Decision at Thunder Rift

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'spilot ever since he'd turned her over to the Militia headquarters. After all, he had promised that 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.