The Price of Glory

by William H. Keith

  "So . . .we will starve them out?"

  "We will do whatever is necessary. And the first thing that is necessary, Garth, is that you not command the forces against him."

  "What? Wait! You can't do that ..."

  "You forget yourself, Garth. I am in command of this expedition, and I alone, remember? Colonel Langsdorf showed excellent judgment, speed, and planning at Clef Valley. Three enemy BattleMechs were destroyed, to a loss of only one of our own . . . and the DropShips were captured!"

  "With a spy's help ..."

  "That's right, with a spy's help, but it was Colonel Langsdorf who gave the spy his opportunity, who had his troops in the right place at the right time to assist the spy, who managed the battle in a brilliant fashion. I am sorry, Garth, but this campaign is far too important to be left in your blundering, thumb-fingered hands!"

  Garth didn't think Rachan sounded sorry at all. "You cannot treat me this way!" He drew himself up taller, trying to look down on the ComStar man. "Precentor or not, you have no right! I am Duke of Irian ..."

  "Consider it a . . . promotion. Your Grace. You and I will be on the field as observers only, watching as Colonel Langsdorf closes the trap on our prey.

  "But it will be Colonel Langsdorf who leads, Garth. I have watched you, and you could not lead your nose to your face!"

  Garth bristled, but Rachan soothed him with a motion of his hand, and a tired smile. "Peace, Your Grace, peace. I meant no disrespect. Langsdorf is a trained and talented military leader, and you are not . . . but that is not your disgrace." He shrugged. "I have already discussed matters with the Colonel, and he has worked up a plan to overwhelm the Gray Death. Perhaps we can trap him against the mountains, if he does not find the key he seeks. Perhaps we can pin him inside the cache, if he finds a way in. In any case, we must overcome the results of your incompetence." Rachan turned back to study the map, dismissing the Duke of Irian.

  "You press too far, Rachan," Garth said.

  "Because I have great ambitions, Garth. Ambitions that someone like you cannot even begin to imagine. Ambitions that will not be stopped by someone like you ... or a man like Grayson Death Carlyle!" He stopped then, his eyes aflame. Then, slowly, he seemed to draw back inside himself, to subdue the passion that had gripped him. He passed a hand over his face, looked back up at Garth, and smiled. "I'm sorry, Your Grace," he said. "I am . . . tired. There is much to attend to here. Come . . . consider instead what you will do with your share of the weapons from the Star League cache, when you sit on the throne of the Captain-General, ruler supreme of House Marik and the Free Worlds League!

  "That should satisfy even you!”

  26

  There were rain clouds in the west, piling into the sky above the Dead Sea Flats on the horizon. Bubble tents had sprouted like bizarre, camouflaged mushrooms on either side of the dry river valley. The Legion's non-combatants clustered in the center of the encampment, with the soldiers and armored vehicles around the perimeter. On the outskirts, waiting and watchful, were A Company's surviving BattleMechs.

  Grayson stood on a small rise by the river bank, watching the gathering clouds. He had just had the usual experience of speaking by radio with Colonel Addison, regimental commander of a House Kurita special strike force aboard the DropShip fleet. Already inbound, Ricol's DropShips were accelerating toward Helm at a spine-pounding 2.5 Gs. They would swing end for end sometime that night and begin deceleration leg, entering atmosphere above the Nagayan Mountains by late afternoon tomorrow.

  Grayson had until then to get inside the cache, find what there was to find, and prepare to leave the planet. There was still no word from the Deimos and the Phobos, which was not good. Addison had not been in contact with Ricol, and that in itself was strange. Dulaney should have joined Ricol's forces long before daylight, and they should have heard some word by now, either reporting success or announcing disaster. Grayson wondered if Graff's escape had spoiled the plan somehow, but decided that, at this point, there was nothing more he could do about it. He would have to take care of his own people who were here with him.

  They had worry enough in the "vurra large force" spotted by McCall. Those 'Mechs would be here by nightfall, long before Grayson could hope for help from Ricol's incoming DropShips. Their one hope now was to get inside the cache.

  He stared across the river bed toward the Wall. He could barely make out the forms of DeVillar and the two Techs working with him atop the wall as they searched for the best places to lay their satchel-charge explosives.

  Their basic strategic problem at this point was the approach of the heavy Marik forces. If DeVillar could blow down the wall, Grayson would be able to move the Legion inside the shelter of the cache itself. A small force of 'Mechs would be sufficient to hold the opening against whatever forces Marik was able to bring to bear.

  Unfortunately, if Marik forces were encamped outside the entrance to the cache when the DropShips arrived, how would the Legion be able to even approach and board Ricol's fleet, much less load it with treasure from the cache? Various possible alternatives flashed through his mind. He could lead his eight 'Mechs north and meet the Marik 'Mechs halfway. A Company would be destroyed, but it might buy time for the rest to make their escape.

  Or would it? Eight 'Mechs could be destroyed easily by a fraction of the army being brought to bear on them. Garth could afford to deploy enough 'Mechs against Grayson's command to keep them busy, while marching the rest on the cache gate. Another possibility was to pull out now, while there was time. They could slip north and west across one of the passes that breached the wall of the Nagayan Mountains, and emerge on the Vermillion Plains to the west. Perhaps a small 'Mech force could stop the Marik army long enough by holding them at the passes. The problem, of course, was that there were three passes to defend. While Grayson was holding one, Garth could slip a large force past his position and into the rear. Besides, to run now would mean giving up all hope of raiding the cache, and Grayson was not sure what Ricol's reaction would be when he found himself with a plain full of refugees, and no treasure. He had agreed to pick up the Gray Death Legion, even if the treasure were lost somehow, but Grayson would still feel he had cheated on his end of the bargain. There had to be a way to salvage at least something of the cache for Ricol, as well as to keep it from the ComStar and Marik forces marching south on their position now.

  The key, Grayson realized, as he stared at that blank, impenetrable wall, lay in the doorway to the cache itself . . . and to the cache's nature. There had been a door there, and so there had to be a way of making it open.

  One possibility was that it might require a radio command, modulated a certain way, or on a certain frequency. A spoken code word, an "open sesame" from the pages of ancient Terran mythology was another. So, too, was a literal key, a device hidden somewhere that, when manipulated, would trigger the mechanism of the gate and cause it to open.

  The Gray Death Legion could camp on this plain for a year trying various combinations of code words and electronic modulations in an attempt to reach the door's mechanical guardians. They could search the entire Helmfast district for a century and never find a hidden key, which could be anything—disguised as a piece of machinery, or a decoration on a mantle piece, or . . .

  Grayson froze where he was, eyes riveted to the Wall, paralyzed momentarily by a bolt of inspiration. The engineers who worked here would have needed to open the door, both when they were setting it in place, and later, when they were transferring the stock of weapons from Freeport to the cache site. They would have needed a convenient way of opening the door, and an equally convenient way of keeping the door's secret safe. They would have created the key in such a way that it could be passed on, from one of the district's military guardians to another, for generation after generation, if need be. Presumably, whoever was in command of the military district would have the key. It might be that the key's purpose, even the knowledge of its existence, had been lost during Helm's struggles to survive, centuries
ago. It would take the death of only one man before he could pass the secret on to his successor for the secret to be forgotten, lost forever.

  Or the secret could be rediscovered, now!

  Grayson turned and began to sprint for the vehicles that carried what had been salvaged from Helmhold. He, Grayson Carlyle, was the modern-day military governor of the district. As Lord of Helmfast, he was the heir to the lost Star League cache and all it contained. No wonder Rachan and Garth had wanted to get him out of the way. He, Grayson, had had the key to the Star League cache the whole time!

  He found what he wanted among the headquarters supplies in one of the trucks, then sprinted back toward the truncated pyramid resting on the gravel banks of the dry river. Lori saw his pounding run and followed. She burst into the engine shack moments after Grayson had plunged inside.

  "Grayson! What is it?"

  "Maybe ..." Grayson was gasping for air, making speech nearly impossible, but he was working now, bent above the ancient Star League computer on its table in the half-lit shack. He keyed the initiate sequence and watched colored bars of light chase one another across the display. "Maybe the key . . . we've been . . . been looking for!"

  He held up what he had recovered from the headquarters transport vehicle—the map program from Helmfast. That memory clip had been given to him as part of the investment ceremony in Helmdown months ago, a Star League-era map of his domains on the world of Helm. Presumably, that clip had been handed down, Helmfast lord to Helmfast lord, for three centuries. How many of those lords had known the secret it might hold? None, possibly, save for those who had written the program in the days of Minoru Kurita.

  Grayson inserted the map program clip into the slot on the side of the engineering computer terminal.

  He didn't realize he was holding his breath.

  A computer program, whatever its purpose, however it is designed, written, and stored, is a collection of information arranged in electronic form, a systematic and complete list of instructions that a computer can interpret and act upon, step by step. The map program contained instructions and stored data based on old orbital photographs, which could be displayed as a photographic map that allowed the viewer to examine the mapped area at varying levels of clarity and detail, according to his manipulations on the keyboard.

  The list of instructions in a program could be designed to be very flexible and subtle. A very long program, or a piece of a program, could be written and stored on the memory clip in such a way that no one would ever suspect it was there. So far as any casual user of the program was concerned, this new section of the program did not even exist. There was no way to get at it, unless the program were instructed to reveal the hidden information. That code could be a series of letters or numbers entered through the keyboard ... or by uttered voice into computers that responded to voice command.

  One particularly elegant solution, though, in cases when the code word might be lost or forgotten, was to build the code into the computer itself. The program might be designed to work perfectly in any computer that would accept it. No one would ever suspect the existence of the hidden program section unless the program were run in one particular computer, the one that held the secret code. In that computer, the code, set into the computer's own working memory, would be applied against any program run in it. When the program with the hidden program section was run, the code would unlock the electronic door, and . . .

  "Colonel! Colonel!" He looked up as a Legion trooper burst into the doorway. "Colonel! Come quick!"

  Grayson turned from the terminal. The display had remained irritatingly blank when he plugged the memory clip into the slot. He had not even gotten the ordinary map display, and he was beginning to think that something was wrong with the computer.

  "Sir! It's ... the Wall!"

  Grayson and Lori both hurried to the door and looked out. Two hundred meters away, men and women were stepping back, looking toward the towering gray monolith of granite that blocked the valley. Grayson could feel a peculiar vibration in the ground through the soles of his boots, and he was aware of small pebbles along the bottom of the dried river jittering and dancing in time to some massive movement of engines or equipment beneath the surface.

  The Wall had opened. The section within the grooves that Grayson had noted earlier was sliding back into the rock, exposing a smoothly cut opening in the rock face. When the section had withdrawn into darkness for a depth of two meters, it stopped with an audible thunk. Then there came a grinding of machinery as the rock section slid aside. Ten meters wide, twenty tall, the doorway stood open.

  * * *

  Hundreds of kilometers to the north, Colonel Julian Langsdorf leaned forward in the cockpit seat of his War-hammer, willing the bulky Marik column to move faster . . . faster! Several 'Mechs had turned back already due to breakdown or overheating problems, but he was determined to press forward at maximum speed, to catch Grayson Carlyle before another 24 hours had passed. The Gray Death Legion had slipped away during the night, had covered far more ground than he had thought would be possible for a convoy that must include hundreds of civilians, technicians, and wounded personnel. He had not expected such a move at all. After all, where could such a column go? They could continue to hide in the valleys and forests of the Aragayan Mountains for months, if need be, where there was shelter and plenty of water and game. To strike out south, however . . . There was nothing in that direction but the inhospitable wastes of the Nagayan Mountains, the mineral salt wastes of the dead sea, the cratered ruins of Freeport, and endless prairie.

  The man who had identified himself as ComStar Precentor Rachan had explained matters to Langsdorf. Carlyle was searching for the lost League cache, possibly with a good idea of its whereabouts, and he was hoping to seize it before Langsdorf could bring his forces to bear.

  Rachan had put Langsdorf in direct command of the entire Marik Expeditionary Force. General Kleider was still en route and would not arrive for several hours yet. Rachan had assured Langsdorf that even when Kleider grounded, the final closing of the trap on the renegade Carlyle and his band was completely under his command.

  Carlyle had escaped Langsdorf before, and the man was determined that he could not escape again.

  Langsdorf had twenty-seven BattleMechs in his force. His own 12th White Sabers consisted of six 'Mechs, plus a handful of armored hovercraft and some mechanized infantry he had drawn from perimeter duty at the spaceport, all under Major Sigwell Allendry. There were only two 'Mechs left of the small 5th Marik Guards. Both had been incorporated into the 4th Light Assault Group under Captain Maranov, bringing that company to a full twelve 'Mechs. The 7th Light Assault Group under Captain Chu Shi-Lin was understrength with nine 'Mechs, and five of those were 20-ton Stingers or Wasps.

  Finally, he had a collection of hover tanks and mechanized infantry of the Marik House Guard under a foppish Lieutenant Colonel named Haverlee. Langsdorf wasn't certain how he would be able to use that bunch, but he would find something for them to do, one way or the other.

  Though his command was a kind of a ragtag throw-together, twenty-seven 'Mechs was a powerful force-almost a full battalion's worth. Meanwhile, reconnaisance reports showed that Carlyle had only eight 'Mechs under his command, plus a scattering of light armor. Rachan had assured him that even if Carlyle managed to penetrate the Star League cache, there was no way he would could ready and power up any weapons in the depot in time to do his renegade band any good. Besides, he would have only a limited number of people who could even operate the stuff. How many MechWarrior trainees might be with him . . . eight? Five? Probably not even that many.

  Langsdorf was determined to plant explosives and bring down the entire face of the cliff if Carlyle did manage somehow to find a way into the storehouse. Star League weapons would do Carlyle little good in a final, desperate battle in the depths of that mountain.

  One way or another, Colonel Grayson Carlyle's hours were numbered!

  * * *

  Gray
son stood inside the old Star League cache. It was difficult to contain his surprise ... or his disappointment.

  The towering blackness of the Wall blocked off the light behind him, except for the shaft falling through the open door. The troops and dependents were already filtering in, awed into silence by the size of the hidden chamber. A grating, mechanical sound echoing through the rock-walled chamber announced the arrival of Bear's Crusader, moving carefully across the threshold so as not to kill or injure any of the people at his feet.

  The chamber was a full fifty meters wide and over twenty meters tall, the rocky ceiling barely visible in the weak beams of hand torches cast this way and that. Ahead, the tunnel descended sharply into darkness that swallowed their lights, giving no clue at all to where the far wall might be.

  Yet this whole, vast chamber, obviously once a storehouse that could have held rank upon rank of Battle-Mechs with ease, was completely empty. All that remained was a building similar to the one outside, a chopped-off, flat-topped, four-sided pyramid with a single door. Holding his torch and trying to keep his hand from trembling, Grayson approached the small building. It was probably another engineering shack of some sort.

  Was it possible that the cache had not been found in time before Kurita's invitation? That the chamber was still being prepared when word came that Kurita's fleet was materializing at the system's jump points? Perhaps the Star League equipment had been hidden in the city of Freeport, after all. A city is an enormous, complex place. Was it possible that Kurita had missed the actual hiding place during his search, and that the treasure trove of League artifacts had been destroyed when Freeport was vaporized?

  As Grayson entered the small building within the chamber, he knew that it was indeed possible, because this building had nothing whatsoever to do with a League military storehouse.