Decision at Thunder Rift

10

Ten-meter-tall death machines now stalked the narrow avenues of Sarghad. Though Grayson knew how to find the Third Street of the Merchants, four times he and Tor were forced to leave streets suddenly blocked by throngs of panicked people or by the striding nightmares of attacking 'Mechs. Grayson tried to keep track of the types he saw. There was one Locust,he knew, and another that looked like one of the Commando Wasps,now bearing the animal's eye insignia of Hendrik III of Oberon. Once he saw the Marauderagain, wading through the splintered rubble of buildings. A pall of oily smoke hung suspended above Sarghad, and the air was heavy with dust from plaster turned to brick rubble, and crumbled slabs of ferrocrete.

At the mouth of an alley opening onto the Third Street of the Merchants, Tor held back, motioning Grayson behind him. Peering past the freighter pilot, Grayson saw another Wasp,this one leading a string of perhaps fifteen Trells toward the city borders.

"What are they doing?"

Tor looked grim. "Taking hostages, possibly. But those people don't look all that well-to-do. Slaves, more likely."

Grayson remained silent. He'd heard stories of the slave trade among the bandit kinglets of the Periphery, but had not given them much credence. Even Claydon's lingering fear that his mother might have been taken by Hendrik's raiders as a slave to Oberon, that was easy enough to dismiss as the xenophobic fears of an untravelled, nearly uneducated native who had never been beyond the fringes of his own world's atmosphere. The brutal truth was that among the shards of a civilization where machines and the products of technology were treasures, human labor tended to be cheap and easily harvested.

"Where will they take them?" Grayson wondered aloud.

Tor shrugged. "The spaceport, perhaps. They won't be able to use them here. Most likely they'll be coralled somewhere offworld." His voice was curiously level and remote. "They might even load them aboard the old Invidious."

A rumbling crash from farther down the street caught Grayson's attention. He crawled forward, slipping his head past the shelter of the wall close to the street. What he saw shocked him to the core. Standing there was the Marauder,encased in the rubble of a building in flames. A knife twisted cold in Grayson's gut. That building was the house of Berenir the merchant

The Marauderlurched forward into the street, completing the destruction. The front wall of the house rippled and collapsed inward, sending a galaxy of red sparks into the smoky pall above it.

Tor was watching Grayson's face. "That was the house of your friends, I take it."

"Yes... yes, it was. But I don't understand.. Why did they destroy just that one house?" Berenir's house had been eliminated with surgical precision, but none of the other buildings on the block had been touched. Grayson wondered if Claydon had survived. As the Maraudermoved on to the north, leaving rubble and flames behind, Grayson thought it was unlikely. He watched grimly as another wall of Berenir's house collapsed in a shower of sparks.

Grayson and Tor edged back away from the street. "Sorry about your friends," Tor said.

Grayson nodded acknowledgment. He felt curiously empty now, drained of all but the need to strike back against the bandit 'Mechs. But how? How? A feeling of helplessness weighed heavily on him now.

"I'm heading for the port," Tor said. "Technicians are always in demand, and I've got enough ship teching skill to find me a billet. You can come along as my assistant and we'll find a way to dye your hair. Then you won't have to take mud baths, right?"

Grayson thought for a moment, then shook his head. "Go on without me, Captain. I've got something else to do."

Tor was taken back. "What?" he wanted to know. "Where?"

I've... never mind," Grayson said, distracted by his own musings. "I've just got to do some thinking, is all. I'll find you at the port later."

"When?"

Grayson shrugged. "I don't know." He glanced down at his hand, wondering why it was not trembling. His legs and arms felt weak, as though the surge of emotions that had drained away at the sight of the Marauderhad left him a husk, scarcely able to stand. The adrenalin high that had kept him going till now was vanishing, leaving him exhausted.

He turned to face Tor. "Just go. I'll join you when I can."

Tor gri

Go to hell and leave me alone, Grayson thought with a viciousness that surprised him. He said nothing, however, but nodded and turned away. He was going to have to find transportation to the mountains, and was not entirely sure that he had the strength to manage it.

* * * *

The junior officer stood stiffly at attention and felt the sweat pooling in the collar of his black body armor. "No, Lord, he is not here," the man reported. Looking up from the paperwork on his desk, the seated man regarded his officer with a cold and level gaze. "He must be. I shot him myself. I saw him fall, right at the spot I marked on the map of the Vehicle Bay I gave you."

"He was not there, Lord." There was fear in the young man's face. His commander had a reputation for ruthlessness. "We have searched the Castle, and checked all the bodies. There... there is evidence that someone was moving about the Castle after our departure. Perhaps this is the boy you seek. A storage compartment door that Sergeant Wy

Captain Lord Harimandir Singh considered himself a just man — ruthless, yes, and demanding — but not given to whims of raw emotions. He had fired the single shot that had hit the enemy commander's son in the head. It had been his order that had led the attacking party and its prisoners out of the Vehicle Bay,to follow the surviving Commandos to their spaceport perimeter. If Grayson Death Carlyle still lived, it was Singh's responsibility, and not that of the Lieutenant trying so unsuccessfully to mask his terror.

So, the fault is mine, Singh thought. I should have sealed the matter with a second shot, or at least had someone stay and check for wounded in the Bay.

But things had been happening so fast down in that Repair Bay. Only rapid decisions and swift movement would have accomplished the mission.

And the mission HAD been accomplished, had it not? Carlyle's Commandos were broken, the survivors fled, and their base in Singh's hands. If this one boy had managed to escape to Sarghad, could that seriously jeopardize the grand plan? Singh's specific orders had been to make certain of the death of Carlyle's senior Tech, Riviera, of all Mech Warriors remaining in the Castle, and of Carlyle's son. The orders had been carried out, except for the very last.

Singh considered the matter carefully. The boy had not escaped with the surviving members of Carlyle's Lance, of that he was certain. If he lived, he could only be hiding somewhere in Trellwan's desert wilderness, or in that sprawling refuse heap at the foot of this mountain the indigs called Sarghad.

If he hadmade it to the wilderness, his time was ru