The Price of Glory

by William H. Keith

  27

  Rachan looked at each of the faces in turn. These six men with him were Adepts from the hyperpulse generator complex north of the Helmdown spaceport, the highest-ranking ComStar operatives on the planet. They had gathered in this gloomy little basement room of the Helmdown ComStar facility because Rachan was absolutely certain of the security here.

  Had Helm been an A-class HPG facility, there would have been another Precentor like himself to manage it. The presence of another Precentor—however awed he might have been by Rachan's credentials—would have complicated matters considerably, for Rachan had taken great liberties with his authority with the hierarchy of the Order. It was entirely possible, even probable, that these six Adepts would all meet with unfortunate accidents within the next few weeks, if all went well in the military operation against Carlyle. ComStar Adepts, by regulations dating back almost to the time of Blake himself, never spent more than a year at any one ComStar station or facility in order to prevent undue familiarity among the various staff members. If six tragic accidents did not somehow occur, then within a year, all six Adepts would have been transferred to six other worlds across the Inner Sphere.

  Rachan could not permit the secret these six would learn within the next few days to spread to other worlds, even among other Adepts sworn to secrecy. It had to be buried here on Helm.

  The Precentor smiled, nodding to each of the men.

  "I've brought you together because I know that you all are trustworthy," he said. "What we are dealing with here is a secret that must never fall into the hands of those outside the very highest ranks of ComStar! It is a secret that holds the future of ComStar itself!"

  One of the men was Senior Adept Larabee, a man in his late twenties and the ComStarTech in charge of Helm-down's HPG station. "Excuse me, Precentor," Larabee said. "Does this have to do with this weapon cache in the south? Rumors have been flying through this city for days ..."

  "ComStar is not interested in the weapons," Rachan interrupted.

  Another Adept looked startled. "I thought that was the whole purpose of the Marik operation! This renegade Carlyle had the key to a lost Star League treasure, and ComStar was helping this Duke Garth recover it!"

  "Silence, and attend!" Rachan spoke the time-honored formula used by ComStar instructors with Acolyte apprentices. Having been an instructor for many years, he knew well how to assert his authority over the wills of others. "The weapons cache is a blind, merely a pretext to win Garth's obedience. That Star League facility contains something more precious than BattleMechs or laser weaponry.

  "It contains a treasure, and I'll need your help to win it!"

  * * *

  The rising of the sun had not brought the attack on the captured DropShips. Tracy Maxwell Kent lay flat on her stomach on the wooded slope 100 meters from the Deimos, practically in the DropShip's shadow, and wondered what they were going to do now.

  The plan had depended on their rendezvousing with Kurita troops under Duke Ricol's command south of Cleft Valley. The idea had been to surprise the DropShips with their equipment bays open. When word came that the Legion had marched south, the Marik troops would surely relax security around the captured DropShips.

  First of all, Ricol's forces had never shown up. There was no telling what had happened there, though the rumor spreading through the assault force was that the Kurita warlord had betrayed them.

  That figures, Tracy thought. So now we face two DropShips with fifty troops. Great!

  The enemy had not relaxed his security, either. So far as Tracy could see, no one had bothered to tell the Marik forces there that the Legion had gone. The woods were silent, and the BattleMech bay doors were shut, the rampways tucked safely away. Outside each ship, six Marik soldiers in full, bulky combat armor walked nervous patrols. Their attitude suggested that they expected Carlyle's 'Mechs to appear out of the woods at any moment. Tracy turned her head, looking south. Lieutenant Dulaney lay stretched out behind a clump of weeds, and what she could see of his face through all the camouflage paint showed that he was as perplexed as she was. On Tracy's other side, Janice Taylor shifted the position of her TK assault rifle, almost in slow motion, so as not to alert enemy sensors.

  So what now? They could lie here in the weeds all day, but it didn't look like the DropShips' captors were going to give them the opportunity they were waiting for, and every passing minute increased their risk of being discovered. Someone among them would sneeze or perhaps be annoyed by some stinging Helman creature, and then the assault force would lose the hope of winning by surprise.

  The sun continued to rise. Tracy was sweating heavily now, her face paint smearing into a grotesque caricature. She stared at the Deimos with hungry fascination. Somewhere aboard, strapped and racked along with the rest of the Legion equipment stored in the ship's cargo bays, was the Dutiful Daughter, her Phoenix Hawk. If she could get in, if Tracy could reach her 'Mech, the whole situation would be transformed.

  If! If! The word mocked her.

  There was a noise, a thrashing in the underbrush 500 meters to the south. She turned her head, searching the light-dappled woods. There was a stir around the Deimos as well. Turret-mounted lasers high in the ship's hull swiveled toward the sound, while the guards in the shadows by the landing legs turned, their weapons at the point.

  What emerged from the brush startled Tracy so much that she nearly cried aloud. It was a man dressed in the tattered and dirt-smeared coveralls of someone who had traveled a long, long way through woods and rough terrain on foot. He was too far off for her to recognize his features, but there was something about his form, his posture and the way he moved, that was familiar. The next moment, it came to her in a flash who the man was. Graff!

  Somehow, he had escaped from the Legion, had made his way back here. How? Perhaps he had stolen a hovercraft and abandoned the machine nearby, so that he would not be mistaken for the enemy. He entered the clearing between the DropShips now, his hands upraised, still chained together, a white cloth in his fingers. She could hear his voice as he called out to the DropShips. "Hey! Hey! You in there! This is Captain Grass, Marik House Guard! I have news! Don't shoot! I'm friendly! Don't shoot!"

  Two of the Deimos's guards consulted with the others, then left their posts, approaching Graff cautiously with their rifles leveled. Two more sentries approached from the Phobos, to the south, joining Graff midway between the two vessels. As Tracy watched, the five men talked excitedly. She could not hear them, but there was much gesticulating and waving of arms.

  A moment later, there was a sound from inside the Deimos, and the BattleMech bay door ground open, the ramp extending out and down to the ground. Two more sentries took their places on either side of the open door, weapons at port arms. A moment later, a pair of Marik officers strode down the ramp and turned toward the conference in the clearing. Half a kilometer away, Tracy could see a similar delegation approaching from the south. Graff's message could only be that the Legion was far away, and that he had escaped to warn his Marik comrades. She could see the subtle shift among the sentries taking part in the conference, the lowering of weapons, the slouching of their postures.

  She let her eyes shift over to Dulaney, and he looked back, and winked. Slowly, very slowly, he raised his thumb in a universally understood thumbs-up gesture. This was the opportunity they'd been waiting for!

  Dulaney moved his hand, bringing the small hand-held transmitter to his lips. "All units . . . this is it! Go! Go!"

  Listeners aboard the DropShips would hear, of course, but they would lose long seconds to surprise and confusion. As a single body, the fifty hidden men and women along the ridges on both sides of the landing zone rose from the weeds and brush and scattered boulders. Laser and submachine gun fire lanced and stabbed into the valley. Tracy saw the sentries under the Deimos whirl, eyes wide, their weapons searching the ridge slopes, looking for a target. By the time they found their targets, though, by the time those targets had registered on their brains, the
y were already dying, cut through by a hail of automatic fire.

  Tracy held down the trigger of her TK as she ran down the hill, hosing the entrance to the Deimos's 'Mech bay with a small and deadly cloud of 3 mm slivers. One of the sentries on the ramp threw down his rifle and clasped his face with his hands as blood erupted from the ruin of his face. The other sentry pitched off the ramp, blood pumping from multiple, shattered craters in his body armor.

  By the time Tracy reached the bottom of the slope, someone aboard the Deimos had awakened to the fact that the DropShips were under attack. A laser battery turret swung from high up along the ship's hull, its double barrels swinging around to cover the woods. Then laser light flared like a star gone nova, outlining in stark and hideous clarity the forms of running men and women, burning them into Tracy's mind like the flash from some gigantic strobe lamp. From behind her, she heard the unmistakable, blood-curdling sound of an agonized death scream.

  Then another laser fired . . . and another. Someone at the gunnery controls was firing wildly. Some shots angled off into the trees to the east, where a fire had already begun. Others flashed off toward the south, toward the Phobos, and Tracy could hear shrieks of horror and agony from that direction as well.

  They would all die if they remained where the lasers could mark them down. Their only hope was to gain the DropShip ramp. Men were gathered at the top of the ramp as she approached from the bottom, and she felt a kind of plucking at the left sleeve of her uniform as her boot came down on the ramp's base.

  Tracy fired her TK again, seeing gruesome wounds open like red blossoms among the men above her. Then Lieutenant Dulaney was rushing past her, running up the ramp toward the open door. That door was grinding closed now, even as the ramp started to move under her feet. The movement knocked Tracy down, and she scrabbled to find some purchase on the grated surface.

  "Tracy!"

  She looked down and back and wished she hadn't. The ramp was withdrawing into the ship, its end now meters above the ground. She looked down into the eyes of Janice Taylor, wide and white in her paint-smeared face.

  "Tracy! Let go!"

  But Tracy clung to the ramp as it swung into the air.

  Dulaney was above and beyond her, firing his submachine gun in short, savage bursts. Somehow, the man kept his balance as the ramp moved, somehow he began moving again, step after uncertain step, still firing, moving toward the narrowing opening of the hatch. Why didn't he fall? He reached the hatch when it was three-quarters closed, stepping through into the red light that flooded from the opening. She heard gunfire, submachine gun rattles mingled with the throatier blasts of rifles. She heard Dulaney scream.

  Tracy followed, clutching the TK's pistol grip with one hand, the ramp grating with the other, making her way up toward the hatch. She realized the Bay hatch had stopped closing by the time she had reached the top, and squeezed through the meter-tall opening.

  Inside, the bay was red-lit and filled with struggling figures. She saw Dulaney's body sprawled nearby, the submachine gun lying beyond one outflung hand. She had only a moment to wonder at how so many of the attacking Legion troops had managed to get past her and up the ramp. Only she and Dulaney had been on the ramp when it began to move. The answer struck her with almost brutal force. The prisoners! They must have been kept on one of the DropShip's lower decks, must have attacked their guards when the Legion strike force's attack had begun!

  Seeing two Marik soldiers run toward a hatchway, she cut them down with a swift, accurate burst from her TK. Then she found the bay hatch controls close by Dulaney's body. The Lieutenant had managed to punch the button that stopped the hatch from closing entirely, but had died before he could open the door and extend the ramp all the way once more. She touched the proper controls, then stood guard, crouched above the Lieutenant's body.

  Once the rest of the assault force assigned to the Deimos arrived, the battle did not last. There had been only twenty Marik troopers aboard, less than the total number of prisoners. No wonder they had looked nervous!

  Word came swiftly that the strike force's rush had taken the Phobos as well. That ship's defenders had not even had time to fire a laser or to try to cycle their hatch shut. Use Martinez had gutted a Marik guard with a combat knife she had hidden before her capture, and led the rest of the Phobo's crew against the bridge, even as Legion troops had poured onto the 'Mech bay deck. Even at that, it had been a close call. Seven of the assault force troops had been killed, including Dulaney. Six prisoners had died in the battles aboard the DropShips. Fifteen were wounded among both the rescuers and the rescued. The ships' doctors and medical personnel began working at once to set up an emergency surgery in an empty cargo bay on the Phobos.

  They found Graff's body, or what was left of it, some time later. A wild, slicing laser shot from the Deimos had exploded most of his body from the waist down. Though Tracy felt Graff had gotten what he deserved, she had other things on her mind.

  When she found the Dutiful Daughter intact, hung safely in its storage rack, she had been overjoyed.

  Now she would show what she could do!

  * * *

  Grayson ran his fingers across the deeply engraved lettering in the ferrocrete facing of the building inside the underground chamber, and felt a profound shock to see those words in this place. He and his people had been looking for a weapons cache, and instead had found: STAR LEAGUE FIELD LIBRARY FACILITY, HELM, DE890-2699.

  He had heard of such facilities, but had never seen one. Most, he knew, had been set up in the important cities of worlds across the Inner Sphere, urban centers of modern culture and learning. Unfortunately, the vast majority of those cities had fallen during the holocausts of the First and Second Succession Wars.

  "What is it, Gray?" Lori said. "What does it mean?"

  "It means we might have some trouble explaining it to Duke Ricol," Grayson said. "I don't think this is what he had in mind when he spoke of a Star League treasure." The door opened silently at his touch, and light flooded the single room when his boot touched the carpeted deck. This room was not dusty, as had been the engineering shack outside, but it held the same built-in desk and computer.

  Grayson quickly sent a soldier for the memory clip still set into the slot of the computer outside. When the clip was plugged into the library computer, the entire wall opposite the computer terminal came to life in color and light. Some words flashed on: "The Advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only true guardian of liberty. "—James Madison.

  When Grayson touched the engage key, the words vanished and were replaced by what, at first glance, appeared to be a listing of subjects. The room was indeed a library of sorts, and slowly, haltingly, Grayson began to learn how to use it.

  Within the next two hours, he discovered a great deal. How a culture handles the dissemination of information to its population can be one of the most critical aspects of its vitality. A culture that restricts information to a select and militant few, or one that reserves learning only for those few able to afford expensive technical devices or expensive schooling—those cultures are flawed to their very cores, no matter how outwardly vigorous and expansive. The Helm library had been one technological answer to the problem that faces every advanced civilization: how do you put an explosion of new information into the hands of people who need it?

  Grayson learned that, centuries ago, libraries such as this had been located on every world, in nearly every major city of the old Star League. Their design was simple: it consisted of a memory core that could easily be duplicated onto other cores, and read off the appropriate electronic hardware, either a computer terminal or a simple memory retrieval screen. The technology of the 31st Century, Grayson realized, was no longer up to building a device such as the library itself, but the memory cores and the means for duplicating that knowledge were commonly available. A sampling of the information stored within the computer's memory convinced Grayson that he had found a treasure far greater than any number of BattleMechs. />
  There was the formula for a simple chemical catalyst, one that would allow silicon, gallium, arsenic, and carbon to be combined in such a way that the material became superconducting at room temperature, allowing the transmission of fantastic voltages of electricity, with no waste heat and no loss of power. That was a secret, Grayson knew, that had long been lost—a secret that could improve the handling of the immense electrical charges required to move a starship into jumpspace. Manufacturers already had devised a method for this crucial process, but even to Grayson's untutored eye, it looked like the new information was much more efficient.

  Here, too, was a technique for manipulating the genes of earth-stock dairy animals in such a way that milk production was increased fourfold, as well, as providing certain trace elements, vitamins, and anticarcinines as well.

  Grayson was looking for something special among this dazzling array of knowledge that he had managed to access from the library's memories. He touched the display key, and a map covered the far wall in a glowing confusion of color. As he studied the tangled traceries of light and words for a moment, Grayson smiled.

  He had found a map of the Star League's Nagayan Mountain Facility.

  28

  The Star League facility was far larger than anyone had expected. As Grayson had guessed, the main, central corridor was a cavern originally hollowed out by the waters of the Vermillion moving rapidly through a natural cavern system under the Nagayan Mountains. Major Keeler and his battalion of Star League engineers had begun the project by creating a system of subsurface tunnels beneath Freeport, adding to tunnels originally designed to channel flood waters away from the city and into a deep fault chasm known as "Helm's Pit."

  The Nagayan Mountains, Grayson learned, marked the point where two of Helm's continental plates ground against one another. Millions of years before, an up-welling at that site had created the mountains themselves, and the gradual rise of the land to the east had produced the North Highland Plains. The fault line that marked the juncture of crustal plates existed still, and in one place, the two sides had drawn far enough apart to create a hole into Helm's depths that was, for all practical purposes, bottomless.