Grayson stepped inside the slender blade, his left hand closing on the man's throat. He felt savage, keening agony in his side as the neural whip raked across his ribs, but the light jacket he wore shielded him from the worst of the weapon's charge. His right hand smashed forward, the heel of his hand ramming into the jaw of his enemy. The man's head snapped back, the whip falling from nerveless fingers.
Gasping, Grayson limped over to the table where Lori remained bound. Wincing against the pain of the whip's burn, he drew his knife and sawed at the leather straps that held her.
"Gray...you're here..."
He took her in his arms. "Easy there, Lori. I couldn't go misplacing my own best first officer, now could I?"
She was shivering, unable to say more. He shrugged out of his combat vest, then stripped off his lightweight black jacket and pulled it around her shoulders. He then took a moment to check his side. There were no marks, but it burned like fire when he pulled his tactical vest back into place over his undershirt.
Lori's boots lay on the floor nearby, next to an empty liter cask of azelwax. Grayson brought them to her. "Think you can walk?"
She nodded as she pulled the lightweight boots onto her bare feet. Grayson stooped to retrieve his automatic pistol from where he'd dropped it and pulled another one from the grasp of a fallen Kurita soldier. He handed one to her, and tucked the other into his trousers.
"O.K., we're going to get out of here now. Everything will be..."
Lori threw herself against him with a scream, knocking him to the side. The neural whip sang past his ear and whanged against the empty steel table. The white-smocked Draco interrogator was on his feet again, staggering forward, his lower face a bloody mask where Grayson's blow had broken teeth.
Lori swung her pistol up, but their attacker had already stepped between her and Grayson. She froze, unable to get a clear shot. Grayson grappled with the man, his fingers groping for a hold on his wrist to keep the deadly blade of the neural whip away from his face. Slick with sweat, Grayson's fingers lost their hold. The blade descended and rang loudly against the steel table as he twisted away from the blow. The neural whip described a flashing circle as the interrogator snapped it around for another lunge.
Grayson stepped forward, blocking the blade with his left arm as he brought his fist back for a punch. The neural whip scribed white fire down Grayson's left arm and tore an agonized, uncontrollable scream from his throat. He sagged back against the table, helpless. The attacker smiled through a bloody mask, the neural whip blade levelling, weaving centimeters from Grayson's eyes.
The torch kindled to new, blazing life as it whipped through the air, smashing into the interrogator's bloodied face from the side. The blow snapped the man up and back, arms flailing, as the torch dropped clattering from Lori's hands.
The flames in the basin on the tripod had subsided somewhat during the wild battle through the room, but the liquid burned still with flickering yellow flames. The interrogator fell against the tripod, shrieking as the liquid splashed, soaking his smock. Flames roared, licking at the ceiling. Grayson stepped past the drunkenly staggering human torch, turned Lori away from the horror, and shoved her out toward the passageway.
He pulled his pistol free and whirled, ready to deliver a mercy shot, but white heat clawed at his face as flames raced across the room. He heard screams, weaker now... but he could no longer see his target. The cries were swallowed by the roar of the fire.
Lori's face held dull shock. "I killed him..."
"And I'm very glad you did." He held his still tingling arm across his chest. "You probably just saved us both."
He looked at her carefully. After all she'd been through, she looked... stronger somehow.
Lori raised her eyes to Grayson and managed a smile. "I'm...O.K."
"I know you are." He pointed back to where smoke was curling out from under the door to Room 6, between the sprawled forms of the two sentries. "They'll send someone down to see to that fire any minute now. Let's move!"
Hurrying through dimly lit corridors, they found an elevator guarded by mangled bodies in Kurita uniforms, but Grayson did not trust the building to continue providing power for long. They kept hunting until they found a stairway leading up. On the next level, they heard the rattle of gunfire and the dull, flat crack of exploding rockets.
Cautious now, they moved toward the sound with pistols held ready. They found more dead, here a trio of men in prisoner’s rags splattered with blood, there a Kurita soldier beaten into grisly horror, his weapons gone.
They came to a vast, open room enclosed by shadows and menacing shapes. It was a BattleMech maintenance facility. There were stacks of shells and armor plate along the walls between twelve-meter high skeletal frameworks of work gantries. Two of the gantries were occupied, and Grayson recognized both ‘Mechs. The one on the right was the Crusader he'd faced twice already. The other was the Marauder that he knew belonged to the Kurita senior ‘Mech regimental commander.
Across the room, a huddle of men moved behind a hastily thrown-up barricade of carts and armor plate. At first, they were only moving shapes against the light from outside. Grayson's eyes adjusted to the light in the same instant that one of them turned away from the firing line. It was a Kurita soldier.
The man shouted and raised his submachine gun. Bullets sang and cluttered overhead as Grayson and Lori ducked down among the stacked arrays of BattleMech treasure. That armor plate would protect them from any weapon those soldiers could carry, but he could hear the shouts and running footsteps of troops spreading out to both sides. It wouldn't be long before he and Lori were pinned down and killed.
Grayson raised his head far enough to cast his eye over the two BattleMechs. The Crusader was closer, but its torso had been opened to reveal tangles of power cables and actuator circuitry that hung from it like an obscene parody of disembowelment The Crusader had been badly damaged in its last fight and was in the racks for extensive repairs.
The Marauder looked untouched, however, its weapons gleaming, its cockpit hatch invitingly open. That was deceiving, Grayson knew. He had hit the Marauder, and critically. Had the damage already been repaired?
Bullets snapped overhead and Grayson dropped behind the armor plate. Lori was finishing with the fasteners of her borrowed jacket. She pushed a tangle of stray blonde out of her face and gave Grayson a weak smile. "Lovely day for a last stand, isn't it. Gray?"
"It's not time for that yet. How'd you like to try for that Marauder over there?"
She glanced in the direction he'd indicated with his thumb. "I'd love to. How do we get past those... people?"
"Like this. Be ready to run."
He pulled two grenades from his tactical vest. Each of the dull, squat canisters bore the legend "WH SMK." He handed one to Lori.
"I only have two of these, so make it count. You put yours over mere," he said, pointing. "Mine will go on the other side. Count ten, and we'll go."
She nodded and took a firmer grip on the canister, the index finger of her other hand looped through the arming pin. Grayson held down the arming lever of his own grenade, yanked the cotter pin, then waited while Lori did the same with hers. Then he nodded out a silent three-count and hurled the canister with a stiff-armed swing.
The two grenades clattered among the stacked supplies and exploded with dull thuds. White smoke boiled up from two widely spaced spots in the room. There were wild shots and yells of alarm. Grayson counted ten, then stood and slipped over the sheltering pile of armor. Lori was close behind.
The smoke was a gray and impenetrable fog. Grayson and Lori held hands to keep from being separated as they sprinted across the open area that Grayson had noted in his brief inspection. Once a shadow moved across their path just ahead, but it was swallowed by the smoke as quickly as it appeared. Smoke rasped harsh and scratchy in Grayson's throat He tried to take shallow breaths but he found he was holding his breath by the time they reached the far wall. When he finally let the breath
out, the exertion of his run forced him to draw in a deep breath at the same moment. The whole routine nearly doubled him over in a gasping fit of coughing.
'Take shallow breaths," Lori said, but Grayson had neither breath nor strength to answer. They had reached a wall of stacked equipment crates, which Grayson had remembered seeing piled on either side of the two ‘Mechs. Now, was he to the left or the right of the Marauder?
He decided they were between the two ‘Mechs, and just to the right of the Marauder. They turned left and hurried. The smoke was thinning rapidly. Already, he could see shadows running through the fog meters away, charging back toward the way they had just come. Just ahead, he saw the shadow of the Marauder.
The BattleMech's ladder was not down, but there was a ladder on the gantry framework that held it. Lori handed him her pistol and started up first. He tucked both pistols into his combat belt, gave her a moment's head start, then scrambled up after her.
A high-pitched whining puzzled him as they climbed. It took him a moment to place the sound. Large fans set into ventilators in the walls or ceilings had been turned on. Such fans were standard equipment in ‘Mech repair areas, where poisonous fumes or the smoke from smoldering battle damage could accumulate. Once they were turned on, the smoke began clearing rapidly.
Too rapidly. There was a shout, a crack, and a bullet howled off the side of the ladder ten centimeters below his right hand. The vast and echoing room rang with the chatter of a submachine gun, and rounds spanged and chirred through the steel framework around him.
He twisted around, pulling one of the pistols from his belt, thumbing the safety off. He was eight meters above the ferrocrete now, and the figures of the Kurita soldiers below him were made small by the distance. He clung with one arm to the ladder, pointed the pistol almost straight down, and squeezed the trigger. The gun snapped in his hand, and spent brass flicked through the air and down toward soldiers suddenly scattering in every direction for cover. He fired again...again...again... He hit no one, but his targets showed a sudden reluctance to remain in his line of sight
Glancing up, he saw Lori's long legs flash in the gloom as she swung off the ladder and dashed across a metal walkway to the Marauder's open hatch. Grayson swarmed up after her as shots from below began potting through the air in his direction.
The Marauder's cockpit was big enough for the two of them— just barely. Up close, the damage from Grayson's lucky LRM shot into the heavy ‘Mech's head was still evident. The cockpit screen had been breached, and jagged fingers of metal and plastic pointed inward where fragments had broken through. Blood stained the control seat, and Grayson wondered what had happened to the ‘Mech's pilot. Had it been Kevlavic? Probably. On an ambush as important as that one, he would have been there. He must have been seriously wounded at least, though he'd managed to con his machine back to Regis. Wondering if Kevlavic were still alive, Grayson swung the canopy down into place and dogged it tight.
"Maybe this isn't the time to bring it up," Lori said from behind the control seat, "but I've never piloted one of these things."
"Don't worry," Grayson said as he clicked the pistol's safety back on and tucked the weapon back into his belt "I have." He didn't tell her that his experience with Marauders was limited to time spent in the simulators of his father's unit. Why worry her? It should be the same...
The shouts outside were louder now. Bullets whanged and keened off the Marauder's armor. Those Techs would know of the damage to the forward screen, would be telling marksmen where to aim. A high-powered rifle bullet expending energy as it bounced back and forth inside the narrow cockpit could chew both of them to bloody rags in a few horrible seconds.
He sat in the seat ignoring the stains. Two major hurdles remained. He ran his fingers across the instrument panel, depressing plastic touch plates and flicking switches to "on". Somewhere deep in the bowels of the huge machine, powers woke and uncoiled, grumbling. Green readouts winked on in uneven patterns across the board. They had crossed the first hurdle. The Marauder's power systems were operational.
He hesitated a moment men reached for the neurohelmet suspended overhead by its webbing of power feeds and circuitry. This was the big hurdle. If the Marauder was still keyed to Kevlavic's brain waves, it would be impossible to steal the machine. Grayson knew, though, that BattleMechs hanging in the racks for repair generally had the coded sequences in their computer interlocks opened so that the Techs and astechs could run test programs and check the operational controls and circuit overrides. He'd been able to steal his own ShadowHawk from a Kurita repair facility on Trellwan because the Techs had not yet recoded the ‘Mech's computer. That's what he was counting on now.
A bullet sang off the cockpit's outer armor, a hand's breadth from the jagged hole. Another struck, close by the first.
He brought the helmet down onto his head, taking the cushioned yoke onto his shoulders. He hesitated again as he checked the power readouts on his panel. It was possible to booby-trap a BattleMech against would-be thieves, as well as to lock it up with codes. Several thousand volts searing through the brain would abruptly end any thoughts of hijacking someone else's ‘Mech.
There was only one way to find out. He reached out and opened the ‘Mech's helmet-computer interface.
Dizziness twisted at his head and stomachy and strange sensations tugged at his inner ears, but the protective charge of high-voltage current did not flow. His hands gently eased vernier dials, as oddly doubled waveforms on an oscilloscope blended, merged, then steadied into a single trace. The dizziness vanished, and Grayson was one with the machine.
He did a rapid check of circuits and weaponry. As near as he could tell, the only damage to the ‘Mech was the hole in the forward screen. There could be additional, unmarked damage to some vital circuit or lead, but there was no quick or simple way to check that out. Grayson brought the visor down across his eyes, and told Lori to grab hold of something solid where she stood behind him. Then he brought his hands down on the primary controls.
The computer interface took advantage of Grayson's own sense of balance. It read the signals relayed to his brain from his own inner ear and translated them into gentle surges of power to selected actuators, transforming the ‘Mech's motion from the stiffness of an automaton to the fluid moves of a living being. Feedback from sensors located at points across the ‘Mech's legs and torso were fed back through Grayson’s inner ear, replacing his own sense of balance with that of his 75-ton mount. In no sense did the BattleMech become his body, but man and machine did blend in the same way a horse and rider team might have done in an earlier, less bloodstained era.
The Marauder straightened against the binding constraints of the gantry framework. Steel pipe and titanium-vanadium alloy struts snapped free of mountings, spitting sheared bolts across the room like high-powered rifle bullets. Part of the structure collapsed with a resounding clang, and the Marauder stepped forward, scattering the gantry's skeleton like a wind-blasted house of cards.
* * * *
Machine gun fire from the ‘Mech service area across the courtyard had ceased moments before, though Ramage could still hear shouts and racketing gunfire from inside the building in that direction. He wasn't sure what was happening, but perhaps the mixed force of commandos and armed ex-captives could use the diversion, whatever it was, to pull back from their positions and withdraw to the tunnel.
If only Grayson would show up. Ramage didn't want to leave without him, but the Verthandian prisoners had stopped coming out of the tower's sublevels ten minutes before, and none of them had seen the Gray Death's commander.
Ramage didn't want to believe that the young man who had built the Gray Death from rags and odd ends on Trellwan was dead. At the moment, however, he didn't see what else to believe.
He looked about him. The commandos had seized most of the courtyard and still held it, but half of their number were dead or wounded. The command would not survive another determined assault Curiously, the enemy ‘Mechs at
the courtyard gates had departed. He eyed the massive steel gates uncertainly. It could be that the ‘Mechs had been unable to break through, but one of the commandos had told him that the Combine ‘Mechs had swept those gates aside like cardboard during the University riots.
If that were so, why hadn't they attacked? What else could they be planning?
A chirruping from the transceiver at his belt interrupted his circling thoughts. He snatched the device to his mouth and opened the channel. "Ramage."
"Clay here. Sergeant. We're coming in."
"What? What do you mean?"
"We've got a full company of Kurita ‘Mechs, pretty near! They've circled around the AgroMech factory and are moving in fast! There's no way to go but...down the tunnel!"
Ramage digested this bit of information. So, that was where the ‘Mechs had gone. They must have suspected that the Gray Death BattleMechs were waiting outside, and so had circled about to catch them in a trap. Those ‘Mechs were more important targets than a few dozen commandos trapped in the rubble of the University courtyard—especially when ‘Mechs and commandos could be dispatched at one time with a little patience and a well-timed maneuver.
"Cray! This is Ramage! If you come in here, you'll be trapped!" He couldn't believe that the enemy ‘Mechs had left the courtyard gate unguarded. More Kurita ‘Mechs would be out there, perhaps unseen in the tangle of Regis' streets, but ready to rush the gates when the time came. "Do you hear me? Don't come in! Scatter north, and save yourselves!"
'Too late," Clay replied. "They came down on us from three directions at once and hemmed us in. If we show ourselves outside the factory, We're dead meat." The transmission was garbled by the hiss of a nearby explosion. "Archers" he said. "They're starting to shell the factory! We're coming through before we're trapped in the rubble. Maybe we can figure things out once we're inside!"
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