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"What the General is trying to say," Sta
"I thought the King himself was behind the Lancers!"
Sta
Grayson wasn't sure what it was he had gotten, but its touch was ice-cold.
* * * *
The cold was bitter, an iridium blade carving through sneak suits and bone and marrow, borne on a keening wind. The air was so dry it leached moisture from exposed skin, but intermittent flashes of distant lightning revealed heavy snow clouds above the mountains to the north. It was the dark of mid-Secondnight. Trellwan was approaching the sun again, but this would be a Far Passage, with the sun high in the sky on the far hemisphere, while Sarghad remained gripped in sub-zero night.
With Far Passage would come the Secondnight storms, and then the gradual warming of Thirday. But that was a week of standard days away.
The team of men clothed in night-black slipped along a frost-rimmed ridge on the perimeter of the parade ground below the Castle. Lights on poles strung along the fenced perimeter cast stark illumination over the ferrocrete apron, and isolated the looming black mass of the truncated stone pyramid above them. There was activity in the open Repair Bay. Figures moved there, visible through the broad glass walls bathed in red light.
Grayson signalled to Sergeant Ramage: Move up. He used no words, as there might be sonic detectors nearby, listening with computer-controlled filters to eliminate the yowling wind and pick up a whispered conversation. Ramage nodded and moved forward with cautious, uneven actions calculated to fool sensors set to detect the sounds of ordinary movement
Grayson's mouth was very dry, and only partly because of the bitter dryness of the air. He realized that never, not even during the firefight in the Castle's central control, had he ever been so scared.
He had come up with the plan Jeverid's General Staff and the Council Ministers wanted, having worked it out during long sessions with his senior staff sergeants, Lori, Ramage, and Larressen. The plan approved, the four of them had then worked even longer and harder to select and train an assault force of 50 picked men.
Their targets were the Castle and the slumbering hulk of the Shadow Hawk.Sarghad's military intelligence insisted that the 'Mech had been damaged by thermite grenades during the delaying action at the spaceport, but was now almost repaired. Grayson's force would gain entry to the Repair Bay, clear it with small arms fire and grenades, plant powerful thermite melters at key points on the Shadow Hawk'sarmor, then withdraw into the darkness. With luck, the 'Mech would be hopelessly ruined for anything but spare parts. Even enough damage to require another few hundred hours of repair time would be worth almost any cost in men and equipment. And when he thought of it that way, Grayson knew he had to lead the mission himself.
"You can't," Varney had said. "You're the whole reason for this Lance! Without your specialized knowledge of 'Mechs and 'Mech tactics.
"Lori Kalmar has precisely the same knowledge," he'd said. That was not entirely true, for she'd not had Kai Griffith to train her in small unit tactics, but this wasn't the moment to quibble. "She can carry on if I don't come back."
"No woman is going to lead this unit, Grayson. Especially not an offworlder!"
Varney had continued to protest, but in the end, Grayson simply insisted on going, and that was that They would have gotten no work from him locked into a District HQ cell, and nothing short of that would keep him from leading his team. He reasoned that his training suited him for the mission, while troops would respond with an extra measure of effort if their CQ was in the fight with them.
Thanks to Griffith, Grayson was an expert in commando tactics, but the men in his command were still green. As recently as four standard-day weeks ago, most of the soldiers on the team could not properly use camouflage, could not sneak-stalk an enemy sentry, could not even load and fire an automatic weapon in anything less than five seconds. Grayson had been training in small unit tactics and techniques when he was fifteen, and training under the sharp eye and sharper tongue of Sergeant Griffith. He'd balanced the risk of letting them proceed with the mission on their own with the risk that he would be killed, then decided the gamble was worth it The chance of success would be increased by his presence, his direction, and the steadying influence of knowing the CQ was watching.
Grayson's training had included a wide variety of weapons, martial arts training that blended several very old and effective fighting traditions, as well as training in moving swiftly, silently, and with precise navigation. He was sure of his skills, even glad of the opportunity to exercise them again. Why, then, was he terrified?
He licked his lips, and the pain of the cold on wetted lips steadied him. He had been scared in the firefight in the Castle, but numbed almost into insensibility by his father's death. He had been frightened during the street battle when he'd dueled with the Wasp,when he'd stalked and confronted the Locust,but he'd been sustained by the hunger for revenge. The desire had dulled, become lost in the piles of administrative details that needed Grayson's attention. He had been afraid during the one-against-one 'Mech battle, but real 'Mech combat was so like simulator combat that, except for the heat, it had been easy to lose himself and his fear in the dance of the giant machines.
But now Grayson Death Carlyle lay on frozen ground outside the gaping maw of the Castle, and trembled inwardly. The other operations had all been more or less forced on him by the needs of the moment. This mission had been ordered by the high command, and he was not yet convinced that it was a necessary one. Worse was the fact that he was leading 50 men against a fortress designed to repulse a battle force of laser turret-armed DropShips and a regiment of heavy Mechs.
That a force similar in size to his Lancers had taken the Castle before was no comfort. That attack had come as a complete surprise and had been aided by a traitor within the Castle walls. Grayson had no traitor to assist him, nor could he be sure that the enemy did not expect him.
There was something else, too, something nagging at the back of his mind. He had been worried about how they would enter the Castle. Formerly, the doors had responded to his palm print, but the Castle's new occupants must have changed the computer security ID system by now. At best, doors would admit him, while triggering an alarm on the screens in Central Security. They had brought explosives to breach a door, if necessary.
Strangely enough, the Repair Bay doors stood wide open, shimmering as the castle's i
Maybe that was what the worry was. It looked too easy. Griffith had always warned him to expect the unexpected, to be convinced that danger usually existed where one least expected it. What hidden danger might be gnawing at his awareness here? There was always the danger of betrayal, of course. The attack on the Castle had burned that lesson into his very being. Still, the only ones who knew of the present attack were those at the highest levels of the Defense Ministry, and they were united in the need for a Lancers victory. He thought momentarily of Stefan, of other bandit agents among his own men, but then dismissed the idea. That Stefan had been the one to attempt Grayson's death suggested that there were very few such agents in the city. No, most of the spies among his ranks belonged to the Guard or to the Militia.