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Renfred Tor pulled out his earpiece and gave the command to his men. They'd been standing at attention in the shelter of a hydrogen tank for the past eight minutes, waiting for the word to come from Grayson. Now he had given the signal, and it was time to move.
The fifteen men swung out into the chill wind and marched toward the DropShip. The beam turret still tracked them as Tor led them into the spotlit glare from the powerful lamps casting their harsh light across the main entry hatch. Elsewhere, the lights ringing the port paled under a slowly lightening sky. The port buildings, gantries, and storage tanks were all visible now, gray shadows in the twilight.
A pair of sentries stepped from the shadows. "Hold it right there. Where do you think you're going, Green Coat?"
"Orders," Tor said. Steam boiling from the DropShip's vents fumed and churned in the spotlit pools. "We were told to report aboard before launch."
"Let's see 'em."
Tor let a trace of anger creep into his voice. These were Draco sentries, not Trells, and there was no way he could threaten or bluster his way past them. But he might be able to take advantage of the fact that the oldest of the two sentries was half Tor's age, and looked green.
"I have no written orders, soldier. I was ordered..." he stressed the word, "ordered to report aboard this DropShip by the tower officer. You want to take it up with him?"
There was uncertainty in the sentry's face, the universal fear of the military's lower echelons of having screwed up somewhere. But his voice was tough. These WERE just Trell indigs, after all. "We'll just see about that,"
He used a hand transceiver to call the DropShip's bridge. His muttered conversation was inaudible to Tor and his men shifting from foot to foot in the predawn chill. The sentry looked up suddenly. "Sergeant... Claydon?"
"That's right,"
"Nobody ever tells me nothin'." The sentry waved them on as the outer hatch swung open. "Move it. Get on board. You Greenies're expected, it seems."
Too easy, Tor told himself as they filed on board. They had to be even more on guard now, for things could change at any moment. He reached down and unobtrusively unhooked the safety strap across the top of the Gunther MP-20 riding on his hip.
27
Grayson stared down into the computer display, his hands clenched in white-knuckled fury at the data he'd retrieved. He had tapped into the biog extract files, the same files left behind by Carlyle's Commandos when they'd withdrawn from Trellwan during that night of blood and fury. Learning the information in these files had been an important part of Grayson's training during the past years, but there were far too many names and faces for him to remember them all.
BattleMech combat was intensely personal warfare. The theory was that a warrior would have a better chance in combat if he knew something about the man he faced. In you knew, for example, that a certain MechWarrior favored close-in combat, it might give you the edge if you opened fire at long range and worked to keep him at a distance. The files included the histories of thousands of MechWarriors from across known space, living and dead, friend and foe. Even friends were recorded, for it was not unusual for friends to become enemies in the era of the Successor States.
The face staring back at Grayson from the screen was one he recognized. It was the long, swarthy face with dark eyes and an abbreviated beard circling lips and mouth, the face of the man he had seen during the attack on the Castle so many weeks before. The files identified the man as Baron Harimandir Singh, a Captain of the Red Hunter Special Operations Group. His biog stated that he had been born on Chekaar, that he was an accomplished Weapons Master particularly skilled in hand-to-hand and small unit tactics, and that he was also a renowned MechWarrior with a long list of kills. Most important, he was the right-hand man of Hassid Alexander Ricol, Duke of Chekaar.
Even with the proof before his eyes at last, Grayson could scarcely believe it. He had first looked up the computer entry on Duke Ricol, hoping to learn more about the leader of the Kuritist invaders. The Red Duke, it turned out, was a MechWarrior well known to the enemies of Kurita's Draconis Combine. He favored a 75-ton Marauderpainted red with black trim, and was known by friend and foe as the Red Hunter.
The background data had referred Grayson to the entry on Colonel Singh, who, it reported, had served with Ricol for at least fifteen standard years. Grayson remembered the name Singh from Lori's story about how she had come to Trellwan, and again from Griffith's dying shout during the battle in the Castle's Vehicle Bay. Now he understood the co
Though Singh was a MechWarrior, he served more often in his capacity as warleader for the Duke's special ground operations group. His BattleMech was a Crusader,a 65-to
So there had never been any bandits from Hendrik of Oberon at all. The entire situation — the attack on Carlyle's Commandos, the raids on Sarghad, the timely arrival of the Red Duke — all had been arranged as part of an elaborate ploy.
The reason for the hoax was easy enough to figure out. If the Red Duke had simply attacked Trellwan outright, the Commonwealth would have fought back. Even if the Kurita forces had won, they would have been ruling a conquered, hostile planet that required a sizeable garrison to keep the peace.
Instead, they had sabotaged the negotiations with Hendrik and stirred up the Trell population against the Commonwealth. Thus, the Combine invaders would be transformed into liberators who arrived to save Trellwan from the ravages of Hendrik's pirates...
There had to have been Draconis agents in on it from the begi
Grayson nodded to himself as the pieces of the puzzle clicked together. The Combine would win everything — a friendly base of operations deep within the Commonwealth's Cis-Peripheral sector, a new source of ground troops, water, and supplies, and a staging area for secret strikes against the heart of Commonwealth space. The plot had to be Ricol's. Which also made him the man who had pla
Almost as an afterthought, Grayson sca
That confirmed the plot by Ricol and Singh. And it gave Grayson three names in the list of those who had killed his father Duke Ricol, who had pla
He kneaded at his forehead with stiff, hard fingers. He hated Ricol, hated the entire Draconis Combine with an intensity he was only begi