No, Lord Garth, I'm not going to turn over command to you. I'll just wait here for Colonel Hawkings."

"It's a moot question at this point," Grayson said. "We've been relieved, and we've received our orders. His Grace is here, and we've been gently but firmly shown the door."

Ramage brought one hand to his comset, listening intently. "The door's open," he said after a moment, as lights winked in the darkness from the set. "All infantry companies are aboard and secure. MechWarrior Graff is boarding the Deimosnow, and that's the last of our recon lance. The last of our gear is coming aboard too. The duty cargo officer reports that we can boost in ninety minutes."

"Maybe," Grayson said carefully, "Maybe we should hurry and leave, before Lord Garth changes his mind.

There's something seriously wrong here, and I don't think I want to know what it is."

* * *

Aboard the House Marik DropShip Gladius,Lord Garth, His Grace, Duke of Irian, paused in his inspection tour of the four freshly painted BattleMechs in the ship's Mech bay. Those machines looming among the shadows created by the harsh overhead work lights were newly freed from their restraints and protective locks. All four were painted in the mottled gray and black camouflage patterns used by 'Mechs in combat on airless worlds. The grinning visages of new-painted, stylized gray and black skulls on scarlet unit patches leered down at the Duke and his party from high on the left leg of each battle machine.

A tall man in an unadorned brown tunic and shortcloak approached the ducal inspection party and executed a correct but perfunctory bow. The slim dagger in his forearm sheath flashed in the light of the overhead fluoros as he straightened.

Garth licked his lips and acknowledged the bow. The man made him nervous. His manner, his bearing, the hint of power that he represented, all served to magnify the threat, real or imagined, behind those dark eyes. "Call me Rachan," he had told Garth at their first meeting, on Irian, months before. "Not 'my Lord,' not 'Precentor' Simply 'Rachan' will do."

"You have a report, Rachan," Garth said. The words were a statement, not a question. Rachan had never approached Garth simply to talk, for which Garth was profoundly grateful.

"The mercenary Dropships are preparing to launch. Your Grace," Rachan said, without preamble. "My agents report that all is ready at Tiantan."

Garth nodded, his chins wobbling with the motion. "Very well. I will come up." He managed a weak grin. "This should be something to watch, eh?"

"Indeed," Rachan said not returning the Duke's forced smile.

By the time the Duke and his staff arrived in the large, richly ornamented lounge of the Gladius,the Deimos,one of the two Legion Dropships, had already boosted. Smoke still hung heavy in the cold air above the ferro-crete launch pad in the distance. Still remaining was the DropShip Phobos,a solitary, silver-grey sphere flood-lit by batteries of port arc lights, and with wreaths of vapor steaming from exhaust ports and vents. The skull emblem of the Gray Death Legion was distinct under the glare of one of the port lights.