The Price of Glory

by William H. Keith

  There was nothing wrong with that, either. The Gray Death mercenaries had been hired specifically to smash Liao defenses on several key worlds such as Sirius V. From the point of view of the Marik high command, military resources were precious, and it was often cheaper to hire mercenaries to expend their resources than to waste irreplaceable 'Mechs and equipment.

  Still, it was hard to fight and die, all the while knowing that reinforcements capable of tipping the balance in your favor were only a few thousand kilometers away . . . watching it all on their long-range scanners. It was harder still to hear your own people dying beside you. Jenna Hasting's choked screams as the planet's cold and poisonous atmosphere had flooded her Centurion's cracked canopy were still raw in his ears. Sirius V was starkly and brutally unforgiving during combat in a way that even enemy MechWarriors were not. There had been very few wounded on either side during the past two weeks. Breaches, however small, in combat armor or Battle-Mech pressure walls were almost invariably fatal. When oxygen spilled into this hydrogen-rich atmosphere, and heat or a spark was added . . .

  Grayson stopped ten paces away from the lone man. The other, as supplicant, gave a slight, stiff bow.

  "Ambassador Gregar Chandresenkhar," the man announced formally. "Special Diplomatic Liaison of the Lyran Commonwealth to the planetary government of Sirius V and the Capellan Confederation. I have placed myself at the disposal of the Tiantan City Fathers, to act as their representative. Is that acceptable to you, sir?"

  Grayson returned the bow. "Perfectly acceptable, sir. I am Colonel Grayson Carlyle, Gray Death Legion, under service to the Lord Garth, Duke of Irian, and Lord Commander of the Marik Fifth Expeditionary Force. Under all accepted conventions and protocols of war, I have the authority to treat with you, and those you represent."

  "I have been directed to ask for terms," the Ambassador said. "The City Fathers are willing to concede defeat."

  So. The campaign was over. The thought held no thrill no sense of victory. It was simply that the fight was over.

  "All resistance will cease everywhere on Sirius V, and throughout the Sirius system," Grayson said slowly. "All military electronics, including electronic scanning, radar, and countermeasures, are to be shut down at once. Capellan military command frequencies will be restricted to orders to cease resistance, and for emergency use alone. I am authorized to inform you that units in the service of House Marik will arrive within thirty standard hours of formal cessation of hostilities. Local civilian and government officials are to cooperate with them fully."

  "Of course." That cooperation was, after all, basic to the formal protocols of war. "Is Sirius V to be permanently transferred to Free Worlds's control?"

  He wants to know if this is a raid or an invasion. Grayson thought. I guess I’d want to know the same thing myself, in their boots.

  He shook his head. "I'm afraid I don't know, sir. I'm sure His Grace, the Marik Lord Commander, will have his own list of demands. The City Fathers are to appoint a council to receive His Grace and the League officials to discuss their requirements."

  "Is that all?"

  "That is all I have for you under the flag of House Marik. I have requests to make in my own name.”

  “Yes?"

  "Nothing beyond the protocol of the Conventions, Mr. Ambassador. I will need supplies, repair parts, if possible, the use of local recreational facilities for my people. I will guarantee their behavior, of course."

  The ambassador nodded. "I'm sure that can all be arranged. Is there more?"

  "Liao troops within fifty kilometers of Tiantan are to turn over their weapons immediately. If there are no violations, there will be no need for registration or internment."

  Chandresenkhar bowed again. "That is good of you, Colonel. The gesture will be appreciated."

  "You understand that I cannot speak for the Lord Commander," Grayson said. "His Grace may require internment, and that is entirely within his rights under the Conventions. But until then ..." Grayson shrugged. "If Tiantan's people behave themselves, I see no reason to lock any of them up."

  "I understand." The ambassador hesitated, as though listening. The man would be linked, no doubt, to the Tiantan Fathers themselves, through a commlink in his environmental suit. "Sir, the City Fathers have asked me to convey to you their complete acceptance of your terms . . . and to thank you on their behalf for your generosity. They count themselves fortunate to have been bested in war by the illustrious Grayson Death Carlyle."

  * * *

  In a sealed and heated communications vehicle nearly ten kilometers from where Grayson and the envoy were speaking, a dark man with brooding eyes leaned back from the radio console, setting aside the device he had been holding against one ear. "That's it, then," he said, the words slow and thoughtful. The four men crowding around him in the narrow compartment listened attentively. "They've agreed to Formal Peace. The Sirius campaign is over."

  "We can begin, then," one of the four said. His environmental suit was open enough to show the bulky padding of a BattleMech cooling vest across his chest. The insignia on his breast patch was a grinning gray and black skull against a scarlet background.

  The first man nodded. "I never thought anyone would be able to move as fast as Carlyle did. In a way, it's a shame ..."

  "What is a shame, Precentor . . . ?"

  "Never call me that! Not even here!"

  The MechWarrior's eyes widened, and he struggled visibly to swallow. "I . . . I . . . Forgive me, Lord."

  "Forgiven," the man said simply. "But don't forget again. Your role in the events to come is most important. You cannot afford a careless word or thought. It would be most . . . unfortunate."

  "Y-yes, my Lord. Thank you, my Lord."

  "Good. You may ready yourself." He nodded toward the other three. "All of you gather your men. The Duke will be here in thirty hours. It is time we began."

  2

  "Well, our part in the contract has been fulfilled," Grayson said.

  He stood with Lori on an arched bridge above the Silver Way, the high-vaulted main corridor running across the breadth of the largest of Tiantan's five domes. The other ferrocrete and steel structures housed hydroponics facilities that fed the city-colony's entire population. In this dome was the city proper, a vast, labyrinthine subsurface of warrens that housed twelve million people.

  The Way below was crowded with people, citizens of the colony that had just fallen to the Legion's thrust. The Tiantan domed cities were completely encased in ferrocrete and duraplast, warmed and sealed against the frigid poison without. Outside, the domes were a sullen, cold grey. Inside, the walls had been painted in pastel shades that contrasted the crowds clash of color, costume, and noise.

  The bridge, too, was crowded. It seemed that all of Tiantan's population had left their quarters today to glimpse the invaders in their midst. The Legion's tireless Captain Ramage had stationed armored security forces at strategic points throughout the main dome, but there seemed to be no need for force of arms. The crowds were not hostile, though Grayson had noted many sullen or uneasy looks among the faces. The defenders had surrendered, and so, under the protocols of war, the city of Tiantan would remain intact. The rulers of the city might be changed or reparations charged that could raise the city dwellers' taxes. All in all, though, the lives of individual Sirians would change little as a result of the recent battles in the icy fields beyond the city's domed walls.

  Lori touched Grayson's hand lightly and guided him out of the jostling crowd to the railing above the Silver Way. Blonde hair fell across her eyes as she looked up at him, but she brushed it aside impatiently. "We've done our part, but you don't sound happy about it, Gray."

  "What's to be happy about?"

  "Home," Lori said, but her voice scarcely carried across the distance between them. "A place to call home ..."

  "At least until the next campaign, the next raid."

  She took his arm in both of hers and squeezed. Her smile was infectious, but Lori's ey
es held a shadow of worry as she searched his face. "Oh, come on, Gray! Aren't you excited about a place to call home? I am." The smile faded. "Sigurd is a long way away ..."

  Grayson managed a smile of his own. "I must be an honest-to-God old soldier now, love," he said. "Home is the regiment, and all that ..."

  Lori hummed something, low and sad. Grayson ducked his head closer to hear above the crowd roar. She stopped humming then and sang, putting words to the tune.

  Home is the regiment, across the sea of stars,

  On worlds hot, on worlds cold,

  where Warriors tread afar.

  Though place of birth and family,

  though loved ones all be lost,

  Home is the regiment, across the sea of stars.

  She stopped, then looked up at Grayson, her eyes bright. "It's all of that, Gray. But the regiment needs a place of its own. All of us do. For us. Helm will be home ..."

  Grayson nodded, but he was thinking that the military had been his own home for as long as he could remember. As the son of Durant Carlyle, commander of Carlyle's Commandos, he had lived in a blurred succession of garrison outposts, cantonments on worlds along the marches, fortresses above alien cities. At the age of ten standard, he'd become a MechWarrior apprentice in his father's own company. From that day forward, he had been trained as a MechWarrior, raised in the expectation that one day the father would retire and the son would assume his command.

  Things had not worked out that way. The betrayal at Trellwan and the death of Durant Carlyle had left Grayson Carlyle on his own. From the ashes of that loss and defeat, he had forged the Legion almost through sheer will. In the fire and blood of shared combat, he had found a kind of family to replace the one that had been destroyed.

  For him, home had always been the regiment.

  As a mercenary combined arms regiment, the Gray Death Legion was fairly typical, if still small. The Legion had grown since Verthandi. The backbone of the unit was still Grayson's BattleMech company, called "A" Company, or the Gray Death. Those twelve 'Mechs were arranged in three lances of four 'Mechs each, with Grayson himself as Captain, the Company Commander. In addition, they had also managed to assemble the better part of a second 'Mech company, which was now designated as a training company and replacement pool for the Gray Death. New recruits were trained in Lieutenant DeVillar's B Company, while older, more experienced recruits were rotated two at a time through A Company's recon lance.

  Those who survived would eventually graduate to a permanent lance slot in a second line company that Grayson was planning.

  Besides the 'Mech units, there were two companies of line infantry under the command of Captain Ramage. Organized as three 40-man platoons, each company had been unrelentingly trained and drilled by Ramage, a former Trellwanese infantry sergeant who had a knack for special commando tactics. His ability to train raw recruits into commandos able to take on BattleMechs with improvised weapons had been vital to the success of the guerrilla campaign on Verthandi, and so Grayson had promoted Ramage to the rank of Captain, despite his protestations.

  A new company had only recently been created and placed under the command of another newcomer signed on at Galatea, Lieutenant Mark Baron. Baron had charge of the Legion's armor company, which consisted of eight Galleon and twelve Vedette light tanks, most of them prizes captured from the Kuritans on Verthandi. Grayson hoped to organize the tanks into recon lance support teams, but for now was more concerned with training tank drivers to handle the balky combat machines.

  Then there was the Tech Company, now under the command of Master Tech Lieutenant Alard King. At last count, the Tech Company consisted of over three hundred specialists trained to provide the technical services that kept the unit functioning. The personnel ranged from senior MechTech King, to drivers for the Legion's skimmers, combat medics who cared for the wounded, the weapons Techs, and cooks who prepared the food.

  Finally, there was Renfred Tor and the twenty men and woman who crewed the starship Invidious. This former merchantman crew were now the Legion's Transport Division.

  Counting MechWarriors, troops, specialists, and Techs, the Gray Death Legion had grown to more than 600 strong. The total approached nearly a thousand when the Legion's "family" was considered. These were the total non-combatants, wives and husbands of warriors or Techs, children, teachers, servants and retainers, barbers, private Techs in the employ of specific families, and the small army of administrators and bookkeepers who kept the business end of things running smoothly.

  This minor army was not all on Sirius V, of course. For each of the Liao campaigns, Grayson had deployed to the combat zone only the troops absolutely necessary for the job at hand. A world near the border in Marik space, Graham IV, had served as a staging area. For transport, the Legion had only the one aging freighter and its two DropShips. In these merchanters converted to troop transports, conditions would have been unbearably crowded with even half that number of personnel. Besides, a mercenary unit had to feed itself when campaigning, and that task became logistically complex and devastatingly expensive on a non-Terran and hostile world such as Sirius V. This time, Grayson had with him only the Gray Death Company itself, plus several reserve 'Mechs from Company B, and one of Captain Ramage's infantry companies. The tanks, with their internal combustion engines, would not have worked in Sirius V's atmosphere, and diesel fuel was hard to come by in such places, anyway. The rest of the training company, the support personnel, even most of the unit's Techs, had all been left behind at the Legion's new home at Helm.

  The Legion's contract with House Marik had promised them a landhold, a charter granting the regiment a lease on the planet known as Helm. Cold and glacier-locked, Helm was a savage world. Even the habitable equatorial region was raw and largely barren. The entire planet had a population of perhaps fifteen million, divided among numberless villages and small farming communities rather than cities. There were no factories, no mines, no massive industrial complexes, little, in fact, to make it attractive by the standards of modern galactic civilization.

  The contract with Marik had been struck a year ago, and the final details of the landhold worked out six months after that. In exchange for its services against Liao, the Gray Death Legion formally received title to a large part of Helm's North Highland Plains in an investiture ceremony at Helmfast Castle, near the village of Durandel. Two months later, the regiment's 'Mech facilities had begun rising from the plains to the east.

  The bulk of the Gray Death Legion—the cooks and teachers, spouses and children, the computer and logistics technicians, the army of astechs raised from among the local population, the training company and infantry reserves and Baron's tank company—all were on Helm now, building the Legion facilities at Durandel.

  Despite the pessimism that gripped Grayson, he had to admit being anxious to return. Home.

  "Uh oh. Recon lance approaching at Sector Front-Center, Colonel," Lori snapped in mock-official tones.

  Francine Roget, Harriman Vandergriff, and Sylvia Trevor approached Grayson and Lori arm in arm, forging relentlessly through the crowds of civilians that thronged the Silver Way.

  "Ho, noble Colonel!" Lieutenant Roget raised the green glass bottle in her free hand and nodded an elaborate bow to Grayson. All three were well past the limits of sobriety. "A salute, comrades, to Colonel Carlyle, the Victor of Sirius V!"

  Grayson saw black glances among the nearest of the civilian passersby, heard a change in their murmured conversations.

  "Damp it, Lieutenant," he said, gently disentangling his arm from Lori's. "The celebration is over."

  "Aw, Colonel . . ." Vandergriff began, but Grayson stopped him with a look.

  "That will be all, Mister!" He glanced at his wrist-comp, noting the time. "Muster with your DropShip Captain, the lot of you."

  "Vandergriff," Lori said. "I thought you had the duty tonight, walking perimeter." As the unit's Exec, she was in charge of duty schedules and watch bills.

  "Aw, Lieutena
nt. Graff swapped with me. Said he didn't care for the nightlife here!"

  "When he comes in off duty, you can tell him your whole lance is confined," Grayson said. "I'll want to see all of you logged in and ready for boost by the time I come aboard."

  The lance commander came to a reasonable approximation of attention, and the others struggled up after her. Hilarity was replaced by sullenness in Vandergriff and evident confusion in Trevor, the newest member of the lance, but they obeyed.

  "Is it the Colonel's orders that my lance miss out on the fun, sir?" Lieutenant Roget's words were tightly bitten off, her fists clenched at her sides. "We have been fighting hard . . . sir."

  "Boost is in eight hours, Lieutenant," Grayson said. He spoke quietly, but his tone and pitch carried authority with them. "You won't be missing more than a few hours' fun." He leaned forward then, voice lower rather than louder. "And I damn well am going to see to it that you miss out on causing a riot before we boost! Dismissed!"

  The three managed a ragged salute, then turned and made their way with the flow of the crowd. Grayson turned back to Lori.

  "I imagine most of our people are . . . ah . . . celebrating. It's been a rough two weeks."

  "Maybe. But if they disgrace us now, with the Formal Peace ..."

  "I know. But they're good people. Gray. The whole company! They're all good people!"

  What was Lori trying to tell him? Grayson wondered. He knew they were good people. The past year had seen them forged together in the furnace of a fast, bloody, hard-hitting campaign. He had watched them come together, watched them become a fighting unit. Some of them had been with him on Verthandi before they'd signed on with Marik. He knew they were good.