Once aboard Dahl's Invader, with their DropShip safely attached, Sep said, "When we hit Dragon's Field, we'll get our bearings first at the deep-space station. There's bound to be another 'cooperative and discreet' pilot looking to make a few extra C-Bills."
Dahl said, "Why don't you let me check things out for you? As a pilot, I'd never be suspect And once you're gone to worlds distant, I'll just be sitting here nice and innocentlike, recharging my ship."
Dragon's Field was a snap. Dahl found some friendly pretext for inviting another pilot aboard the DropShip, where Sep, Jarlik, and Ref were waiting.
"These folks need to use your ship," said Dahl reasonably. "They'll pay you well. And if anybody asks, just tell them you were kidnapped. How about it?"
Dahl had chosen well. Within fifteen minutes of docking their DropShip to the new pilot's JumpShip, they were on their way. No hue and cry was raised, nor would any be until someone wanted to board the charged ship that had vanished so mysteriously.
The jump from Hamlin was a bit more difficult. Their last pilot had been willing to be "kidnapped', but not to compound a felony by helping them hijack another ship. Again, it was Jarlik who did reconnaissance in port, where he strolled about, observing the possibilities. When he learned of a JumpShip that was currently idle, he told Sep and Ref, "I'll persuade the pilot to transport me to some phony destinadon, while you and the crew hide snug in the DropShip. Once we're aboard, well introduce ourselves and our real desdnadon to the captain."
As the new pilot was making ready for jump, Jarlik approached, his hand laser drawn. "What we really need is a lift to Ral," he said, his tone as mild as a rumble can be. The pilot came up swinging, but one shove of Jarlik's big hand convinced him that the bigger man outdid him, armed or otherwise.
They popped into being near the Ral system, where four JumpShips were charging not far beyond their position.
Jarlik patted his captive on the shoulder. "Nice work. Here's a bit to make it worth your while, and also enough to pay for the extra charge. You'll have to report this, but you don't have any idea who has taken you for a ride, do you?"
The pilot shook his head. He didn't, and that was the truth. He barely understood what had happened, as such a hijacking had never been tried before.
The three companions then selected one of the Jump-Ships waiting nearby, and had their current pilot signal that he wanted to board to get some assistance with a minor mechanical problem. Then Ref, Sep, and Jarlik got into their DropShip, and had their crew pilot them over to the new ship. In less than half an hour, they had jumped again, with another JumpShip pilot wondering if it were all a bad dream.
The last jump, from Vincent to Argyle, was accomplished in much the same fashion. "You won't know where you've been," Jarlik told the pilot, handing him a wad of C-Bills, "and you won't know who took you there, now will you?"
The pilot shook his head. "But I'd like to know how you made out when this is all over," he said. "Here's my call number. Get a message to me when you can."
Jarlik nodded. "Will do...if we live."
They landed their DropShip in a meadow outside the city of Stirling, which housed Hanse Davion's Summer Palace. Not wanting to be seen in port, they had chosen a spot that seemed safe for a private landing.
This early in the morning, mist was rising from the streams that made a webwork of waterways through the countryside. The 'Mechs stalked from the DropShip, and stood like prehistoric monsters in a dawn-world. The Drop-Ship crew, meanwhile, had orders to keep quiet and stay undercover.
"We'd best stow the 'Mechs in the woods and check out the palace on foot," said Sep. "One of us can stay to watch them. The other two can split up to see if we can find out what is going on."
They thudded through the summer grass toward the towering forest that stood between the meadow and the grasslands around the Summer Palace. There was enough cover there for an army of 'Mechs. Stowed in a thicket of heavy-leaved bushes, the heads and shoulders of the ‘Mechs were screened by arching boughs of the trees overhanging the thicket. From a distance, nothing was visible to anyone who didn't know to look closely.
It was decided that Ref and Sep would probably be able to melt into the palace background fairly easily, but that Jarlik would probably be recognized instantly. They decided that he would remain behind.
Sep and Ref went to separate entrances, where their retinal scans admitted them through the portals into the complex. Almost reflexively, Sep found herself headed toward the barracks.
Denek was coming down the steps as she mounted them.
"How goes it Den?" she asked. He looked up, startled, then grinned. "Sep, by golly, it's good to see you back. I never knew managing a unit could be so much hassle. Come with me and tell me what you've been doing!"
She turned companionably and moved with him toward the Palace. "Everything going well?" she asked again.
He looked doubtful. "I don't know about well. Not that there's any trouble, but with getting the guard ready to move back to New Avalon and all, it's been confusing. And the trouble with Steiner, too, right on the heels of that."
Sep stopped in her tracks. "Trouble with Steiner? What trouble? I've been on R and R, remember?"
He nodded. "Come on, then. I've got to hurry. Final inspection before jump. Davion's already gone. We all registered a protest that it was a bad move, but he insisted that he must attend to some important business on New Avalon. So off he went, with just a skeleton guard, his aide, and one unit."
"But what about Steiner?" she asked impatiently.
"We'd all thought there was some sort of agreement between the Commonwealth and the Federation. You remember, we used to talk about it. Well, just a week or so ago, Hanse went up by Command Circuit to meet with Katrina on Sol. Came back in a towering rage, saying he'd rather tie up with a she-bear. All connections have been severed."
Denek turned abrupdy into the gate of the drillground. "And it puts us into a real bind, if Liao tries to retake Stein's Folly. We'll be standing alone now, with all the major systems against us."
Sep digested Denek's words as he checked out the unit and sent the 'Mechs to their DropShips, the warriors to quarters. When Denek was done, she pulled him aside. "We have to talk. Now," she said, and began at the beginning. Denek listened, but his expression grew more and more skeptical as she spoke.
"Sep, Ardan was out of it. The doctors, the Meds, everyone said so."
She stared at him sternly. "So just about the time Ardan would have gotten here, Hanse just happens to change drastically. Not to mention the fact that there's no sign of Ardan and hasn't been, even though he was using the Jump-Ship Hanse Davion assigned to us so that we could get to the Folly and meet him."
She set her hand on his shoulder and shook him gendy. "Ardan got into that installation where he'd been held. He found a holo set up with pictures of Hanse in every sort of situation. Also of Argyle, in detail. When he brought Ref and me back to see it, the booby-traps began to go, and we had to get out or die. But he had put a set of holos in his pocket."
"He what?"
"Just what I said. He had a packet of them in his pocket. When we put them in the viewer, we saw the Palace at Argyle. There were holos of everything, in so much detail that if you studied them, it'd be almost like having lived here most of your life. From the Prince's private can to the bird sanctuary, with the names of all Hanse's favorite birds marked onto the case of the holo. It told us something. Doesn't it say anything to you?"
Denek might behave as if he were a foolish young fellow out for a good time, but he was a MechWarrior, and a good one. That meant he was no fool.
"They were training someone to take the Prince's place. And he's done it. If Ardan did show up here unannounced, he was probably either killed or is in hiding or has been ...detained."
He looked steadily into Sep's eyes.
"I have to get the unit offworld right now. You stay here and learn what you can. There's a ship, for emergencies only, stashed in Ha
ngar Twelve at the private port. Old Sarnov lives in the village north of the grounds. He was one of the best pilots ever. When you find something...if you find something...you come to New Avalon. You're due back off leave, anyway. Nobody is going to ask how you got onworld, once you're there.
"I'll put your impending arrival on the incoming chart, as soon as I get in, with the notation that you are allowed recharge time and your exact time of arrival is unknown."
She patted his shoulder. "Good thinking. And put it as 'Candent Septarian and group', will you? We just might be able to slip Ardan in that way. Not to mention Hanse, if he should still be around."
She turned back to the forest, her mind busy. Where would the false Hanse have put his captives? Would he be naive enough to put them in the cells beneath the palace?
Where?
30
Ardan found himself at the outlet of the ventilation slot while the sun was still high. Hanse, behind him, was silent, and Ardan recalled suddenly that the Prince had a tendency toward claustrophobia. He felt a twinge of guilt at bringing him through such a tight place.
Then he chuckled.
"What's so funny?" asked Hanse.
"I was feeling sorry about getting you into such a smothery position, when I remembered that the alternative was the detention cells. Have you ever taken the tour? It's enough to make your gorge rise. I wonder why your what-ever-it-is-great grandfather built them as he did."
Hanse sighed and crouched beside Ardan in the narrow passageway. "Old Lucien was a complex character, I suspect. He had, among other things, a mania for the antique. Not what we call antique, mind you, but the really ancient He was an able administrator, a wonderful organizer, but he had several important screws pretty loose, indeed. He made his detention cells just like the dungeons in the ancient records. Odd thing. We've never used them much for any but important prisoners who were in danger of their lives."
As the sun set, Ardan watched the line of light work its way along the wall. Only a shoulder's width of space marked the slit on the outside wall, he knew. It was decorated around its edges with carved stone and looked like a high-set window.
"Well, I'd rather be here than down in those ghastly deeps," he said. "It'll be dark before too long. Then we can get onto the roof and take off."
The sky darkened gradually. The slit of warm gold was gone, and the sky turned to lilac, then to gray, and then to midnight black. Stars sprinkled the expanse when the two fugitives worked their way from the slit and began climbing the sheer wall.
Lucien had liked stone-carving. His decorations, old as they were, were still firm, and they gave finger and toeholds to his descendant as Hanse and Ardan made their painful way up the wall toward the roof. From time to time, they froze in place, as the thud of giant feet announced the presence of a 'Mech guard on the paved terrace below.
At the top of the wall was an overhang. That posed a problem, for there wasn't firm enough purchase to allow one of the men to swing his foot over the ledge above them.
They clung there for many minutes, trying to think of a way to go upward without falling from the wall. Then Hanse whispered, "You move toward me along this stringcourse. Yes, like that. Now. Set your near foot onto my knee. I have it braced between the stone and the wall. See if you can get high enough to put an elbow over the top."
Ardan moved as directed. Once he had his foot set firmly on Hanse's knee, he found that he could give a spring upward. It took him far enough to catch the lip of the crowning ledge with his right elbow and his left hand. In a moment, he was over onto the roof. Anchoring his body against a chimney, he then reached down.
"Hanse! Can you reach me?" he hissed.
A big hand slapped into his palm. Another hit his other hand. Heaving with all his might, Ardan swung the big man sideways to clear the overhang. Hanse's leg hooked over the lip. Then he was beside Ardan on the roof.
"Whooo!" the Prince said. "I also hate heights, in case anyone wonders. But I have a new liking for my many-times-great Grandpa. If he hadn't decorated his palace like a wedding cake, we'd never have been able to make it."
They crept around the bulk of the chimney stack and started toward the blister that sheltered the air car. The closure opened to Hanse's thumb, and the two pulled the light craft free onto the roof. While Ardan was checking it over, Hanse unlocked the stubby wings and put them into vertical takeoff position.
"Very pretty," a voice behind them said. "We knew you would probably come here."
Cleery stepped from behind another chimney stack, accompanied by six heavily armed guardsmen. "Ekkles was really puzzled by your disappearing trick. You will tell me how you accomplished that, before we are done."
"I prefer to deal with Ekkles than you," said the Prince. He sounded calm, but Ardan felt the undercurrent of frustration in him.
"Impossible, I'm afraid. Ekkles has accompanied Hanse Davion to New Avalon. An unexpected emergency demanded the presence of the Prince. You are now in my hands." The note of gloating in the man's voice startled Ardan.
He had known Cleery for years, ever since the man had become Davion's Maître of the Household on Argyle. Neither of them had suspected that there might be a power-mad sadist lurking beneath that suave and polite exterior. A shiver moved through Ardan's body. What had they gotten into now?
Cleery took no chances. He had the guards shackle Ardan to Hanse, and their feet linked on short chains so they couldn't possibly run. Then, the Maître stepped forward and snapped his fingers. One of the young pages brought him a bag, from which he took two thick robes, like those worn by inhabitants of some desert worlds. They had deep hoods.
Once the captives had them on, neither could possibly have been recognized, unless an observer were to stand face to face with them and look directly into the shadowy recesses of the hoods. Cleery was definitely no fool, Ardan decided.
The Maître had, of course, ordered that both men be disarmed immediately. Cleery himself had run his hands down the arms, sides, and legs of his prisoners to make doubly sure. Then the guards led them down and down beneath the huge palace, into the dank corridor that led into Lucien's genuine, old Earth-type dungeons. Even the steps they descended had been artificially shaped to hint at millennia of wear.
The bottommost corridor ran crosswise. Rats scampered away from the handlight of the guards. Drips sounded, echoing hollowly through the maze of tunnels leading from the main artery. The smell was not pleasant, and it got worse as they moved deeper into the complex.
"Here we are," said Cleery, mock cheerful. "The Royal suite. Designed, no doubt, for Pretenders. Suitable enough. We'll even leave you together to grieve over the failure of your plot."
Ardan felt sure at this moment that Cleery was part of the conspiracy. How else could the false Hanse have gotten into the Palace and into the royal quarters so easily without being detected?
"Cleery, I never really knew you," said Hanse quietly. And now that I'm beginning to, it's certainly not a pleasure."
The Maître smiled, his fat lips stretched obscenely over his square white teeth. "I think that you will now have time to plan all sorts of vengeful schemes. And that is all you will have—Time. It can break the hardest will, I am told. It will be interesting to put the theory to the test"
Hanse did not reply. They watched the heavy door slam to. Bars were slid across from the outside. Locks snapped, the harsh echoes resounding crazily.
A torch had been left in the corridor, and its dim flickers gave only the barest illumination to the cell, the light making its way through some slits in the stone wall. Ardan examined those at once, but they were obviously for the purpose of placing food and water within reach of prisoners, without taking the chance of opening a door.
"No hope there," he said, testing the solidity of the stonework. "I think it must be cut out of the bedrock the house sits on."
"Damn Lucien!" said Hanse. "That's exactly what it is. I've read his journals. He was very proud of his authentic dungeons, from
which no prisoner would ever escape." He shivered in the dank, chill air. "Cold in here, isn't it? At least we can be thankful for these havy robes."
Ardan nodded. With his mind racing frantically to think of some way out of an impossible situation, he hadn't even noticed the cold till now. He shivered, too, hoping the torch would hold out for a while. He didn't like to think about how it would be when they also were faced with total darkness. Ardan huddled against Hanse in a corner. Evidendy, no prisoner had ever been kept in the place, for there wasn't even straw to cushion the hardness of the stone floor.
At first, Ardan and Hanse had expected that their captors would kill them immediately. As long as they remained alive, the two of them were a grave threat to the plot to replace Hanse Davion with an imposter.
Instead, the days passed, empty, dark, cold, and interminable. Hanse and Ardan no longer knew whether it was night or day, though Ardan had pulled the wire from a pocket charm the guards had not removed, and he was using it to scratch out the passage of time in the stone wall. There wasn't much else to do, except think. But when the routine suddenly changed, Ardan would gladly have gone back to the torture of boredom.
One day, several guards came into the cell, seized Hanse roughly, and dragged him away protesting. "Hanse!" Ardan screamed, grasping the bars and pressing his face against them as the footsteps retreated down the corridor. When the silence descended once more, Ardan dropped to the floor, overcome by his sorrow and despair. He was sure Hanse had just gone to his death.
What seemed like hours later, Ardan again heard heavy footsteps approaching down the stone corridor. "My turn now," he thought grimly. But the guards merely opened the cell door, and threw Hanse bodily back into its gloom. Ardan crawled weakly over to his friend, and found him drugged senseless. It was a relief that Hanse was still alive, but what had they done to him?
The sword and the dagger Page 21
