As he gazed up at the ruins of Helmfast, his fists clenched around the Marauder's control 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 but it was made something like three centuries ago, so it's a bit out of date."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 know how 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 all be 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 Phobos were 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 not consider 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 had to be rooted out . . . the perpetrators of such a monstrous scheme had to 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 Warhammer when he'd smashed aside the walls of her house. He had had the woman in the sights of his Warhammer's left 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.
The answer had come moments later, in the call from Captain Javil in orbit. He informed Langsdorf that a pair of DropShips had set down outside of Durandel, probably at about the time the Colonel's Warhammer was returning to Helmdown. The news answered several questions, but was disturbing, too. It suggested that things were going very wrong, indeed. Had not Kleider promised that the first-line combat forces of the renegade mercenaries would be diverted to another system and apprehended there, that all Langsdorf would need to worry about was a handful of rebellious civilians, trainees, and third-rate troops?
Third-rate troops did not dispatch eight 'Mechs so quickly that they scarcely had time to call for help.
The grounding of a pair of Union Class DropShips meant that as many as twenty-four 'Mechs could be on the ground at this moment—far too many for his small combined unit to face. At the moment, assuming that all eight of the Hammerstrike 'Mechs were destroyed, he had fifteen 'Mechs at his command, and the majority of those were lights.
Langsdorf had assembled what 'Mechs he could—his own Warhammer, plus three lights left by the Hammerstrike Company at Helmdown when they'd left for Durandel, together with two full lances from his own 12th White Sabers. That would leave only three more 12th White Sabers 'Mechs to watch Helmdown, but he'd be needing as much firepower as possible to have a chance against the enemy DropShips.
The road between Helmdown and Durandel was broad and flat, and so progress was rapid. A pair of ECM ground vehicles detached from his infantry reserves raced alongside the 'Mech column, broadcasting the static that would scramble the enemy's radio transmissions. It would also tell the enemy of their approach, but that didn't matter. Langsdorf's Warriors already had detailed instructions, with little need for further communications once they were in the field. The jamming should hamper the enemy more.
With luck, his force would arrive at the DropShip landing zone before the mercenary raiders could even return from Durandel.
With luck, they had a chance.
* * *
Captain Ramage adjusted the focus on his ranging binoculars. Numbers flickered across the image plate within the eyepieces as the device probed targets with rangefinder laser beams. The far end of the gently sloped valley was already obscured by dust, making it difficult to get a precise fix on the most distant targets, but the nearest were only eight kilometers away.
Casting long shadows through the low-lying dust cloud, the two lead machines were moving at nearly eighty kilometers per hour. One was the odd, stilt-legged shape of a Locust. The other was a more human-shaped Wasp.
He opened the tac frequency and heard the harsh, rattling hiss of static.
The Price of Glory Page 7