Decision at Thunder Rift Page 2

  It was Ari who replied. "He is here at my request, my Lord, and at the direct order of Captain Carlyle."

  "Indeed? And since when does a battlelance tutor set staff policy?"

  "When he is charged with training the CO's successor... my Lord." Ari's hostility was barely restrained. "The boy may have to handle this someday."

  "Let him stay, my Lord," Griffith interjected, nodding toward the monitor. "That trader DropShip's almost in."

  Lord Olin Vogel scowled, then moved away to another monitor console, trailing his ruffled dignity. Behind Vogel's back, Griffith made a face at Ari. Seated at the communications console next to the tutor, Chief Tech Riviera could not conceal his own grin.

  Grayson was completely uninterested in politics, but found Representative Vogel's presence with the Lance annoying. He had arrived from Tharkad 80-some standard days before, brimming with plans to forge an alliance with the nearby stellar empire of a troublesome Bandit King. None of the men or women in Carlyle's Commandos liked the stiff-necked and arrogant viscount, and the necessary formal etiquette of dealing with Katrina Steiner's personal emissary often failed to veil their black looks. Few in the unit agreed with Vogel's plan for pacifying this sector.

  Fortunately, that had nothing to do with Grayson. He peered across Ari's shoulder at a console monitor. "So what's happening?"

  "If you'd been here on time, you wouldn't have to ask. Your father is at the spaceport. The Mailai shuttle has entered atmosphere and should ground in ... about ten minutes."

  The monitor showed the spaceport's empty expanse of ferrocrete. The image moved in peculiar, swaying bobs and dips caused by the lurching of the transmitting camera, which rode on a BattleMech.

  Grayson needed no explanation of the monitor scene. The camera transmitting that ponderously shifting image was mounted on the unit's lead BattleMech, a Phoenix Hawk, 45 tons of battle-scarred and endlessly patched and rewired walking combat machine. And Grayson's father was at the con.

  Griffith frowned at the image. "I still wish he'd been able to take all four 'Mechs."

  Riviera shrugged. "The Shadow Hawk's in the Repair Bay, and the Captain wanted the Wasps on patrol in town, just in case." He made a slight gesture toward Vogel still standing at a nearby console. "THAT one wasn't going to see his plan sabotaged for anything!"

  Griffith watched the government representative with narrowed eyes. "Did we have to send both Wasps to patrol Sarghad?"

  The Tech made an unpleasant face. "Who knows? The natives're none too happy about this deal."

  "I wouldn't be, either," Ari said. "The line between a legitimate interstellar empire and a pack of bandits can be rather fine at times. The Trells’ll have to live with them when we're gone. They have a right to be nervous about old Hendrik's... intentions."

  The meeting this hour would seal the hard-fought pact between the Lyran Commonwealth, which was using Carlyle's Commandos to garrison Trellwan, and the new and blossoming empire of Hendrick, the Bandit King of Oberon VI. It was unfortunate that the Trellwan natives had no love for Hendrik's legions, but that did not affect the secret negotiations one single jot.

  A deep voice blared from the overhead speakers. "I'm in position."

  Riviera leaned forward and touched a console plate. "Riviera, private channel. Your son's here, Captain."

  Captain Durant Carlyle's voice emerged from the console's private line speaker, and it was still uncomfortably loud in the hush that had fallen across Combat Command.

  "Oh, he is, is he? Tell him he's earned an extra five hours in the simulator this week."

  Riviera's grinned as his eyes flicked back to Grayson. "Message received, Captain."

  Grayson frowned, but said nothing. It rankled that he was as subject to discipline as any of the Lance's ground troops, but he'd learned not to make a fuss about it. MechWarriors were, after all, the elite. They were like modern-day knights who held the course of battles in their charge, and he was in training to take his father's place at the con of a BattleMech one day. THAT BattleMech, in fact — the Phoenix Hawk.

  Anyway, simtime wasn't so bad, as punishments went. Grayson not only enjoyed the simulator, he was good at it. It was the closest thing to piloting a 'Mech in combat without actually being there. The only problem was that the five hours would come out of his free time with Mara. But then, he'd already said his goodbyes, hadn't he?

  Funny how Mara had been so sure he wasn't going to be leaving Trellwan after all, but she'd just have to get over him, poor kid. The next stop for Carlyle's Commandos was the Commonwealth capital. Now THAT would be a piece of decent duty, for a change! He'd never been to Tharkad, but the troopers who had been were more than willing to yarn about the place. Cool and rocky the world might be, but nightlife in the strip outside the capital's starport had a decidedly warm reputation. He was looking forward to it.

  Grayson had become very tired of Trellwan, with its endless succession of long cycles of dark and light dragging through years so short that seasons came and went in mere days. "Ari, my father has this pact of his pretty well wrapped up, doesn't he? I mean... this means we'll be leaving Trellwan, right?

  "This meeting'll make it official, Master Carlyle, with nothing more to do but go through a ceremonial changing of the guard. It can't get any more wrapped up than that"

  Grayson watched the monitor image. "But could anything go wrong?"

  Ari shrugged expressively. "When dealing with Periphery bandits, keep one hand on your account files, and the other over your eyes."

  "My eyes?"

  White teeth flashed in Aristobulus' dark face. "So they don't rob you blind."

  "Better still, shoot the lot of 'em," Griffith said. He was obviously and gloweringly displeased at the situation.

  "That would take a lot of shooting, my muscle-massed friend. And maybe with this treaty of Vogel's, we won't have to. Then you could spend your time shooting Kuritists instead."

  "Ah, well, there is that! You have a way of finding the bright side of everything, Ari."

  They laughed, but the Weapons Master was still troubled. Worry went with his title and rank, of course, but the situation was tricky. Consider, as Ari was fond of saying during his more pedantic moments, the Trell system lying at the ragged boundaries of the Lyran Commonwealth, an isolated sentinel against an unthinkably large and empty unknown. Inward was so-called civilized space, the Inner Sphere, where the

  Commonwealth of House Steiner and four other warring heirs to a sundered Star League jockeyed and scuffled for fleeting advantage of arms or diplomatic positon.

  At their backs lay a wilderness of unknown or long-forgotten worlds, the darkness of the void, the rabble of petty tyrants and Bandit Kings scratching ragtag empires from the ruin of a war-shattered glory-that-was.

  Hendrik III was one such bandit king, and his raids for water and technological flotsam had savaged scores of worlds both in Lyran space and among the other systems of the neighboring Draconis Combine. It was those raids that had brought Carlyle's Commandos to Trellwan in the first place five standard years before, and there'd been some sharp fights between bandit raiders and Trellwan's garrison in the meantime.

  Somehow, between raids, Hendrik had forged a tottering alliance of a dozen Bandit Kings, an alliance that had made the man a power worthy of recognition... and caution. The coalition, which was centered at Hendrik's capital of Oberon VI, controlled the firepower and transport capacity of a minor House. That was something mere bandits could not be trusted with.

  Olin Vogel had arrived from Tharkad with a plan, a plan smoothed over with the veneer of diplomatic tact. By treating Hendrik III as just another Bandit King, making raid for raid and challenge for challenge, the Commonwealth would simply get more raids and challenges, requiring more garrisons strung along more dry and half-forgotten worlds clear across the Commonwealth's Periphery. But treat Hendrik as a House ruler, treat him as lord of an empire as legitimate as the Commonwealth by suggesting a mutual defense pact with generous t
erritorial inducements and guarantees... that changed the situation, and for the better.

  Vogel's maneuverings had taken the better part of two local years, which was almost three standard months. As neither side trusted the other, a local trading house, House Mailai, had been hired to ferry the negotiators between Trellwan and Oberon VI. Neither party was quite ready to allow heavily-armed DropShips from the other side to ground on home territory. Worse, Hendrik already had a treaty (or at least, a rough understanding) with the Draconis Combine, and the Combine was at war with the Lyran Commonwealth. Technically, this made Hendrik an enemy, though not a particularly active one. It had taken time, and that most fleeting of human commodities — trust — but at last a pact had been hammered out

  With the Trellwan Concord, Hendrik would become the Lyran Commonwealth's partner and ally. It would now be Hendrik's JumpShips and 'Mech battalions guarding the Commonwealth's peripheral worlds in this sector, freeing up the Steiner garrisons there for duty in the Inner Sphere against the latest maneuverings of the Draconis Combine. This would discourage further bandit raids because the military arm of Oberan's minor empire was already stretched to the limit

  In return, Hendrik would gain more worlds to rule, more resources to tap. Trellwan was one of those worlds, a minor pawn in a political game played out across light years. Trellwan's own native population was governed by a kinglet named Jeverid, a man with fealty sworn to House Steiner and the Commonwealth, but what of that? When worlds are traded, the wishes of individuals do not count for much. Besides, Trellwan would still technically belong to House Steiner. That was the agreement. The only difference was that the outpost's 'Mechs and troopers would now be Hendrik's instead of the Commonwealth's.

  The negotiations for both sides had overcome severe obstacles to such an agreement In fact, the worst problem had come when word of the secret negotiations had somehow leaked out to the Trells, who were the unsuspecting objects of the planned transfer of power and real estate. Captain Carlyle's staff had intended to keep the Trells ignorant of the deal until after it was achieved. After all, nothing would change for them. One garrison Lance at the Castle was pretty much the same as any other. But Hendrik had raided Trellwan in the past, and the Concord might be interpreted badly by Jeverid and the more short-sighted of his people if they got wind of it too soon.

  Carlyle's advisors had been correct. When news of the impending agreement reached the people of Sarghad, at the base of the mountain where the Castle stood guard, city-wide riots had broken out, and the fires had turned that hot Firstnight to day. The Lance's two light 'Mechs had been tied down with patrol duty in the city almost constantly since.

  House Security still hadn't been able to track down the source of that leak. It boded ill for the future, and added to Sergeant Griffith's worries.

  "Odd," Riviera said, as he snapped a toggle switch back and forth. "We've lost some security cameras."

  "Eh? Where?"

  "Repair Bay. I'm checking." He touched his right hand fingers to his ear, listening to the tiny implanted speaker there. "Officer of the Watch reports Maintenance shut those cameras down a few minutes ago. Something about a fault in the circuitry."

  Griffith looked worried. "I don't like it."

  "You want the Captain?" Riviera reached for the communicator panel again.

  The Sergeant glanced at the monitor, where the trails of fusion flame left by the descending DropShip were illuminating the sky. "No, don't jostle him. Put out a warning to all watchstations. Internal security, yellow alert."

  Grayson wondered how that would help. All stations were already on alert, watching the descent of the Mailai DropShip.

  On their monitors, they could see the Dropship's stubby hydraulic legs unfold as panels blossomed open across its broad base. In a final gush of light and noise, it settled to the scorch:blackened ferrocrete 500 meters from Carlyle's position. The vessel was roughly egg-shaped and very old.

  Repeated patchings and dabs of brown sealant marred its once sleek surface, and the blue X-and-circle crest of Mailai House was the only bright note on a hull faded and blistered from countless lifts and groundings.

  Carlyle's voice came over the commlink. "I've got its landing ID beacon. She checks out as the Mailai freighter."

  The shakiest part of the balance of trust between the two new allies was in allowing DropShips to land on home ground. Because the vessels of the major houses could mount formidable armament, could carry battalions of BattleMechs and small armies of troops and heavy combat vehicles, that trust had not been easily forged. There were weapons trained on the grounded vessel now, of course, the laser turrets and heavy missile batteries that ringed the spaceport and served as the station's inner line of defense. Nevertheless, the base defenders let out a collective sigh of relief at the sight of Mailai's newly-painted crest on the ship's curved hull plates, and at the computer-coded twitter off the ship's ID beacon. There were beam turrets nestled in the vessel's pitted armor, but not the heavy armament of a major House warship. It was only a freighter, aged, battered, and bearing the representatives of House Steiner's newest ally.

  Grayson and the members of the Lance staff watched as their Captain's Phoenix Hawk began striding across the ferrocrete toward the ship that loomed above it

  * * * *

  In the Repair Bay, the traitor glanced over the top of the partly disassembled console where he worked and saw the Watch Officer with his feet still propped up, his back toward the astech. The monitor showed the spaceport lights, the ponderous side-to-side motion of a heavy ‘Mech lurching across the pavement, the settling bulk of the grounding DropShip on pillars of white light. The Trell checked his wristcomp, and watched the last few seconds flicker away to zero.

  The moment for action had come.

  3

  The traitor pulled a small, back-portable generator from his shoulder bag. Of itself, the device was innocent enough. Astechs often carried generators with them for tasks requiring light and power in tight spaces. He didn't put it on because the harness had been removed, but fastened it instead to his tool belt so that it hung free at his right hip. One end of a power feed snapped into a bayonet socket. The feed's other end clicked home at the base of a slender cylinder. A twist of the cylinder snapped the blade open and locked it down.

  The Trell stood slowly, his eyes on the back of the watch officer's neck. Blade in his right hand, he groped across his body for the power switch with his free hand.

  Sensing something wrong, some motion at his back, the watch officer half-turned, then whirled to his feet at the sight of the astech and his blade coming at him. As the officer's chair toppled noisily, the traitor's hand found the power switch for his lead-gray blade, and a dry hum filled the narrow room.

  Vibroblades are horribly efficient for close-in fighting. Power from the backpack is transformed to ultrasonics that vibrate the paracarballoy blade faster than the eye can see. In seconds, friction turns the vibrating blade white-hot, able to slice tempered steel as though it were butter.

  The officer fumbled at his holster for the pistol, but collided with the console at his back before he could free the gun and bring it up. The Troll's humming blade slashed out and down, shearing through gunmetal, flesh, and bone. The officer shrieked, clenched bloodied fingers to his chest then stumbled backward into the console again. The traitor advanced, the vibroblade slashing out and down once more to brutally silence a final shriek.

  The traitor switched off the vibroblade, looped its power feed, and tucked the weapon into an insulated belt scabbard, careful not to touch the hot blade. With rapid and precise movements, he examined the instrument console, finding at last a single white button, which he stabbed down and held. From far off and above came the hollow grinding of machinery. Across the Repair Bay, on the other side of the beached-whale shape of the disabled 'Mech, the metal wall began to rumble open, splitting along a rivet-pocked seam. On the console, a red warning light flashed on and off, and a woman's voice began from s
omewhere, "Warning. Warning. Security breach in Repair Bay. Exterior wall now open. Warning..."

  Sand whirled through the wall opening, blown in by a chill, sub-zero wind. The traitor narrowed his eyes, detecting a flicker of movement outside, then gliding shapes among the shadows. He released the switch, stepped across the gore-splattered body of the watch officer, and clattered his way down the steps to the main deck.

  The Tech who had been at work on the 'Mech below was running for the main passageway when something caught him in the small of the back, lifted him, and hurled him sprawling against the wall. Then, one of the astechs on the ‘Mech's chest screamed and toppled five meters to the deck, while the other tried to scramble to safety behind an open access plate. Next came the sharp hiss of silenced gunfire, the jarring concussion of a hurled grenade. A scream rose up from somewhere, but was mercifully cut short by a second blast and the chattered hiss of sound-suppressed auto fire.

  By now, men in neat gray and blue uniforms had burst through a door at the far end of the Repair Bay, guns yammering. One black-garbed attacker lurched backward as another hurled something that bobbed across the deck. There followed a flash and a stunning blow that whipped the traitor's coveralls against his legs. The next moment, those neat gray uniforms ceased to exist, save as bloodied shreds and tatters.

  The Trell stepped off the ladder and felt the blade at his throat before he sensed the man behind it. "Hunter!" he choked out "Hunter!" The attacker's grip loosened.

  "You're Stefan?" The voice was curiously level.

  The Trell nodded, rubbing at his throat. Squads of attackers dressed in close-fitting black garb raced past. One of them stopped before Stefan, his face totally obscured by featureless black plastic, a silenced submachine gun in his gloved fist The black canvas bag across his back bulged with menace.

  "You're the traitor?"

  The Trell nodded again, uncertainly. The attacker's accent was foreign and hard to follow, his manner unexpectedly harsh.