The Price of Glory

by William H. Keith

  "Halt!" The amplified voice from theThunderbolt's pilot boomed into the darkness. "Halt where you are!"

  "Hey . . . ya wanna drink?" came the reply. The voice was that of Sergeant Burns.

  "Aye, ye grand, fell Laddie!" There was no mistaking that voice "Ye'll be wantin' jes' a wee li'le drop ae scotch tae warm ye, an' we'd be aye honored i' . . ."

  "What the devil? Captain, you'd better come and ..." The pilot's voice boomed puzzlement before he realized his external speakers were still on. He cut them off. Grayson moved his head slightly. With one eye tightly closed, he risked a look toward the spotlit men.

  Sergeant Burns, Sergeant Clay, and MechWarrior Mccall stood side by side, blinking into the light. They were unarmed, were not even wearing knives, but they had on the slightly baggy fatigues common to technical personnel in the military forces of all the Successor States. They were the very image of a trio of astechs who had gone out to share a bottle and then wandered back to camp, roaring drunk and barely able to stand.

  The door at the back of the van opened, spilling light onto the gravel once more. Two men stepped down onto the ramp, the light silhouetting them against the brilliance.

  Grayson came to his feet, his TK assault rifle held high, his booted feet pounding against the gravel. Lori, Lieutenant Khaled, Mech Warrior Bear, Alard King, and the others in the assault group followed close behind, flying toward the open door.

  The two men in the light turned at the sound of running feet. One groped for a holstered weapon. The other gasped and jumped back into the van. The sentries on either side of the door brought their weapons down, but the man drawing his pistol on the ramp partly blocked their fire.

  Grayson's TK thuttered as silenced, 3 mm caseless slivers spat from the heavy barrel. One sentry's face vanished in a trio of tiny, searing explosions as soft metal and high explosives impacted in flesh and bone. The man with the pistol shrieked and kicked back as explosive rounds chopped across his chest and arm. The second sentry plunged off the ramp, his submachine gun firing wildly into the night.

  Lori's SMG stammered in her hands, picking up the second sentry and spinning him back against the trailer hull. In the same moment, the Thunderbolt swung ponderously around to face this new disturbance. A fractional instant later, a small, furiously burning projectile arced from the woods, exploding the air ten meters short of the Thunderbolt. The explosion grew, unfolding in liquid flame that washed across the Thunderbolt's upper hull, Inferno rounds are designed to explode halfway to their target, spraying it with a concentrated fuel mixture that burns at a temperature sufficient to melt alloyed steel. The "drunken technicians—" Clay, McCall, and Burns-had unlocked arms and ran for cover the instant the inferno round shrieked over their heads.

  The night on the north side of the trailer also lit up as a second inferno round bathed the Archer in living flame.

  Between twin fountains of radiance, Grayson and the others raced up the ramp.

  The door at the end of the van was closing; once closed, there would be no way to open it without heavy cutting tools or a 'Mech's laser, neither of which they had at the moment. More even than the Marik officers inside the headquarters van, time was their enemy now. Grayson ran faster. The door, swinging shut, fouled on one of the bodies at the top of the ramp, giving Grayson the instant he needed to plunge through into the lighted interior.

  A sergeant rose from a communications console, a pistol already in his hand. Two communications technicians sat behind him, their faces frozen in fear. At the far end of the narrow, instrument-crowded room, a Marik officer was heading for the massive steel door that led to the forward chamber of the van.

  Grayson's TK bucked and hissed again, spraying the room with death and destruction. The sergeant pitched back into a console, smoke and blood boiling from the pulsing hole in his chest. Grayson was past him before he fell, was past the technicians before they could even react. The Marik officer at the far end of the van was opening the steel-armored hatch there. If he got through and sealed it, the raiders would be isolated in this rear portion of the trailer. Yet, if there was a chance to capture the van's inner sanctum, this was it.

  The Marik officer stepped through, the door closing behind him. Still running, Grayson swung his TK over his head and hurled it spinning end for end down the length of the room. It clattered across the low sill between the two chambers, and the heavy door smashed down on it. Plastic splintered and the massive sound suppressor barrel bent, but the door jammed open. An instant later, he was at the door, hauling back on it with his bare hands. King was beside him, adding his strength to the effort. The door cleared the smashed rifle, then swung open.

  Gunfire barked from the inner chamber. Lori's submachine gun fired past King and Grayson, shell casings from her weapon ringing against consoles and across the waffle-molded steel deck. Then Bear pushed past her, his own submachine gun looking like a toy in one of his massive hands.

  "Gray!" Grayson had not heard such shock and surprise in Lori's voice before. He squeezed past the half-open door and joined Lori and Bear inside the inner room.

  It was a smaller room than the rear part of the headquarters, with fewer instruments. A planning and conference table dominated one end. On three bulkheads, there were wall-sized, fully-color, satellite-projection computer displays showing the entire area from north of the Aragayan Mountains to the Vermillion Plains beyond the Nagayan Mountains in the south, and from the Gro-don Sea to the west to the Dead Sea Flats to the east. Computer terminals glowed, their screens crowded with words. A Marik Lieutenant lay sprawled on the floor, cut down by Lori's gunfire.

  Lori stood there above the body now, her gun leveled on a second officer cowering against the far wall of the room. Grayson knew from the uniform that this was the man he had first seen outside, and whom he had chased back through the trailer. His eyes widened in shocked recognition.

  "Graff!"

  "Don't . . . kill me! Carlyle! Don't kill me! I'm valuable to you!"

  Bear reached one massive first forward and easily plucked Graff from the deck as though he were a bundle of rags.

  "Don't hurt him," Grayson said. "Bring him!"

  King and Khaled were in the outer room with a half-dozen of Ramage's Special Ops people. Grayson recognized Janice Taylor under layers of camouflage paint. Lieutenant DeVillar and a Legion infantry-man came through the door, each lugging three canvas satchels. Each satchel held ten kilos of plastic explosives and a set of fulminate of mercury detonators.

  Grayson gestured at the two technicians who still sat in their chairs, their fingers carefully interlaced on the tops of their heads. "You Techs," Grayson said. "Out!

  If you stop running any time in the next five minutes, you're dead!" The two squeezed past the Legion troops, their hands still above their heads. Grayson heard their booted feet break into a run as soon as they touched the metal ramp outside.

  "O.K. Everybody out except the explosives people! Bear! You take Graff! Mind the 'Mechs outside!"

  DeVillar was already placing each satchel of explosives where it would do the most good, and running long wires clipped to the fuses from bag to bag. The man had been a mining engineer long before becoming the commander of the Gray Death's B Company, and professed to know something about explosives. This, Grayson had told him, was his chance to prove it.

  A long burst of machine gun fire sounded distantly from outside, followed by the keening hiss of 'Mech laser fire. The inferno rounds fired at the two 'Mechs would not be enough to disable them. The hope was that the clinging, liquid fire would distract the pilots for the few moments that Grayson's raiders needed to complete their mission. Precious seconds had been lost already, chasing and catching Graff. But if they could get him back to camp, it would be worth it!

  The hollow thunk of bullets striking armor rang through the van. Within seconds, the two 'Mechs would have their fires under control, and the Legion people firing infernos at them would be out of ammo. Marik infantry must be in the area
already. They had to go now!

  Grayson hurried to the van's forward room. Time to go or not, something was nagging him about the map display he had seen there. He studied the maps for several long seconds. The Legion had no up-to-date satellite scans of the area, had nothing, in fact, but old hardcopy maps of the land south of Durandel to the Nagayan Mountains. His hope was to force-march the Legion by night, starting the following night, travelling across the Dead Sea Flats and reaching the Nagayan Mountains before sun-up. In the Nagayans, they might be able to elude their pursuers a while longer, for the land there was broken with wild, forested stretches, isolated glacial valleys, and rugged passes. If they could confound their pursuers by destroying this mobile headquarters, then make the trip in a single night, they just might be able to buy some time.

  A current satellite scan, complete with computer enhancement, would help.

  Reaching a decision, Grayson sat down at one of the terminals. He was skilled with computers ever since his days as a teenaged apprentice with his father's mercenary company. The computer was an Omnistar 4000, a standard-military issue type that took both keyboard and voice input. He had worked with them often before, and so he sat down and rapidly began to type.

  "Colonel!" DeVillar's voice came from the next room. "Colonel! She's ready to blow!"

  "Don't light her off yet," Grayson said, still typing furiously.

  The Lieutenant stuck his head through the inner door. "Colonel, we've got to go now!"

  Grayson punched a final key, then waited. The map projections on the wall screens winked off, plunging the room into complete darkness except for the glow from the terminal displays. A slotted box nearby bleeped, and a narrow memory clip rose from the slot with a slight whir.

  "Right!" Grayson grabbed the clip and turned to face DeVillar. "Let's go!"

  Grayson left the van first. DeVillar pulled the igniter ring on one of the satchels, and followed.

  Outside the Thunderbolt burned furiously against the night. Gunfire lanced among the trees, and here and there, the still, bloodied forms of dead men sprawled in the wierdly flickering light of the flames. The Archer had doused the fires that had fallen on it, and was now sweeping the woods with laser fire, the beams blue-white and sun-brilliant in the darkness. Perhaps its pilot did not realize that Legion troopers had broken into the headquarters van, for the 'Mech's back was to the van and its pilot was directing his fire toward the woods to the north, in the direction from which the inferno rounds had come.

  The Thunderbolt still burned, the fire roaring across its already damaged right arm and shoulder, flaring hotter and brighter as each move force-fed the flaming fuel with more oxygen. In the woods to the south, Legion troops fired with machine guns and small arms, plinking useless rounds against that thick-armored hide in an effort to distract its attention away from the trailer close beside it.

  It almost worked. The gunfire from the woods ceased when Grayson and DeVillar burst from the rear of the van. The Thunderbolt thrashed around to its left, then paused as its pilot caught sight of two men racing through the half-light away from the headquarters. From the corner of his eye, Grayson caught a glimpse of the left arm coming up, caught sight of those twin barrels embedded in the armor above the battle machine's wrist.

  Then the Thunderbolt's paired machine guns were firing, licking the air around them with tracers that danced and wavered into the woods ahead. Grayson and DeVillar threw themselves face down as the Thunderbolt descended on them from behind. Grayson rolled over, looking up at death. The Thunderbolt's fire was almost out now, and there were no more inferno rounds coming in. Bullets whanged and keened off the armor from the south as soldiers tried futilely to turn the machine. It took another step, towering into the night, machine guns levelling for a second, final burst.

  20

  Then the night exploded with a brilliance far exceeding that of a burning BattleMech. Flame mounted into the sky, consuming the mobile headquarters. DeVillar and Grayson rolled face-down, covering their heads. A hurtling wall of flame belched from the open door like the blast from a flame thrower, searing the night just above their heads. A chain of explosions ate its way through the van as DeVillar's munitions erupted in a succession almost too quick to follow. Then the reserve of diesel fuel sealed in a tank underneath the cab blew off with the force of a high-explosive bomb.

  The Thunderbolt, standing with its back only meters from the explosion, was thrown to the ground like a toy. The fact that that toy weighed sixty-five tons made the ground tremble, and the crash competed with the roar of the exploding van. One outflung metal arm whooshed through the air as the BattleMech toppled forward, its fist gouging into the soft ground three meters from Grayson's feet. Grayson and DeVillar were on their feet again in an instant, racing for the woods.

  By the time the Thunderbolt pilot regained his senses enough to bring his machine to its feet, the two men had rejoined their unit in the woods, and the Gray Death assault force was already slipping away to a rendezvous many kilometers to the east.

  Once the immediate danger was past, Graff changed his piteous air for defiance. Perhaps the fact that his captors had bound and gagged him instead of killing him outright had made him bolder. While the assault team was racing back to their new encampment in the hills above the Dead Sea Flats, southwest of Durandel, they had kept Graff under close guard. They had him now inside the large bubble tent Grayson had been using as a headquarters, tied to a chair in the middle of the floor.

  Grayson could see calculation glitter in the man's eyes, and knew precisely what he was thinking: If the commander of the Gray Death Legion is keeping me alive, it's for a good reason . . . probably his own survival! He won't dare hurt me if he thinks he can use me to save his own skin!

  Graff's words confirmed Grayson's thought. "So, what makes you think I'll tell you one damned thing? You're history ... all of you. You must know by now that the Duke of Irian is almost here. He'll arrive in another day, and then your pathetic force will be hunted down and crushed!" Suddenly, his tone turned conspiratorial. "Of course, if you want to make a deal, maybe I can help you! There's still time, you know, before the Duke gets here with his army! I can talk to Langsdorf, you know."

  Grayson felt sick as he listened to the man's attempts at manipulation. McCall stood behind Graff, his arms folded, his normally smiling features twisted into a frown. Clay paced by the door, darkness etching his features. Khaled sat on a stool in a far corner, cool and unexpressive as ever. Lori sat behind the table they had set up nearby, and rubbed at her eyes.

  "Are we going to step on this worm, Gray ... or what?"

  "I vote for 'Or what,' " Clay said. "A slow, lingering 'or what.' "

  "Aye." McCall added. "Colonel. Just gi' me thirty wee minutes wi' tha' laddie, an' . . ."

  "Quiet, all of you," Grayson said. He leaned forward until his gray eyes were level with Graff's brown ones. "Graff, to tell you the truth, I don't think you could buy me a ride into town, much less any kind of deal." He reached forward and flicked one of Graff's collar rank tabs. "What kind of pull does a Captain have over a Colonel?"

  "More than you'd think, Colonel," Graff twisted against the ropes that held him, then managed a shrug. "There are things in this that even the Duke doesn't know ... As for Langsdorf, he doesn't know a damned thing!”

  “And you do, I suppose?"

  The man smiled nervously. "Like I said, Colonel. I'm valuable to you. Play things right, and you might even get off this dirtball alive!"

  Grayson allowed scorn to color his voice. "Well! Gentlemen . . . and Lori! It seems we have captured ourselves someone important! The mastermind of the whole operation!"

  "Laugh all you want! Tomorrow afternoon you'll be laughing at Duke Irian's assault BattleMechs!"

  Grayson considered the bound man. He was a mass of contradictions. Boastful, yet secretive. Unwilling to help Grayson, yet desperate to prove that he could be valuable. Above all, there seemed to be the driving need to appear important
, a powerful figure, someone his enemies would have to contend with.

  It was this last motivation that Grayson sought to use against the man now, in combination with Graff's own fear.

  "Gray ..." Lori began, but Grayson silenced her with a wave of his hand.

  "I'd hoped we would be able to capture Colonel Langsdorf," he said, despite the fact that the object of the attack had been to destroy the mobile headquarters, with Langsdorf's death or capture a minor goal. "You know, Lori, I think we missed the one we really wanted. That man who came out just before we attacked . . ." He turned on Graff. "That was Langsdorf, wasn't it, Graff? The man in the old leather jacket, with no rank insignia?"

  Graff nodded slowly. "He was there. He left a few minutes before you came in. He doesn't care much for the protocol of rank."

  "You know, I think we could have talked with him. It's a shame that all we came up with was . . . this."

  Graff snorted. "You don't know what you're saying."

  "No? You're honestly claiming a Captain knows more about the mission than the Colonel in command of the whole planetary expeditionary force? Come off it, Graff! You're nothing . . . nothing! And you're worth less than that to me."

  McCall came to stand next to Grayson, where Graff could see his face. He was smiling warmly through his beard. "Shall ah takit tha' wee beastie oot for a lit'le walk, Colonel sair? A one-way walk?"

  Grayson sighed. "No, Davis. He's not worth it."

  "We're not taking him with us!" Lori said.

  Grayson shook his head. "No." He gave a calculated pause as he looked at the trembling quisling. "No, I think we'll let him go."

  "What?" Lori was first to voice the outrage all of them shared.

  "You can't do that, Colonel!" Clay said.

  Grayson started to speak, but he was interrupted by Hassan Khaled, who had not moved or spoken during the entire interrogation. When he spoke now, it was with the measured, emotionless tones of Death itself. "I think the Colonel has made an excellent decision," he said. "Somehow, sir, I did not expect you to be so . . . inventive."