Decision at Thunder Rift

by William H. Keith

  Now that the sun was directly overhead, the air over the Nerge grew warm, then hot. Low-lying air masses from the Grimheld Sea area moved across the desert and exploded skyward in a towering column of hot, moist air. From Sarghad, the column looked like a white pillar lifting beyond the mountains to the west. Its rise was so rapid that the naked eye could perceive its movement second to second across almost 2,000 kilometers.

  When the column of hot, wet air hit the subzero air of the stratosphere, clouds billowed out in all directions, blocking the sun and turning the green sky white, then grey, then roiling blue-black. It was then that the hail and rain and lightning began.

  During the seven-standard day period known in Sarghad as the Summer Storm, people stayed indoors in a holiday commanded by the weather. To venture outdoors would have meant wading knee-deep in yellow mud while becoming soaked to the skin, at best. At worst, to leave the shelter of Sarghad's buildings on some errand usually meant being struck dead by lightning or head-sized hailstones. The wind from the east blew steadily across the city toward the Nerge. Even during those periods when the sun was still above the horizon, the landscape was plunged into complete and unrelieved darkness, save for the lightning that flashed brilliantly against the sky.

  With the driving rain a constant rattle against sealed windows and eaves, with the wind thumping against outer walls like something alive, Grayson set up his headquarters in the city Armory, a squat and dismal ferrocrete block building with a warehouse interior in the mechanic's District across the Hub from the Palace Grounds. Seated there at an old desk salvaged from some government office and using an old, black plastic compad tied into the Military Records Library in the District Headquarters Annex, he began his job of recruiting and training Trellwan's first BattleMech Lance.

  His assistants were Sergeant Ramage of the Militia and Lieutenant Nolem of the Guards, both of whom held the tide of Adjutant. Their primary job was to take all the military theory and training that Grayson could put into words and writing, organize it, and then teach it to the men and women who were selected for Trellwan's anti-'Mech unit. Grayson's little team had been given the rest of Firstnight, another fourteen standard days, to organize the unit General Adel wanted it ready for combat by the end of the Secondnight storms, which gave them just about one local year of 45 days to do the job.

  * * * *

  "Sergeant, I don't think you understand the precariousness of your position." Lieutenant Nolem's flat, nasal voice became even more grating when he was being unpleasant.

  "Sir!" retorted Ramage. "My understanding of the line of command is that the Militia troops in the special unit will be accountable to Militia HQ through Lance Command. General Varney would never have consented to placing Militia personnel under the direct command of the Guard!"

  "And I, Sergeant, question whether you have any understanding of the line of command at all! The Guard clearly takes precedence over the Militia in the special unit as it does in all military matters. You meddling Militiamen..."

  "Gentlemen, please!" Grayson sat between the two, fingers working at his temples. He was tired and couldn't think of much else except getting back to the officers' quarters General Varney had arranged for him. There was so much to be done, but he was beginning to regret ever hearing of a Trellwan special unit

  "If you two don't stop bickering, you can forget about the generals. You'll have to answer to the new government!"

  Nolem raised a querying eyebrow. "What new government?"

  "The one the bandits are going to establish in the Palace if you don't drop the petty quarrels over pecking-order and help me get some work done!"

  "Really, Lieutenant. My position here..."

  Grayson's voice was weary but firm. "Your position here is subject to MY approval, Lieutenant, do you understand?"

  "You don't rank me, youngster!" Nolem was all of four standard years older than Grayson.

  "I'll bloody well rank you if I have to prove it by tossing you out in the rain!" Grayson's fist came down on the stack of requisition forms on the desk. "I was put in charge of the unit, so just because your friend Adel slipped you in to pull rank on Sergeant Ramage doesn't mean I'm going to let you get away with it!"

  Nolem bristled. Grayson decided the only way to break through the man's stubborness was to change the subject.

  "Now, what's the status of the damaged Wasp?” He demanded.

  The question took Nolem by surprise. "Ah... uh..."

  "We still don't have a Tech who can supervise repairs."

  "But what's the 'Mech's status?"

  "Uh... the head's smashed."

  "I know that, Lieutenant. I smashed it. Can it be repaired?"

  "The officer in charge says we'll need a trained Tech to tell us one way or the other." He shrugged. "We don't have much in the way of spare parts for 'Mechs, either. I gather the supply officers are having to dismantle second-line weapons carriers just to get scrap armor to plug the holes in the torso."

  Grayson sagged back in the chair. "Maybe I can get down there next period and have a look." Mech Warriors knew as much about a 'Mech's workings as did Techs. But the time... God, the time!

  "You have a meeting with the Military Council next period," Ramage reminded him.

  "Damn, you're right. I..." Grayson paused, thoughtful.

  "Sir?"

  "There is an alternative... possibly."

  Ramage looked at Nolem questioningly, then at Grayson. "I don't think there's a qualified Tech on the planet. Not this side of the Castle, at any rate, and I don't think THEY'RE going to lend us one!"

  He was not about to discuss his wild inspiration with these two. Nolem would resist the idea, he knew, and even Ramage was certainly doubling as a spy for the Militia staff. He wanted to spring this idea on the generals himself.

  Three periods later, Grayson descended the cold stone steps of the Military District Headquarters. It was still raining outside. He'd made the trip from the Armory in a GEV, skimming over the treacherous mud. The water pooled on the stone floor as he handed his compad to the brown-uniformed corporal sitting behind the desk at the bottom of the stairs.

  The corporal entered a code into the terminal on his desk, then leaned back to await clearance. "Wet out, Sir?"

  "A bit. Getting colder, too." By the middle of Firstnight, the temperature outside had dropped nearly to freezing. The week-long Near Passage storms acted as a gigantic heat sink for the planet, and during the long, long night following Periasteron, the heat of the Passage was rapidly dissipated. Soon the storm winds would die, and it would begin snowing in the mountains.

  Grayson thought of Thunder Rift. The ice would all be gone now, the waterfall dried up. When the ice roof was gone, you could see stars up through the rift from the shore of the cavern floor lake, even during daylight.

  "Clearance, sir. You can go through." The corporal operated a control, and steel bars slid to one side.

  "Thank you," Grayson said, and entered the long, dimly lit passageway. The cell he was looking for was at the end of the hall.

  Lori Kalmar sat on the bench in her cell, leaning back against the wall with knees tucked beneath her chin, staring at the opposite wall. She was wearing a long-tailed fatigue shirt and trousers someone had given her, but still had the light slippers she'd worn aboard her 'Mech. Tall, long-legged, and slender, the girl was quite attractive, Grayson thought, but her expression was sullen and bitter.

  Grayson approached the bars of her cell and spoke her name.

  Kalmar's eye flicked across him, then back to the wall. "Oh," she said dully. "It's you." Though there were dark circles under her eyes, the girl's hair was carefully brushed, so blond it looked almost silver in the pale light

  "Are you O.K.? Are you being treated all right?"

  "Why should you care?" she snapped.

  What she didn't know was that Grayson had been feeling guilty about the Locust's pilot ever since he'd turned her over to the Militia headquarters. After all, he had promised th
at she would not be hurt The last he'd heard, she was being put through interrogation. From what he'd been able to learn, the Militia's questioning methods were more psychological and chemical than physical. The Guards, on the other hand, were rumored to take positive pleasure in inventive and enthusiastic physical interrogation, and that was what had triggered Grayson's own panic when he'd faced the sentries at Mara's house. But interrogation in any form was brutal, leaving the prisoner exhausted, haggard, and feeling very much alone.

  "I'd like to talk to you," he said.

  "That's nothing new," she snapped. "That's all people want to do around here... is talk to me."

  "Would you like to get out of here?"

  Kalmar's head whipped around to face him. Her eyes, he saw, were very blue. "What is this? More interrogation?" Her voice was hard, but Grayson heard the tremble of tears hidden in it. "We've been through it all, O.K.? I've told you people everything I know!"

  Grayson had learned Lori's story from the security dossier compiled from her long hours of interrogation. She had been born and raised in Sigurd, a bitterly cold and isolated world that was one of twelve in Hendrik's confederation. Her parents had died during one hellish night of fire and horror when the government forcibly convinced dissident forces on Sigurd that confederation with Oberon VI was in their best economic and social interests.

  Lori had been saved by a neighbor, but only after seeing her parents die in the fire that gutted her apartment habitat. About a year after becoming a state ward (at age eight, or about thirteen by standard-year reckoning), she had applied to the Sigurd Defense Forces as a 'Mech apprentice and had been accepted.

  Apparently, Hendrik's confederation did not have a combined military force. Individual worlds reserved some local defense forces for themselves, an arrangement that created the feeling of greater sovereignty. Lori's unit had been the Sigurd Independent Light Assault Group, operating directly under the command of Vice Regent Alisaden, a warleader who was also Sigurd's Defense Minister.

  Lori had been an apprentice for over three Sigurdian years, which made her almost 19 standard years old now. Though well along in her training, she had not expected to go on active combat duty for several years yet. One night while standing duty as officer of the watch in the 'Mech center, the sergeant in charge of her school section had tried to persuade her to engage in extracurricular training on the floor. She'd resisted, he'd insisted, and she'd given him a final and definite "no" with a knee driven into a sensitive target.

  One week later, her orders had come through. She was being assigned to a "Special Expeditionary Force" with three other Sigurdian trainees, under the command of a Harimandir Singh.

  The circumstances were peculiar. Singh's JumpShip was unlike any she knew within the Confederacy, and the expeditionary force seemed to be part of a deal cut between Singh and Vice Regent Alisadren. So far as she could tell, the operation had nothing to do with Hendrik or Oberon VI at all. Singh himself served someone named Duke Ricol, whom she also heard referred to as the Red Duke.

  Singh. Grayson had stiffened when he'd read that name. It was the word on Griffith's lips when he died. It was obvious the Weapons Master had recognized the bandit leader, probably from a biog data entry in the Castle computer. As for Duke Ricol, Grayson drew a blank.

  Neither Lori Kalmar nor her companions, Pvts. Enzelman and Fitzhugh and a Corporal named Hassilik, had ever heard of Singh or the Red Duke before being assigned to their command. By the time the ship had rendevoused with a freighter at some nameless, worldless sun and they'd transferred across, Kalmar had learned only that Singh's mission was to gather mercenaries for an operation against a world she'd never heard of. It's name was Trellwan.

  She was surprised to suddenly find herself a mercenary MechWarrior. She'd been too busy to think much about it, however. Lori Kalmar and her comrades had been kept hard at work moving and installing heavy weapons aboard the freighter's DropShips. Soon after that, the vessel had resumed its mysterious voyage across the stars.

  During the trip, the three Sigurdians met and learned to fear their Lance commander, a Lieutenant Vallendel. Early in the voyage, they'd delegated Corporal Hassilik to go to Vallendel and protest their virtual kidnapping. They were homesick by that time, and utterly bewildered at being transported across tens of light years in the company of utter strangers. Ten minutes later, the assembled company had watched young Hassilik, naked and tied hand and foot, go out the airlock into space.

  There were no more protests. They spent most of the passage working in the cargo Bay where the 'Mechs — a Marauder, a Stinger, and a Locust — were stored. They practiced what tactics they could on holographic map tables under Vallendel's critical eye, performing maintenance checks, and going over 'Mech operating systems. When the time came for the drop onto the night side of a world close by a mottled, dusky red sun, however, the unwilling mercenaries had not been included in the assault team. They'd watched from the freighter's DropShip as Vallendel and two of Singh's Techs had disembarked into a night of fire and terror.

  They'd also watched Vallendel's Marauder smash to pieces an aging Phoenix Hawk already savaged by the weapons they'd helped install in the DropShip's hull.

  "Why did they bring us here, anyway?," she'd asked. But no one was giving any answers.

  Once the crew transferred to their new Trellwan base in an imposing black stone edifice built on a mountainside, her new masters had begun allowing Kalmar and her companions to exercise with the Locust, and with a pair of 20-ton Wasps captured from the yet unidentified enemy. They were closely watched by the other 'Mechs; the Stinger was generally detailed to keep a close eye on the Sigurdian's activities during patrols. It was clear that they were not trusted.

  Kalmar's initiation into battle had come shortly after the first successful raid on the enemy city, where a number of prisoners had been captured and specific targets identified. It had also been her last

  Her target had been the Palace. She'd received an accurate map of the Palace layout and the location of shelters where important members of the enemy government were expected to be hiding during an attack. She and her two companions were to attack the Palace, flush the ranking officers and members of the Royal Family, and, if possible, to capture them.

  It all had gone wrong. Wes Fitzhugh had been killed in a battle with unarmored troops in the street, and Enzelman's Wasp had been damaged at the Palace Gates. Lori had been moving up from the rear to support them when Enzelman had limped past, heading north. "They're after me," he'd cried over the combat pircuit. "Cover me!"

  She tried and succeeded. Garik Enzelman had escaped to the Castle, and now she was awaiting death at the hands of her captors.

  "You can drop the pretense," she told Grayson. "I know you're going to kill me... eventually. I only surrendered because... because I didn't want to burn." She shuddered. "It's a horrible way to die."

  "I didn't know about your parents," Grayson said gently. "I wouldn't have threatened you like that if..." He let the words trail off, acutely aware of how foolish he sounded.

  "Look," he continued. "There is no trick. I'm not going to hurt you, and I'll do my best to see that no one else does either. And I'm serious about getting you out of here. I need a Tech to supervise the repair of a damaged Wasp."

  "That's ridiculous. I'm an apprentice."

  Yeah, right, he thought. But so am I. He wasn't about to admit it, however. "Which puts you way ahead of everyone else in Sarghad. Will you help?"

  Her eyes were guarded. "What's to stop me from slipping off to my friends up the mountain? Or wiring a C-90 charge into your 'Mech's primary power circuit?"

  "Oh, there'll be safeguards." He thought of his conversation with Varney and Adel, of the arguments he had mustered, and the promises he'd had to make. Kalmar was to be considered an enemy agent. She would be guarded at all times, and the astechs assigned to help her would have training enough to know if she were deliberately sabotaging the work. They'd finally agreed to Grayson's pl
an only because there seemed to be no other way to get the job done.

  Grayson had accepted their conditions, and prayed that the girl would agree to work with him under such restrictions. There seemed to be no alternative, for any of them.

  "You'll be watched, but at least you'll be out of this place. Do you owe some oath of fealty or service to the people who brought you here?" Many peoples in the near-feudal culture of the Successor States strictly observed fealty vows and oaths. In the shifting tangles of allegiances among the states, individual warriors needed a focus for their loyalty.

  Lori Kalmar closed her eyes. "No. There's... nothing. A slave's vow to her master, perhaps, nothing more.”

  “Will you agree?"

  There was a long silence. When she spoke again, it was in a very small voice. "Yes. And... and thank you."

  BOOK II

  17

  Harimandir Singh drew the collar of his cold weather jacket closer about his face and ears and leaned into the wind. The storms had ended, but the long dark of Firstnight continued. With the coming of the storms, temperatures had fallen. There were patches of snow across the ferrocrete apron of the spaceport, and the wind eddied small whirls of dry snow through the pools of light cast by vapor lamps on the poles overhead. At last report, it was snowing heavily in the mountains nearby. He thought what a dismal, brooding planet was this Trellwan, a place he would be glad to leave when the mission was complete. Perhaps... perhaps after this, he would see again the crystal skies and gleaming salt flats of his home deserts.

  The guards at the door to one of the squat, sheet metal storage buildings lining the main port area came to attention with the slap-crack of a weapon salute. One of them took the paper Singh handed him, studied it, and unlocked the door. The air that poured from the dimly lit room beyond the door was sour with the stench of unwashed bodies, and the odors of vomit and human waste.

  "How many do we have, now?" Singh asked his aide.