"Okay?" he called over his shoulder, and Caitlin squeezed twice. "Okay," she said. He cut in the throttle, kicked the accelerator pedal past its detents, and the Bluestreak howled, spitting gravel. With a single tire, steering was almost entirely a matter of leaning to left or right, though the control stick gave him some extra cornering when he needed it by shifting the flywheel from side to side. The road descended the hillside in a series of steep, sharp switchbacks; Alex took each turn with a reckless bravado that threatened to set them airborne with each swing.
Even driving far faster than was safe on that road, it was almost twenty minutes before the dirt track leveled off and finally joined a paved highway straight-lining toward the spires and domes of Dunkeld. Alex kicked in full power, the cycle shrieking beneath the two riders, the wind tearing at their clothing as they roared down the road. Before long they could see the grim gray turrets of the Castle Hill fortress rising from the cliffs above the town.
They were forced to stop at the Legion checkpoint on the outskirts of Dunkeld. There, an armored trooper checked their IDs in his hand-held scanner while a hulking Vindicator covered him from behind the base perimeter.
Glancing up, Alex recognized the Vindie, a much-patched survivor of the Glengarry campaign called Tassone's Terror.
"Afternoon, Captain," an amplified female voice boomed from the eleven-meter machine. "And Caitlin! What've you two been up to all morning?"
MechWarrior Veronica Tassone was a brassy redhead who loved to indulge in juicy bits of gossip, true or not. There was also, Alex was aware, some bad blood between her and Caitlin, a smoldering hostility that he'd long wondered about. It was flattering to think that the women might have fought over him....
He didn't respond to Veronica's banter, however, beyond tossing her an offhand salute. Then he accepted the IDs from the trooper, gunned the cycle, and tooled into the twistings of Dunkeld's streets. Five minutes later, they showed IDs again at the front gate of the fortress, before being admitted to the castle's lower-level motor pool area.
Almost the instant he pulled into his numbered parking area, Caitlin sprang off the machine and whipped off her helmet. "What the devil was that all about?" she demanded.
"What, Ronnie Tassone? She's just jealous of—"
"No, you egotist. I mean your damned wild driving down off that mountain! What's with you anyway?"
"Well, maybe you'd rather not do it again!" he flared.
"You've got that right, mister!" She was furious now, her dark eyes flaming, the usually pale and lightly freckled skin of her face flushed. She stood in front of him, fists on hips, chin jutting forward defiantly. "For a long time now I've been making some damned big allowances for you, Alex Carlyle, because of what happened to Davis Clay and everything, but this is just too damned much! You've been moody, testy, and unpredictable! You treat me like your personal property, like you have some kind of a right to use me whenever you feel like it, without regard to my schedule or my feelings in the matter, and when you can't have your own way, you rage off like a madman and nearly kill us both on this expensive toy of yours! One minute you're boasting about being the Colonel's son, the next you're so sullen no one can reach you! Well here's a class-A priority for you, Captain Carlyle. I've had it with your moods and I've had it with you. Next time you want to go AWOL for your fun, talk to your friend Ronnie!"
She shoved her helmet hard into Alex's gut, then whirled about and stormed off. "Wonderful," Alex said, turning the helmet in his hands. "Just drekkin' wonderful "
His thirty minutes were already up and men some, so he didn't stop at the officers' quarters to change his uniform. Instead, he rode a lift all the way up to Level 10, where he was waved through security by a bored trooper and into the Legion's Administrative Center. Captain Santly Gunnarson waved him past the outer office and into the sanctum sanctorum ... the Colonel's office.
Major Davis McCall was there, wearing full dress instead of his usual fatigues or grease-stained jumpsuit. The gold, silver, and polychrome glory of the medals on his chest snagged the eye with color and reflected light, contrasting with the deep gray of his tunic.
"At last!" the elder Carlyle said, looking up from the computer display on his desk. "The prodigal returns!"
"Sorry I'm late, sir," Alex said.
"An' is that any way t' appear before th' Colonel, lad?" McCall said with a disapproving glower. "Y' hae nae comit back from a battle, I'm thinkin', an' there're precious few other excuses for the condition of that uniform."
"Let it be, Mac," Grayson said gently. "Where were you, son?"
"I was taking some time off for lunch," Alex replied, a hint of sullenness creeping into his voice. "Took a ride in the hills above Dunkeld."
"I don't care about the condition of your uniform," Grayson said, "especially since my orders were to get you back at once. But you will stay within easy call while you're on duty. Am I clear?'
"Yes, sir."
"Very well. That's all we'll say about it, son. Meanwhile, what do you know about the Word of Jihad?"
Alex furrowed his brow. He'd heard something recently. ...
"Isn't that a fanatic anti-'Mech religious cult of some kind? I remember seeing a download not long ago, something about a riot on New Earth."
"Aye, that's the one, lad," McCall said, nodding. "Not only anti-'Mech, but anti-tech. They'd have us back in the Stone Age if they could, an' even then they might be protestin' our chippin' flints an' making fire t' aye keepit warm."
"They'd have a rough time on Glengarry." Glengarry's climate, though on the cool side, was mild through most of its year, but the winters tended to be long and harsh, particularly in the northern latitudes.
"Maybe so," Grayson said. "But they seem to be making new trouble now. On Caledonia."
Alex glanced at McCall, but the big Caledonian's face was an impassive mask. "We're being contracted for Caledonia?"
"Not yet," Grayson said. "But there is a chance." He, too, looked at McCall. "Mac? You want to tell him?"
"No, sir. You go ahead. I still think th' idea's daft."
"That's what I like to hear in my people, Mac," Grayson said with a half-smile. "Complete and absolute confidence in their commanding officer. All right, Alex, this is the situation." And he began filling his son in on recent events on Caledonia, including the arrest of McCall's brother Angus.
"I can well understand Major McCall's reluctance to go into a situation where he might end up fighting against his own family," Grayson concluded. "I can also understand why he wouldn't want to remain behind while his people were dying ... quite possibly because of our intervention in their affairs. What I'm proposing to do is almost the worst of both possibilities, but it offers him an alternative and the Gray Death a better chance if we get sent in as peacekeepers. I'm putting him on detached duty and sending him back to Caledonia. I want you to go with him."
"Sir, for all ye ken, y' could arrive in Dundee in a month or two an' find me leading a rebel army against tha' wee bastard of a governor."
"Actually, Mac, I'm stacking the deck in the Legion's favor. The political situation sounds confused enough that the Legion desperately needs some eyes on the ground in advance of their deployment When we land, if we land, we'll need to know who our friends are, who our enemies are, what their respective strengths and weaknesses might be, and we'll need to have all of that information immediately, without having to gather it for ourselves. You know as well as I do that the official mission briefings are likely to be slanted."
"Well, aye, there's that. An' to tell the truth, sir, I would nae trust this Wilmarth character oot a' SRM range."
"This won't be a combat assignment, Mac. It won't even necessarily be covert. You can go in as yourself, help your family, see about getting your brother's release. But you'll be keeping your Mark I Mod I sensors on full the whole time."
"Aye. Y' know, Colonel. It almost makes a crazy sort of sense a' that."
"But why send me?" Alex blurted out.
Grayson nailed him with a hard stare. "Is there any reason why I shouldn't?"
Plenty of reasons, Alex wanted to shout, but he clamped his mouth shut and said nothing. He was sure that Ellen Jamison must have been keeping his father apprised of his restless nights; that was, after all, one of her duties as a regimental MedTech. And his father would know about the trouble he'd been having in the simulators lately, too. It was Artman's duty to inform him of that.
He was confused, unable to order a whirlwind of conflicting thoughts. His self-confidence had been shaken to the point that he wondered if he would ever be able to function as a 'Mech pilot again, but there was still the question of what he would do, what he could do instead.
And he desperately needed to get away—away from the regiment, away from the other people. The other Legionnaires had been comrades once, but now more and more they were strangers. Alex could sense that the change was not in them, but in him, in the way he reacted to them. Caitlin had as much as told him that just a few moments ago.
"Well, Alex?" his father prompted. "I won't order you to go. It's volunteers only. But if you refuse, you and I are going to take up this matter of your simulator scores. I'm wondering if some extra duty might not improve your concentration. What do you say?"
"How aboot it, Alex? Are y' game?"
"I'll ... go."
"That's the spirit, young Alex!" McCall said, grinning. 'To tell the truth, I think your father wants t' send you wi' me as watchdog. He cannae trust me on m' own wi' the Jacobites, an' he needs you t' keep an eye on me."
"That's not true and you know it, Mac. But I do want you to have some back-up, just in case. And Alex needs the experience."
"But what am I supposed to do?" Alex asked. He was feeling increasingly out of his depth.
"You'll watch Major McCall's back and you'll do what he tells you," Grayson replied.
"Aye," McCall added. "We'll let this battle plan write itself, Alex. Colonel? How soon can we leave?"
Grayson consulted his desktop computer. "Well, it wouldn't make sense to send regimental assets, of course. Too obvious. There's a passenger run schedule for next week. JumpShip Altair."
"The Altair? That's the one Lori's comin' in on, noo?"
Grayson smiled. "Yup. With her 'surprise,' whatever that is."
" 'Twould be a shame t' miss her. Two ships passin' in the night, as it were."
"Can't be helped. Unless you want to wait a month for the next scheduled passenger run. Or take a military Jump-Ship."
"No, that makes no sense at all. The Altair it is, if you'll gi'm' best wishes to your bonnie lassie when she grounds."
"That I will, Mac." Grayson glanced at Alex. "I'm sorry you'll miss your mother, son. She'll likely skin me alive for this."
Alex managed a small grin. "I'm sorry too. But JumpShip skippers aren't known for their patience, are they?"
"I'm afraid not."
JumpShips linked star system with star system. Their transit times were essentially instantaneous, but it took days— eight days, in the case of the Glengarry system—for them to recharge their drives between on jump and the next. Unable to operate deep within the local star's gravity well, Jump-Ships remained always in deep space, usually at the system's zenith or nadir jump points, and at a distance determined by the star's mass. DropShips provided transport between waiting JumpShips and the system's worlds; for Glengarry, transit time at 1G between world and jump point was about five days.
The JumpShip Altair, adhering to a tight schedule, would arrive in-system tomorrow—on the eleventh—and depart eight days later, on the nineteenth. Lori's DropShip, un-docking from the Altair shortly after arriving in-system, would arrive at the Dunkeld spaceport on the sixteenth, but Alex and McCall would have left Glengarry two days earlier in order to reach the Altair in time for the jump. The two DropShips would, literally, pass one another in the night of space, one inbound, the other out.
Grayson continued to study his computer display. "How much of a hurry are you in to get to Caledonia, Major?"
"Well, noo, it would be nice t' be there for tea tomorrow," he said. "But tha' would be bendin' the laws of physics."
"Just a bit. The Altair is scheduled for two stops along the way, at Gladius and Laiaka." McCall frowned. "An' wi' seven or eight days at each for recharge—"
"You wouldn't reach Caledonia until the middle of next month. But there's another way."
"Aye? A handoff express?"
Grayson worked at his keypad for a moment. "You could transfer to a FedCom military JumpShip at Gladius," Grayson said. "The Neptune. That would cut your delay at Gladius to three days. Then at Laiaka, we transfer you to another civilian job, an independent trader called the Shoshone."
"Independents won't be as certain of their schedules," McCall pointed out.
"True, but if you can cut a deal, you won't have to wait at Laiaka for more than two or three days. You could be on Caledon by the thirtieth of March. If you miss the Shoshone, you could still be there by April fifth."
"That sounds good," McCall said. "Better than I'd hoped by a damned sight."
"April," Alex said, looking up. "We won't be here for the ceremonies."
The first day of April was a special day for the Legion, the annual Day of Heroes, when fallen comrades were remembered.
Heroes like Davis Clay. Alex had been looking forward to this Day of Heroes for almost a year now, with both anticipation and dread.
"Can't be helped, lad," McCall said. "Perhaps we can have our own celebration, on Caledon."
"You all right, Alex?" his father asked.
"Huh? Yes. Yes, sir. I was just ... thinking."
McCall was looking thoughtful, tugging at his beard. "I'm wondering, though, Colonel. How much leeway do we have wi' equipment on this deployment?"
"Well, considering the fact that you two will be going back in an unofficial capacity, private citizens, as it were, I doubt very much that the local government will let you smuggle in a couple of 'Mechs."
"Aye. I was nae thinkin' of 'Mechs. Two BattleMechs against a planet is nae my idea of a fair fight."
"We should be able to arrange almost anything else, though. Personal arms, certainly. I'll want you to take a small commo base station with you, as well as personal communicators. We can disguise all of that as freight easily enough."
"Aye. I was wonderin', Colonel, if you could see your way clear t' allowing us to take along a couple of the new wee bairns, as well."
Alex looked shocked. "Is that a good idea?
Grayson smiled. "I think we could probably arrange that, Major And heaven help anyone who gets in your way!
6
The Residence, Dunkeld
Glengarry, Skye March
Federated Commonwealth
0955 Hours, 18 March 3057
"So," Lori Kalmar Carlyle said, pressing up close inside the circle of Grayson's arms. "What do you think of my surprise?"
"As Mac might say," Grayson replied with a chuckle, "I'm just a wee bit thunderstruck." Releasing Lori, he turned to the short, compact, gray-haired and -bearded man beside Lori and grinned. "You don't know how long I've wanted to meet you, Commander!"
"Actually," Lori put in, "it approaches hero worship sometimes. Embarrassing!"
"The same with me, Colonel," the man replied, laughing. "Though I admit I'm delighted we could arrange the meeting like this, and not out on the field somewhere, 'Mech to 'Mech."
Jaime Wolf, supreme Commander of Wolf's Dragoons, was arguably the most celebrated—and notorious—mercenary inside the Inner Sphere or beyond it. Word had it that he no longer commanded in the field, that he had, in fact, retired at last after almost fifty years of active duty. The death of his son two years before had been a grave blow, and a rebellion by members of his own unit at his moment of weakness had very nearly finished him. But he'd fought his way back to win that one, final, critical victory, then returned to his world of Outreach to begin shaping the Dragoons for their new rol
e as an independent power within the Inner Sphere.
Early yesterday, Lori had returned from Tharkad aboard the JumpShip Altair, bringing with her Jaime Wolf and several members of his staff. She'd encountered the celebrated mercenary on Tharkad, she'd explained, and persuaded him to return to Outreach by way of Glengarry. Wolf, expressing an interest in meeting Grayson Carlyle of the famous Gray Death Legion, had readily agreed. One of his JumpShips would be arriving at Glengarry soon to pick him up, summoned there by an HPG transmission from Tharkad.
"It's probably better this way at that, Commander Wolf," Grayson said. "Your Archer against my Victor, well, it just wouldn't be fair!"
"Please," the other man said with a grin. "Call me Jaime!"
"Jaime. If you call me Grayson."
"Grayson it is! Not fair for whom?"
"I'd outmass you by ten tons."
"Ten tons isn't that much in the way of armor, but it might make a difference with maneuverability. You might find I have a few surprises in this old carcass of mine!"
The light bantering felt good. Last evening, the Legion had hosted a formal banquet in Jaime Wolf's honor, but the formalities hadn't allowed Grayson much opportunity to really talk with Wolf. And, truth be known, he'd had other things on his mind than his famous guest last night. After all, he hadn't seen Lori in nearly six weeks, and they'd needed a long time together alone, after the party.
So he'd only just begun to really get to know Jaime Wolf, but so far, he liked the man a lot. He was intelligent, sharp, and quick on the uptake. The good-natured bravado of MechWarrior vets fit them both much more naturally than did their full-dress uniforms ... or the stuffy formality of the banquet.
"Enough, you two armchair warriors, enough!" Lori said, laughing as she stepped between them and hooked their arms with hers. "That's why we've organized this show here today, so you two can show off to your hearts' content without strewing expensive 'Mech innards across half the landscape!"
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