Mercenary's Star

There was a noise outside, like the roar of a DropShip launch, and then the lights went dead. As the room became pitch-black, chunks of sound-proofing sprayed down from the ceiling on the defenders, a fifty-centimeter-thick support beam groaned and cracked, and ferrocrete blocks rained down from above. A twenty-kilo chunk landed squarely in the middle of the communications console, shattering glass and plastic and briefly lighting up the dark with a shower of sparks. There'd be no more broadcasting for the raiders, but that worry was behind them now. Looking up in horror, they saw that the Pantherhad fired its jump jets and was standing now on the roof overhead!

Another explosion of dust and broken stone, and an armored fist one meter across plunged down the stairway, fingers spreading wide like the legs of some monstrous beast. The gigantic metal fingers closed on a shrieking, kicking flurry of motion that jerked once and went limp in its crushing grasp. Ramage and the others looked away as the mangled body of the Kurita prisoner plopped wetly back to the rubble-strewn floor. The gigantic metal fingers opened again, nighmarish in the dust-choked gloom, searching, groping.

The hand jerked away, shattering more of the ceiling as it withdrew. From outside came the deep-throated stutter of an autoca

The stairs were shattered, and the only way out now was through the door. When they'd heard nothing for several seconds, Ramage and the others pulled the upended table aside and kicked away the ruin of the door. There were three bodies on the platform at the top of the stairs outside and smoke wafting up from below. Rifles ready, the raiders ventured down the steps, two of them supporting their gut-shot comrade.

The second floor was deserted, and another stairway invited. Another floor down, and late afternoon light poured through a partly missing and rubble-choked front wall. Grayson's Shadow Hawkstood outside, not far from the vast metal corpse of the Kurita Panther,now minus its head.

A transport skimmer whined to a stop close by the shattered wall. "Hop in," Grayson's voice said through his ‘Mech's external speaker. "Let’s go home!"

On the battle plain below, the rebel ‘Mechs were already withdrawing, leaving columns of smoke and guttering fires where three enemy ‘Mechs and a half-dozen support vehicles lay in heaps of charred wreckage. Another Loyalist ‘Mech, a Griffin,stood frozen in place, the top of its head blasted open where its pilot had decided to leave the fight with precipitous haste.

Ramage gri

Chapley died during the trip back through the jungle.

27

The elevator door opened on the lowest sub-basement floor, and Nagumo stepped out, light from the overhead fluoros catching the intertwining loops and circled dragons of gold at cuff and collar. Two stiff-faced troopers in full dress flanked him, their hands never far from their holstered automatics.

This level had once been part of the Regis University archives, but when the Kurita-backed new order had come to power, most of the records had been removed to a warehouse just outside the campus walls. A number of the basement rooms had become offices and facilities for what was euphemistically referred to as the "Special Branch". With its walls of ferrocrete and quarried stone block, meters thick in places, the place was perfect for the purpose. The screams of the guests of the Special Branch never penetrated to the upper levels of the building.

Nagumo was tired and harassed by growing worries. Rebel activity had been increasing during the past week, culminating with the raid on the deep-space transmitter just the day before. Instead of being broken after the raid on Fox Island, the damnable rebel movement seemed to be spreading like a cancer, infecting districts, villages, and whole regions that haduntil now been pacified.

Reports were on his desk of rebel attacks on Loyalist and Kurita outposts throughout the Bluesward and Vrieshaven, and even as far west as Scandiahelm. The toll in just this week since Fox Island had been ten ‘Mechs destroyed or put out of commission indefinitely. At this rate, it would be the skeleton of an army that met Duke Ricol in six more days. Six days!

The raid on the transmitter was a particularly harrowing climax. The deep-space tracking system on Verthandi-Alpha had marked the arrival of a JumpShip at the Norn zenith jump point shortly before the raid on the transmitter, had monitored a coded burst-pulsed radio message (which had not yet yielded to Kodo's naval cryptoanalysis department) and had then vanished back into hyperspace. To Nagumo's mind, it could only mean a plea for more mercenary reinforcements.

The mercenaries could not know that he'd been informed of their arrival by his spy network on Galatea. He had immediately dispatched a courier to alert his Galatean network that the jump freighter Invidiousmight be returning to Galatea. Where else close by could they go to recruit more mercs? The Galatean network had Nagumo's personal sanction to do what was necessary to block that ship's mission.

Nagumo could not count on success there. In fact, he had to assume that reinforcements would be arriving. Meanwhile, his grip on Verthandi was slipping. Rebel raids all across the inhabited portion of the planet had forced Kurita troops and ‘Mechs and Loyalist militia to keep to their garrison posts, to travel in convoys, to avoid travelling alone in rural areas. And now, a riot in the streets of the Regis Oldtown district. A riot! It had started as a demonstration—with students chanting "Death to the Dracos". Someone had fired a shot that killed a government militiaman, and then a platoon of Combine infantry had fired into the crowd. There were six dead before the lance of recon ‘Mechs had broken up the mob. Since then, the city had been simmering in sullen resentment.

What was he going to tell the Duke?

The guards outside the door to Room 6 saluted crisply, fists to chests, which Nagumo acknowledged with a curt nod. He gestured for his escort to remain there, in the passageway, then stepped through the massive door as one of the guards swung it open for him.

Dr. Vlade and two assistants were inside, their backs to him as they bent over a stainless steel table oddly out of place in the faintly dank and septic gloom. At the sound of the door, Vlade turned and smiled broadly. "My Lord, thank you for coming."

"What do you want, Vlade?"

He didn't have the time to watch Vlade play in his sub-basement funhouse. The place stank of blood, sweat, and stark terror. Filth crusted the floor under Nagumo's immaculate boots.

"My Lord..."

"Make it fast, Vlade," he said. "I've got work to do."

"Of course, my Lord. I wouldn't have called you down at all. This interrogation was purely routine, you see...but I've stumbled across some fascinating information I thought you would want to hear for yourself, right away...rather than waiting for my report."

"Well?"

His chief interrogator gestured to the table, which was nearly as wide as it was long. Vlade's current guest was there, lying spread eagled by rope restraints at wrists and ankles.

"Well, my dear," Vlade said in a kindly, almost fatherly ma