The Price of Glory

by William H. Keith

  Of more concern was the status of his recon lance. The three light 'Mechs had gone to ground on top of the ridge, lying down among the boulders and broken ground to better conceal their machines and to enable them to draw steady sightings on the approaching enemy forces.

  "Lieutenant Roget!" he said into his throat mike. "What's your Twenty?"

  "Colonel! Are we glad to see you!" Francine Roget's voice sounded tired, and nearly broken with strain as she gave him a rapid rundown on the recon lance's condition. Her Panther had taken serious hits to its front torso, left leg, and right arm, but was still functioning well. Missile fire had smashed the SRM rack in the chest of Vander-griff's Commando, which had caused considerable internal damage, but the arm-mounted laser and SRM launcher were still in the fight. A Marik Archer had blasted away the left leg of Sylvia Trevor's Wasp—and with it her SRM-2. Roget had helped drag the Wasp to a good position, however, from where Trevor continued to fire with the light 'Mech's medium laser.

  "And the enemy?" Grayson moved his Marauder to get a view down the slope. Before him, he could see smoke rising from burning vehicles at the bottom of the hill, and what looked like the still, broken form of a knocked-out Locust.

  "There have been at least four separate attacks, Colonel. All light stuff from down there. I think we knocked out a Stinger, earlier on." The arm of Roget's Panther pointed off to the northwest, and Grayson could see a still, silvery shape there, inert among the weeds. "The Archer surprised us from the rear, but I think you frightened him off. We've been taking a lot of fire from all directions."

  "The rest of the command lance is moving up behind you now," Grayson said, "so don't shoot them as they come in. I also ran into Graff and he told me you cleared his withdrawal to handle his malfunction. He'll be back up here as soon as that's taken care of."

  'What malfunction!" Her voice was rimed with ice, the tension showing through again.

  "Eh? he told me you cleared it."

  "That coward! He vanished just before the first wave hit, like he made his 'Mech invisible. I'll give him a malfunction, next time I see him!"

  Grayson felt cold. So Graff had run during the battle, had left his comrades on the ridge to face overwhelming odds, while he skulked among the trees on the slope below. Under the rules of war, a man could be shot for that, if he were caught and convicted under a general court. There was no time to think anymore about that now.

  "You've done well, Francine. You may have held their center long enough to save the DropShips."

  "There's more, Captain." She still sounded taut, as though she were holding herself together by sheer force of will. "I think they're bringing up infantry."

  "Where?"

  "There were vehicles moving that way, a little bit ago. Our infantry took out that Locust ... I think maybe they captured it, because it looked from here like that Locust was firing on those vehicles down in the valley. That was a few minutes ago, when the jamming went off."

  "You think those are jammer vehicles?"

  "Can't tell from here, but I think so. Anyway, there was a lot of infantry—APCs, skimmers, mostly light stuff—moving through the trees down there. I think they were deploying up to the top of the ridge, but they went to ground when that Locust opened up."

  "Anything more from the Locust?"

  "It took some hits a few minutes ago. It's been dead since."

  Damn. Whoever had turned the Locust against the Marik ECM cars may possibly have saved the Legion. And while Graff was running, at that.

  "O.K. Hold your position here. I'll get a handed 'Mech up to help with Trevor's Wasp as soon as we're sure the enemy is really pulling out."

  "Yes sir! And . . . sir?"

  "What?"

  "It's good to have you back!"

  * * *

  Harris Graff pulled his Assassin up outside the main 'Mech port under the towering overhang of the DropShip Phobos. He broadcast his ID, which brought a response from one of the bridge officers aboard. "Graff? What is it you want?"

  "Major malfunction here, Lieutenant. My coolant seal's blown, and it's leaking like a stuck grivit. My Lieutenant said I could come back and have it patched up by your Techs."

  "Stand clear, then. We're opening up."

  With a loud sound of metal scraping metal, the massive 'Mech port ground open, its steel-treaded ramp extending out to the ground like an extruded tongue. Techs gathered on the main 'Mech bay deck, looking curiously at the lone Assassin.

  Graff started the 'Mech up the ramp.

  * * *

  Janice Taylor crouched in the weeds 200 meters from the Phobos and watched the Assassin move up the ramp into the 'Mech bay, then turned away to watch the woods around her. She had been born and raised on a Kurita frontier world called Verthandi. While a professor of history at Verthandi's prestigious Regis University, she had been witness to the bloody revolution against the planet's Kurita overlords. In one attempt by the planetary governor to restore order, she had been chained up with fifty other female captives, and marched under the ready guns of Kurita BattleMechs out of the city. Their destination was to unknown points offworld, where they would doubtless have become chattel joy girls through out the Combine.

  It had been Grayson Carlyle and his men who had liberated the captive women. From that day on, Janice Taylor had become a member of Sergeant Ramage's Special Ops Force, and had participated in the last, wild battle to free Verthandi's capital from the Kuritans. When victory and independence had been won, she chose to follow the Gray Death Legion elsewhere among the stars.

  Janice still wondered about her decision. Her first determination to fight had been born of a love for her world and a willingness to give her life to free her homeland from monsters like the Governor General Nagumo who had ruled it. She did love her world, and her people, and because of that love she often wondered why she had left.

  She thought she might know now, though it had taken her a year to see. Verthandi's freedom had been purchased at a terrible cost of lives of friends and loved ones, and thousands of other Verthandians whom she didn't know but who had also been caught up in the struggle to free their world and had paid the final, highest price possible for freedom. In the end, of course, one lone rebel world like Verthandi could never hope to stand against the armed might of the Draconis Combine. Victory had come when House Steiner had recognized in the rebels' victory at Regis a means for the Lyran Commonwealth to win a political victory without firing a shot. Verthandi's independence was one that existed on paper only, the end result of treaties and concords between House Steiner and House Kurita.

  Janice, a student of history, knew how fragile that independence was. She had been saddened during those last days on her homeworld to watch the newly won freedom become one more bargaining chip in the three-way negotiations between Steiner, Kurita, and Verthandi's new government.

  With liberty only a few days old, there had been people willing to trade away the blood-purchased freedom in the name of expediency—or profit.

  And that, she decided, had been why she left. Janice loved her world and her people, but she could not have borne the sight of her countrymen, trading away their victory through cupidity.

  She had found a new home of sorts with the Gray Death

  Legion. For a time, she had even believed herself in love with the regiment's young commander, Grayson. It had been with some bitter inner pain that she eventually realized that Grayson had a strong and absolute relationship with the company's Exec, Lori Kalmar. In the end, though, she and Lori had become close friends and confidantes, instead of rivals for the attentions of the same man.

  Janet knew that she still loved Grayson Carlyle, but perhaps in a different way. Maybe that was why she couldn't leave.

  A sound brought her around, the TK assault rifle high in her arms. There were men moving throughout the woods, but her section had been ordered to secure a close perimeter around the two DropShips to prevent anyone from approaching too close unchallenged. Someone was approach
ing the perimeter through the dense underbrush a few tens of meters in front of her.

  "Halt!" she challenged. "Identify ..."

  But she got no further. A burst of submachine gun fire tore through the brush, chopping the air just above her head. Reacting with reflexes and training instilled in her by Captain Ramage's endless training sessions, she dove for the ground, rolling hard to her right. She immediately bounced to her knees to fire a short, spattering burst toward her attackers, then hit the ground and rolled again. Something hurtled through the air and thumped among the bushes to her left, where she had been a moment before. She rolled again, then hugged the ground. The grenade exploded with a sharp concussion that set her ears to ringing and shredded the tops of the grass reaching just above her head, but the explosion left her untouched. Men in combat armor were rushing through the brush now, firing as they came.

  She was close enough to see the troops' eagle insignias on the right breasts of their armor. From her position flat on the ground, she triggered her TK in quick, three- and four-round bursts. Two of the soldiers kicked forward and fell to the ground. A third skewed around and opened up with a long, rolling blast from his submachine gun, blazing away across a ninety-degree arc that clipped branches and leaves far above Janice's head. She fired again and brought the man down. Now other Marik soldiers were charging out of the trees. Dozens were already between her and the Phobos.

  Janice opened her personal transceiver to the Phobos's tactical channel. "Phobos! Phobos! This is perimeter five! You are under attack by ground troops charging your 'Mech bay hatch!"

  There was no answer, but machine gun fire was blazing now from the open hatch. The troops replied, and a running figure up in the brightly lit 'Mech bay tumbled down the ramp in an untidy sprawl. She heard the grinding machinery that marked the closing of the big hatch panels.

  There was an explosion inside the DropShip bay, then the thunder of more explosions in a tightly confined space. Smoke belched from the open hatchway. Janice watched in dawning horror as ten Marik troopers raced across the open ground, mounted the ramp, and raced up and into the 'Mech bay itself.

  More Marik soldiers followed. Janice opened fire, but the soldiers ignored her, so fixed were they on their target—the mercenary DropShip. Others of her squad fired from hiding places nearby, cutting down eight . . . ten . . . fifteen Marik soldiers, but more jut kept on coming.

  For a long time, there were no targets.

  Then the Marik BattleMechs returned—the big, damaged Thunderbolt, the Archer still trailing debris from one forearm, a Panther that limped and looked as though its torso had been peeled open with an explosive can opener. They came in firing, not at the DropShip, but at the Gray Death troops in the brush and weeds outside. Janice saw Vince Hall cut down by a laser burst twenty meters away. As smoke from burning bushes roiled across the valley between her and the advancing 'Mechs, she decided it was time to withdraw.

  There seemed to be no reaction from the Deimos, half a kilometer off to the north, but she did note with a curdling chill that as many as the Phobos's weapons as could be brought to bear were twisted around to point north.

  The Phobos had the Deimos under its guns, and so if there had been no firing as yet, it must mean that negotiations were going on. Janice knew what negotiations meant when the freedom of a world was at stake. She didn't want to learn the results of these negotiations, at least not at close hand. She joined other members of the Gray Death Special Ops forces and retreated into the woods to the east.

  Behind her, a hatch high upon on the flank of the Phobos opened, and a radio antenna became a convenient mast for a flag that broke open in the gentle breeze. Armored troops moving among the BattleMechs in the DropShip's shadow stopped and cheered.

  It was the Marik eagle. The Phobos had been captured.

  12

  Lieutenant Thurston's voice bore witness to the strain the man was under. "Colonel, I've got to do what they say. I've got to!"

  Grayson closed his eyes and leaned back in the seat of his Marauder. It was not like him to simply accept such a decision without fighting, and yet there seemed to be absolutely nothing he could do about it. Nevertheless, he could not bring himself to say the words. Go ahead, Lieutenant. Do what you have to . . .

  "No, Thurston! You're condemning all of us if you do! I order you to refuse terms. We'll be down there to support you within five minutes."

  "No, sir. I can't do it. Don't you see?"

  "The cowardly bastard," Grayson heard over his tac-com. He thought the voice belonged to Delmar Clay, but he couldn't be sure.

  "He's not being cowardly," a new voice spoke over the line. "He is being quite sensible."

  "What . . . ? Who is this?"

  "Captain Harris Graff, of the 5th Marik Guards."

  "Graff . . ."

  "Not my real name, of course."

  "Okay, Graff ... or whatever your name is. What is it you want?"

  "I have what I want, Colonel. I have your DropShips ... as planned. If you would care to surrender now, I'll put in a good word for you with my superiors."

  Rage surged within Grayson. "You have Phobos, Graff. You don't have Deimos. And when we come down there and dig you out ..."

  "You'll do nothing of the sort, Colonel. As I have already explained to Lieutenant Thurston, his DropShip has been . . . tampered with. Nothing severe ... or noticeable, but a certain coded radio signal will start a meltdown of the Deimos's fusion plant. No explosion or anything spectacular, but it will generate enough heat to reduce that DropShip to molten scrap."

  Grayson listened in sick horror. The Conventions of modern warfare forbade destroying technology, and most warriors abided by the injunction. From time to time, there were still raids against an enemy's factories or industrial complexes, but such installations were spare whenever possible. A factory or a manufacturing center or even a DropShip might be captured in battle, but there was always the possibility that it might be recaptured later. Warriors who wantonly destroyed something as precious as a DropShip were viewed as barbarians by most other 31st-Century warriors. As the steady, grinding attrition of war continued, there were fewer and fewer Technicians who understood enough to rebuild or even repair something as complex as a fusion reactor or an automated BattleMech plant. Grayson was not one of those superstitious, mystical-minded followers of the Way of Blake, but the idea of a centuries-old DropShip being reduced to scrap at the touch of a button filled him with horror.

  "Release the crew, then."

  "Colonel, Let me assure you that you are in absolutely no position to bargain! These people are legitimate prisoners of war. They are safe, and will remain safe until they are tried."

  "Tried? Tried for what, for God's sake! You . . . you say you're Marik 5th Guard! We're working for Janos Marik, for God's sake! We're under contract to Janos Marik!"

  "Why don't you come down here and we'll talk about it? I have information you may find . . . interesting. We can discuss it at leisure, and perhaps we can find a way out of this impasse. Maybe there has been a misunderstanding somewhere along the line."

  Grayson closed his eye's, suddenly very tired. He had no intention of walking tamely into Graff's parlor. The Marik forces had been using deceit and trickery at every turn of this campaign, and Grayson's own liberty would last just as long as he remained outside the Phobos's hull.

  If he survived at all.

  "No deal, Graff. Tell me over the comline."

  "I don't think we have anything further to discuss, Colonel. But Lieutenant Thurston is surrendering the Deimos to me, or I will melt that ship down around his ears. Will you give him the order, Colonel? Or shall I deal directly with him?"

  "Yes, dammit." Grayson's voice was scarcely audible. "I'll give the order."

  A truce settled across the battlefield after that, arranged by radio between Grayson and Colonel Langsdorf, the Marik commander. Such truces were common in the formalized usages of modern warfare. It was not unknown for two commanders enga
ged in a protracted battle to call a halt while both sides salvaged damaged 'Mechs, recovered injured or lost pilots, and allowed for individual warriors and Techs to trade with each other on the field. A MechWarrior might trade a kilo of rare coffee or tobacco for an enemy Tech's spare actuator adjustment wrench and calibrator set, or a length of number nine reflex tubing for a working percolator. Such entrepreneurial activity was frowned upon by unit commanders everywhere, but was impossible to stop.

  Grayson's men and women used the time to comb the woods for their wounded and to locate what scattered elements of Ramage's infantry company they could. When the line on the ridge to the west had broken, most of the Legion soldiers had attempted to form up at the top of the ridge, then scattered east when the enemy 'Mechs closed in. They were hiding now in the woods throughout the valley. Those who still had radio communications through to the Legion's 'Mechs were already coming in, but it would take time to round up the stragglers.

  Grayson dispatched a team down the west face of the western ridge to recover the unknown trooper who had turned a disabled Locust's weapon against the Marik ECM cars. When he learned that the "unknown trooper" was none other than Captain Ramage, it didn't surprise him. Ramage was badly wounded, unconscious, and in serious danger from loss of blood. Dr. Morrison on the Phobos was the closest medical man around, but Graff would not permit even the ship's doctor to leave. Soldiers with first-aid experience cleaned Ramage's wounds and bandaged them, but no one wanted to predict the Trellwanese's chances of recovery.

  Silently, Marik soldiers moved through the valley and along the hillsides as well, searching for their own wounded, gathering up their discarded equipment. A team of Techs was seen busily at work on the- two disabled ECM Packrats. Another team of Techs had descended on the damaged Locust as soon as Ramage had been removed from it. With some Marik troops posted nearby on guard, they could now be seen working on the severed connectors of the Locust's right foot.