The Price of Glory Read online

  "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 you are."

  "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 that title. 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 him to 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 Assassin stepped aside and raised its left hand in salute as the skimmers passed. Then it turned and continued its patrol.

  The Assassin's pilot 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 Union Class DropShip.

  "I was just wondering at his Mightiness arriving ahead of his fleet," Ramage replied, sotto voce. "There're three more Unions to 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. These troops, 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's blast 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 hope of 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 was aboard 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 Deimos now, 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 'Prec
entor' 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.

  One of Garth's officers looked up as his lord entered the room. He stood, bowing, "Your Grace. The second merc ship is in the final seconds of its countdown."

  Garth nodded and strode toward the broad viewing port. An intolerably brilliant blur of light appeared at the base of the Legion DropShip. Smoke, white-lit by the growing torrent of fusion sun at the DropShip's base, billowed from the launch pit's vents. Seconds later, the Shockwave struck the Gladius, rattling faintly through from the armor of the outer hull. Balanced on flame, the Phobos climbed, slowly at first, then faster and faster into the night.

  Garth sensed a presence at his side.

  "It is time, Your Grace," Rachan said.

  Garth nodded, his forefinger probing nervously at the Marik house crest tattooed on his forehead.

  "Yes . . . yes. Very well. Captain Tannis!"