Текст книги " The Price of Glory"

Автор книги: Уильям Кейт

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

6

Until now, Captain Ramage had been happy with his life. Fourteen standard years, he had been a senior NCO in the militia of a Lyran Commonwealth world called Trellwan, where he had honed his combat skills leading ground infantry against raiders and pirates from the Periphery, the distant, vast reaches of space beyond the so-called "civilized" worlds of the Inner Sphere. He was good at what he did, and the young mercenary warrior hired by the Trellwanese to create a BattleMech force to combat an invasion by the Draconis Combine had recognized it. The mercenary had drawn heavily on Ramage's talents, particularly in special forces techniques for using common infantrymen to bring down BattleMechs. When a world had no 'Mechs of its own, it was up to these ordinary troopers, armed with flamer, skimmer-mounted laser, or satchel charge explosives to defend his people from the predations of the 20– to 100-ton armor-clad monsters that dominated the modern battlefield.

The young mercenary's name was Grayson Death Carlyle, and when he left Trellwan after successfully completing his mission, Ramage chose to go with him.

Ramage's talents had once again been invaluable during Grayson's campaign with the rebels on Verthandi. Armed with only a few battered, captured BattleMechs and AgroMechs jury-rigged with machine guns, the rebel forces had fought the Kurita occupying forces to a standstill, while House Steiner stepped in to guarantee Verthandi's semi-autonomy. It had been Ramage who had trained those ragged ground troops, Ramage who had led them in raid after raid that killed at least ten of the Kurita 'Mechs, and damaged many more.

Ramage had tried his best to retain the rank of sergeant, even when, for all practical purposes, he carried a captain's authority in command of a full infantry company. "The men wouldn't know what to do if they couldn't come grouse to Old Sergeant Ram," he had told Grayson on more than one occasion. When a Captain's commission had come his way despite his protests, Lori Kalmar had pointed out, "The time'll come when you have to rub some fresh-face lieutenant's nose in it . . . Captain.You'd better have the rank to back it up!"

Ramage's leadership technique could best be described as tough, but he was no less hard on himself. Known only by his single Trellwanese name, or affectionately as "Ram," he had earned both the respect and love of the troops under his command.

"Red Two, what do you have for me?" Ramage was crouched in a hastily dug slit trench in the boulder-strewn woods near the valley where the Legion's two DropShips had come down. Behind him were the foothills of the Aragayan Mountains farther to the north. The communicator earpiece spat static at him, then cleared.

"Red One, we have incoming 'Mechs!"

The Lieutenant listening in on a separate headpiece next to Ramage raised his eyebrows. "Ours?"

"Not a chance, Dulaney," Ramage replied. "Not from that direction. Red Two! Red Two! Give me an ID!"

"Red One, this is Two! Company strength! We count twelve. Repeat twelve! We see a Warhammer . . .two Archers... a Thunderbolt . . .and listen, Red One! We see infantry and armored vehicles as well!"

This was bad, Ramage knew. All the 'Mechs that the Legion patrol had named were heavies, a match or more for any of the 'Mechs in the Gray Death 'Mech Company, and far superior to the four light 'Mechs in the recon lance pulled up alongside the DropShips.

"Red Two! This is Red One! Mount up and pull back. Keep us posted on their Twenty!"

More static crackled in their headsets, this time pulsing in a regular, almost hypnotic surge of hiss and pop.

"They're jamming," Ramage said, removing the headset. "I don't know if our patrol heard or not. But those 'Mechs they spotted are moving our way, and fast!"

"What does it mean, Ram?"

"It means they have the DropShips nailed and they're moving in to get 'em!”

“How long do we have?"

Ramage was already studying a map of the area unfolded across his knee. His forefinger marked a point on the map with a smear of mud. "Twenty minutes ... if that. We've got to get word to the Colonel!"

A quick check proved that all radio bands were clogged with the same melodic surge and hiss of enemy jamming. "Damn, and we don't have fiber optics strung yet, either." That meant no field telephones. He looked up out of the trench. "Runner!"

A young trooper in a gray-green camouflage smock dropped into the trench next to the two officers. Ramage switched on a recording device built into his wristcomp and hurriedly dictated his report on what Red Two had observed.

"Situation critical," he concluded. "I strongly urge that main body Gray Death 'Mech company be alerted using jam breaker techniques from DropShips. Estimate infantry and recon lances not sufficient to more than delay approaching forces if hostile."

He switched off the recorder, then pressed a button and caught the thumbnail-sized mini-clip that popped up from its recess, placed it in a small waterproof canister, and handed the package to the soldier. "This is for Captain Martinez, Lieutenant Thurston, and Lieutenant Roget," he said. "For their ears only . . . and urgent! Report back to me with their reply."

"Yessir!" The runner scrambled out of the trench and was gone.

Ramage moved over to where long-range infrared binoculars were mounted on a tripod at the edge of the trench, facing southwest. The land sloped gently in that direction, leading down out of the hills and woods and onto the broad sweep of the North Highland Plains.

Helmdown was in that direction . . . and the main Marik forces.

"I wish the Colonel were here now," Ramage said, more to himself than to Lieutenant Dulaney.

"Can they get a message to him?" Dulaney asked.

"Eh? Well, the transmitters aboard the DropShips will punch through the jamming, if anything can. And if the Colonel picks up the fringe of the jamming, hemight figure out what's happening on his own and high-tail it back here. He's a smart one, that boy."

But Ramage did not feel as confident as he sounded. Even if Grayson Carlyle immediately force-marched his two lances at top speed back from Durandel, they mightarrive in the area of the DropShips at about the same time as the 'Mech force that Red Two had spotted. And after a march like that, Grayson's men would be in poor condition for a fight, especially against an enemy force composed of heavy 'Mechs.

He adjusted the telephoto zoom on the binoculars, scanning the empty horizon to the southwest. No, things did not look good at all.

* * *

Grayson tried again. "Phobos, Phobos,this is Amber, do you copy? Over." He strained against the speakers built into the earphones of his neurohelmet, but could hear only a faint, distant hiss like the heavy surge of an ocean against its shore.

"Lori, what do you make of it?"

Across the ruined plaza, Lori's Shadow Hawkpaused in its slow and deliberate movements among the rubble, as though the battle machine itself were listening. "It's not natural," was her reply. "Deliberate jamming, Gray. I'm certain of it."

"That's what I thought, too."

The horror of finding Durandel deliberately obliterated had left the Legion's MechWarriors in a state of dulled shock. They were finding bodies now, forms crushed beneath fallen rubble or sprawled in laser-seared or trampled gore on the town's ferrocrete walkways. The survivors were emerging, slowly, as word spread that it was the Gray Death Legion's 'Mechs descending like avenging angels on the Marik BattleMechs that had occupied the town. Each survivor had a similar tale. Word had come five days earlier that a force under the command of Lord Garth, Duke of Irian, was landing at the Helmdown starport, that a great victory had been won at Sirius V, that the Gray Death was due some special, spectacular honor.

Durandel's leaders and Captain Baron, who had been left in command at Helmfast, had gone to Helmdown to talk with the Marik representatives.

They had never returned.

On the following day, the BattleMechs of the Hammerstrike Company of the 5th Marik Guards had secured Helmdown and swept into the countryside, seizing strategic crossroads and what few industrial facilities existed around the planetary capital. A clear but incomprehensible radio message had been received at Helmfast: "Your leaders have been declared in rebellion against the legal government of the Free Worlds League. Surrender to your lawful lords, or be destroyed."

After Captain Baron's disappearance, a young Lieutenant named Fraser had assumed command of the garrison. The recent chain of events had been so odd, so confusing, that it was a real possibility that the Helm invaders were not Lord Garth's people at all, but renegades, enemy raiders, or even the vanguard of some rebellious Marik faction. Helmfast had been given into Fraser's keeping. He would not surrender it without certain knowledge of who his attackers were, or what was the legal status of the Gray Death Legion.

Helmfast's first line of defenders consisted of the armored vehicles that had been under Baron's command until his disappearance. There was infantry, too, local Helman militia for the most part, called up to serve with the masters of the Durandel landhold. There were also MechWarriors at Durandel, including Lieutenant Gomez DeVillar, a Phoenix Hawkpilot named Kent, and several recruit trainees, but their 'Mechs had been packed aboard the Phobosmonths before to serve as reserve 'Mechs in Liao space.

Lieutenant Fraser met the Marik BattleMechs on the 66 plains west of Durandel, where the enemy 'Mechs crashed through the defender's line. The militia had remained in Helmfast Castle preparing for a siege, while B Company, the twenty vehicles of the armored company, and the infantry deployed.

So far, none of the survivors that Grayson interviewed had been able to give a coherent picture of what happened after that. Some reported seeing the Marik Hammerstrike Company deploying beyond Fraser's line. Most of the enemy 'Mechs were lights, but well-handled and well-disciplined. Though low, heavy clouds of drifting smoke tended to obscure what was happening, within thirty minutes, there were Hammerstrike 'Mechs firing into the walls of the castle and prowling through the streets of Durandel. There were reports of panic among the trainees of Company B fighting on foot, of the Marik BattleMechs sweeping like a whirlwind of flame and destruction through the lightly armed vehicles facing them. A doctor found working among row upon row of injured soldiers and civilians at the edge of the village said that he had treated a soldier who reported that a Marik Griffinhad crushed Lieutenant Fraser's Vedette light tank under its feet.

Grayson remembered the young and eager officer. He had not been more than 20 years old, and sported a wiry mustache whose obvious purpose was to make its owner look older. Fraser had joined the Legion, as had so many others, on Galatea. He claimed to have heard so much about the exploits of the Gray Death Legion that it made him want to join. "I want to win some of that glory myself," Fraser had told him.

Grayson had sat the young Fraser down in that Galatean bar and bought him a drink. Glory was the wrong reason to join the infantry, he'd explained. There was glory, certainly, in the military traditions and the camaraderie, the bravery and the sacrifice of combat. But such glory came only at a price. A steep price.

Though Fraser's training at a military academy on New Exford had marked him for a commission, he continued to insist that the Legion was for him. He was so determined to wait for an opening among the 'Mech apprentices that he would even give up his Lieutenant's commission. Fraser told Grayson that one day he would be a MechWarrior, a bearer of the truebanner of glory. . .

Grayson had nearly turned him down, but something in the young man's eagerness reminded him of his own green apprenticeship. Fraser had signed the articles that brought him in as a junior lieutenant, and been posted to Baron's armored company, a first step in the long training that might one day lead to piloting a 'Mech. Within a year, he had become a Senior Lieutenant and been entrusted with the authority of Baron's Company Exec.

And now Fraser was dead. Grayson wondered how much glory the boy had found, in being smashed by the foot of fifty-five tons of armored steel. He may have died a hero, but he had also paid the highest possible price. And the battle had continued on after Fraser's death, as though the young man never existed at all.

Sergeant Burns, of Ramage's Special Ops force, had witnessed the final action in the town. With the defending force clearly beaten and scattered, the remaining town leaders of Durandel had decided to surrender. After seeing a white flag flying from the town council's office dome, the militia in Helmfast, themselves mostly citizens of Durandel, had followed suit. The gates to Helmfast had been opened, and the Marik conquerors welcomed according to the usages and conventions of war.

Grayson let his gaze linger on the outcome of those conventions. Not a single building had been left intact. The gates, walls, and turrets of Helmfast Castle had been burned and blasted and torn by laser fire . . . from within.The destruction had been complete and deliberate. While looking at the ruins around him, he pondered these deceptions leading to more deceptions, a twisting of the Conventions that seemed aimed directly at the heart of the Gray Death, and Grayson himself.

The burden weighed heavily on him now. Had it been his stupidity that had put the Legion in their current position? Or had he been too cockily assured that whatever he faced, he could certainly handle it? Of seven hundred people left at Durandel, his men had found less than four hundred so far, and many of those were injured. The fighting efficiency of his unit would be seriously compromised by the knowledge that many of their wives, husbands, children, or other loved ones were dead, or else hiding in the woods and the mountains, possibly wounded and dying.

And if the enemy took his DropShips, Grayson and his men would be trapped here on Helm.

There had been tricks . . . and tricks within tricks.

As he gazed up at the ruins of Helmfast, his fists clenched around the Marauder'scontrol grips. There would be no more such tricks.

* * *

Hours later, Lori found Grayson, in what had once been the briefing room in Helmfast Castle. The south wall had been blasted in, the ceiling timbers charred, the two-story windows smashed. The tile floors were ankle-deep in broken glass, plaster dust, and chunks of stone.

Grayson had brought a small, two-seat skimmer right through the hole in the wall. Cables stretched from the hovercraft's auxiliary generator and into the computer built into the conference table in the center of the room. Above him, a pair of large display screens were mounted on the east wall. Somehow, some way, much of the Castle's electronics had remained intact, though the power generator had been destroyed and fire had consumed many of the circuit controls.

"Grayson?"

He didn't respond at first. His back was toward Lori as he hunched over the computer keyboard.

"Gray?" she said, a bit louder. "Sergeant Burns has uncovered a supply of plastic explosives buried in a warehouse in Durandel."

Grayson turned to looked at her, but his eyes were unseeing, almost as though he didn't recognize her. Then what she was saying seemed to penetrate. "Good," he said, with a nod. "Good."

"You've got the briefing room computer working!"

"There's not much else left up here that works. It was built into the table, and this room survived pretty much intact."

"So I see," Lori said. She looked up at the maps. The 69 one on the left was blank, but the one on the right displayed expanses of green, ocher, and blue arrayed as a photographic map. "Plans?”

“Options."

She crossed the rubble to a point behind his shoulder, staring up at the screen. "What map is this? It's not . . . is that a map of Helm?"

"A very, very old one, yes. It's the computer display map that came with Helmfast, the one the Janos Marik gave me as part of the Title Ceremony. It's a computer-enhanced map, based on photographs taken from an orbital satellite . . . but it was made something like three centuries ago, so it's a bit out of date."

"I should say so!"

Now Lori understood why she'd been confused by the sea on the map. The Dead Sea Flats of today's Helm were bone-dry and barren, mineral-encrusted deserts. But on this map, a small sea still lay south of Durandel. Glowing letters identified it as the Yehudin Sea.

"Want to see how it works?"

She nodded.

"The operation is simple enough. An extremely detailed set of high-imagery photographs are digitized and stored in the computer's memory. The computer creates a referent grid." He turned to the keyboard and typed an entry. Lori now recognized the terrain on the right-hand screen, the southward sweep of the land from the Aragayan Mountains to beyond the Nagayan Mountains. Forests showed as dark, mottled, scratchy-looking grays, greens, and blues. The West Equatorial Sea was a deep and crystal blue, except near the shore along islands, where shallow sandbars created smooth strips of green and green-blue.

He used a display pointer on the screen to indicate a gray patch north of the dead sea bottom. "That," he said, "is Durandel. It's at coordinates 456 dash 076, mag level three. The smallest object we can see here is perhaps a kilometer across."

"Gray ... I knowhow to read a map."

"I'm sorry, Lori. It's been a long, long night." He keyed an entry, and the perspective of the map changed, the ground leaping forward on the screen. The broad sweep of land was now dominated by the tiny gray patch of Durandel. Individual buildings could be made out, and everywhere else, rubble. Helmfast clung to the rim of the bluff above the town.

"There is level five, a one hundred-fold magnification. The smallest object we can see at this enlargement is about a meter across, one thousand times smaller than at level three." He leaned back, looking up at the map.

"It doesn't help us tactically, of course," he said. "It's a bit too far out of date for that. But I have found us a valley across the Aragayan Mountains to the north. The terrain is not difficult. There's a valley ... the Valley of the Araga, about eighty kilometers from here. We can set up a camp there, and keep it out of sight of the Marik ships in orbit."

"Then what?"

"Then we get our refugees up there. I want you to find DeVillar." As one of the two MechWarriors with any experience at Durandel when the attackers had struck, Lieutenant DeVillar was the closest they had discovered to authority among the survivors found so far. "Put him in charge of rounding up all the survivors, plus any vehicles they can get to run. He is to take command of the group and organize an encampment, but he must also continue the search for other survivors."

There had to be survivors, Grayson thought. They had uncovered perhaps fifty bodies so far. They couldn't allbe dead! In the meantime, that river valley would provide shelter, plus food and water, for as long as the group remained undiscovered.

"I'll alert the 'Mechs," he added. "The Company will head back to the LZ at full gallop."

"You're afraid for the DropShips."

"Damn right I am. We lose our DropShips, and we're stuck here . . . and we don't even know who's mad at us yet—or why!"

He didn't add what Lori must already know—that if their communications with the Phoboswere being blocked, it had to be because hostile forces were moving against the DropShips. Grayson knew that if he wanted to act, it had better be fast. Time was running out. Maybe it had already run out, and the Legion would be too late once again.

Grayson simply wouldn't think about that. With luck, they had a chance.

7

For the past two years, Colonel Julian Langsdorf had been the regimental commander of the 12th White Sabers, an understrength regimental assault group assigned to garrison duty on Thermopolis, along the Free Worlds League frontier with the Lyran Commonwealth. That had changed less than two weeks before when none other than General Kleider of Janos Marik's House Command Staff had approached him.

Kleider was a heavy-set man, one of those court functionaries given to wearing torso armor in the form of rank upon glittering rank of military medals and awards. His eyes were deep-set under bushy, gray brows that seemed permanently drawn together in the strain to concentrate. His fat lips, too, seemed always to be puckered, though it could as easily have been in deepest thought as at the remembered taste of something particularly sour.

"I am here at the behest of Lord Garth, Duke of Irian," Kleider had said without preamble, moments after entering Langsdorf's staff briefing room at his garrison headquarters. "His Grace has formulated a plan, and your participation is deemed essential to its execution." The general spoke with the smooth assurance of one who knows that his words cannot fail to impress the listener.

And Langsdorf had been duly impressed. Irian was a minor dukedom, located on the border of the Marik Commonwealth Principality. Its once extensive industrial facilities had been ravaged and raided time again by both Steiner and Liao forces. Garth, the current Duke of Irian, was nevertheless reputed to be highly placed in the webwork of relations, favors, and favorites that permeated the Marik court on Atreus all the way to the Center Seat of the League Staff Command of the Captain-General himself. Any plan involving Garth was certain to be the result of high-level planning, indeed.

"I will serve His Grace in any capacity, sir," Langsdorf had replied, and he meant it. His loyalty was—had always been—to the person of Janos Marik. In the neo-feudalism of the current era, with its interconnected personal allegiances and oaths of military support, any service rendered to Lord Garth was service rendered to Captain-General Janos Marik himself.

Kleider had pursed his heavy lips and gone on to explain that a plot had been discovered with the Free Worlds League, one threatening the very foundations of the League's delicate balance of principalities. Should this plot succeed, Kleider said, the bonds holding together the principalities would dissolve in the blood of civil war. The Free Worlds League would be reduced to anarchy, and the greedy dogs and jackals that pressed so close from every border would surely see it as their chance to seize anything they could.

The plot, it seemed, had originated with a House Steiner mercenary who had managed to secure a contract with Janos Marik for a protracted campaign along the Liao border. Fortunately for the Free Worlds League, Lord Garth had discovered evidence that this mercenary had betrayed Janos Marik and was organizing a rebellion on the very planet granted to him as landhold. The name of that world was Helm.

Thus had Julian Langsdorf now come to Helm. On Kleider's orders, he had landed and seized the planet's starport and its capital of Helmdown. Through a simple ruse, he had also captured the highest-ranking members of the rebellion and dealt with them appropriately. Then, when the rebels had deployed their 'Mech garrison to meet his approach to their castle stronghold, Langsdorf had personally led the 5th Marik Guards in a wild fight to utterly crush the rebels' resistance, smash their capital, and overrun their castle.

The Colonel's orders were to hold his prize until either Kleider or Duke Irian relieved him.

Though he'd done well, Langsdorf was unhappy with his command. It was fine to be hailed as Defender of the League, to know that he was preserving the rule and power of Janos Marik himself, but his operational orders from Kleider offered scant room for his own judgement. Worse yet was that his judgement told him that he was doing a thing that was wrong.

According to the unwritten but quite powerful Conventions of War, themselves descendants of the far older Ares Conventions, civilian populations were not the proper targets of war. Only if a civilian population should rise in revolt, should take arms against its lawful ruler, was that ruler allowed, even obligated,to treat the civilians as an enemy army.

When a civilian population was unarmed, and its army had announced formal surrender by an acceptable agency such as a white flag or neutral messenger, then those people became wards of the conquering army's commander, who was now charged with their protection.

Kleider's orders left little room for the rebels' formal surrender, however. Langsdorf was to answer any resistance, however token, with an overwhelming blow, using every bit of force at his command. The rebel army was to be destroyed even if it meant leveling the village of Durandel and the castle of Helmfast. Furthermore, Langsdorf was ordered to ignore any white flags or other formal declarations of surrender, which were sure to be tricks by the perfidious rebels.

Langsdorf had been horrified. "General! You are making it impossible for these people to surrender to us! Surely a living population is more valuable than one that has been trampled and destroyed! A town whole and productive is more valuable to us than . . . than burned-over rubble!"

Kleider had laid his hand on Langsdorf's shoulder in a fatherly way, his bushy eyebrows rising toward his forehead. "Son, there is more to this than you know. These . . . orders . . . they're distasteful, I know. But His Grace, Lord Garth, has accumulated evidence suggesting that this . . . this foul mercenary is guilty of abominable atrocities in Liao space."

"Atrocities? What atrocities?"

"I don't know the details, Colonel. But from what I've heard, from what His Grace was able to confide in me, this mercenary band planned to commit an atrocity while in the service of Janos Marik, with the sole intention of laying blame for the incident at the Captain-General's own hand!"

"God is heaven ..."

"God had little to do with this scheme, I fear. Imagine! By making the Captain-General responsible for this atrocity, whatever it is, the mercenaries sow the seeds of civil war. The various factions leap to support or denounce Janos Marik. In the chaos, the mercenaries hope to seize power for themselves. And they could, too, with the League falling to pieces, the army in shreds, our worlds open wide to invasion by Liao and Steiner."

"The mercenary and part of his force are in Liao space now. It may be too late to stop whatever terrible deed the man has planned. But we do hope to lure him and his band to a place where we can deal with him. His Grace is already preparing an overwhelming force to trap and deal with this monster.

"You, meanwhile, must seize the mercenary's land-hold. And you must be ruthless about it, single-mindedly and bloodily ruthless!" Kleider had smacked one of his fists wetly against the palm of his other hand for emphasis. "It may well be that the perpetrators of this scheme are among those at Durandel. Certainly, there are no innocents among them, for the mercenary leader would need the full support of his people before even contemplating such a scheme. No . . . you must notconsider these people to be innocents,Colonel."

Being a good, loyal soldier, Langsdorf had played his part. Langsdorf's father, Rolf Langsdorf, had been a personal friend and confidant of Janos Marik, had supported Janos in the recent, bloody fratricidal struggle between Janos and his brother Anton. As reward, Janos had named Rolf as Count Valik, with a patent of nobility that made Langsdorf's brother a viscount, and Julian himself a minor noble. Julian Langsdorf had been raised by his sternly correct father to believe that nothing was more important than absolute loyal and faithful service to one's liege lord.

Langsdorf opened his hands and looked at them, turning them under the light. He still believed that, but the shrieks and death screams of the slaughtered civilian of Durandel still rang in his ears. The enemies of the Captain-General hadto be rooted out . . . the perpetrators of such a monstrous scheme hadto be exterminated with utter ruthlessness . . . And yet . . .

Was there reason and purpose to such slaughter? He remembered the woman, half-naked and golden-haired, who had fled from beneath the shadow of his Warhammerwhen he'd smashed aside the walls of her house. He had had the woman in the sights of his Warhammer'sleft machine gun when he realized she was carrying a baby in her arms.

He had let her go, still torn between duty and morality.

It was one thing to destroy monsters bent on the destruction of his culture and his people, on tearing down the government and the lord he was sworn to serve. The indiscriminate machine-gunning of a defenseless woman and her child was another matter entirely. At that point, Langsdorf had turned over command of the operation to the Hammerstrike Company's Captain Prosser. He had returned alone to Helmdown, where he was greeted with the unconfirmed reports of landings by unidentified DropShips.

Langsdorf sat now in the cockpit of his Warhammer,leading his 12th White Sabers toward what Captain Javil claimed was an enemy DropShip LZ. He wanted desperately to speak with someone, but the same interference that was blanketing enemy communications was blocking his own. Things had started to go very seriously wrong almost from the beginning of the operation. First, there had been this struggle between loyalty and right, a struggle that threatened to paralyze Langsdorf by making him question each order, each movement, if only to himself.

Then had come word that eight 'Mechs– eight 'Mechs—of the 5th Marik Guard were out of contact and presumed destroyed in Durandel. The only clue to their fate was a confused radio message received by a regimental command listening post in Helmdown, a fragmentary and panic-ridden warning of unknown agencies hunting down the Hammerstrike Company. The transmission had broken off before the radio operator could get a confirmation on it. Then, only silence came from Durandel. Langsdorf had to assume that the 'Mechs he had left there under Prosser were destroyed. What he did not know was how and by whom.