Mercenary's Star

Grayson remained at the table, one hand to his forehead as he read another dispatch, then used a stylus to enter a notation on his compad. He appeared to have forgotten her completely.

Lieutenant, indeed!She whirled and strode from the room.

* * * *

The city of Regis was in flames.

From where Nagumo stood at his office window, the fire seemed to engulf the entire city. He clasped his hands behind his back, lifted his chin, pursed his lips. The rebel Helgameyer had named many of her colleagues, professors here at the University, staff members, even Academicians on the government council. Altogether, there had been 117 names on the list she had helped compile. Troopers had arrested every person on the list that very night, and the executions had begun at dawn in the University courtyard. Chief Academician Haraldssen had been the first to die. Nagumo ruled the planet directly now, in the name of his Duke.

The depth, the vehemence of the response of the citizens of Regis had caught Nagumo completely by surprise—and he was a man who did not like surprises. Instead of eliminating a handful of dissidents in a city already cowed by ten years of Combine occupation, the first volleys of the firing squads had been like the signal to open rebellion. It had started with the students. Armed with placards and ba

The firing squads had turned their weapons on the crowd, and now twenty students lay dead in the courtyard. In response, the mob had produced its own weapons, rocks and bottles at first, and then a scattering of handguns and sidearms. Though these might have been stolen, they were more likely provided by Verthandian miltiamen in the crowd.

After that, the entire city had seemed to rise like some angered giant roused from sleep. Nagumo had sent in the 2nd and 3rd Battalions of the Light Dragon Infantry, holding back the 1st Battalion to keep an eye on the Regis Blues. The Dragons had driven the mob out of the courtyard and into Prescott Square outside the University's front gates. And then Nagumo had ordered in the BattleMechs.

As they had two nights before, the mob had scattered, but Nagumo's warriors were under orders not to hold back. Like demons, BattleMechs had swept down on scattering bands of rioters, spraying death and destruction in a random and bloody orgy. The gates of the University had been shattered when rioters had attempted to flee back into the University and the ‘Mechs had pursued them. To the twenty dead were added another two hundred more, as the ‘Mechs pumped missiles, machine gun fire, autoca

Elsewhere within the University walls, Nagumo's men had moved swiftly to exert full control over those government Academicians who had not already been arrested—"protective custody", he was calling it. They were in one of the conference rooms in this very building. Besides the Council of Academicians, 212 professors and teachers on the University Faculty had been "escorted to safety" and were under guard in the courtyard below. At the same time, the Regis Blues had been disarmed without incident, but only because their officers had been summoned to an urgent meeting and not been allowed to return to their men. Men and officers waited together now in a warehouse close beside the University. Nagumo still hadn't decided what to do about them.

Things seemed well in control, but Nagumo was not happy. He had seriously underestimated the public feeling of the Verthandians against their Combine guardians. It had been Duke Ricol's specific order that the University remain untouched, as evidence that Verthandian life, culture, and government continued unchanged under Kurita rule.

In one night, Nagumo had swept away everything that remained of Verthandi's government, and the campus courtyard was choked with bodies and prisoners pi

Well, so be it. His Duke would remove him from command or else praise him for taking positive action. Nagumo was a fatalist about such matters. Events had slipped beyond his control, and now he could only attempt to ride them out as best he knew how. A planet-wide rebellion was too much for one man to deal with. But when Duke Ricol arrived, there wouldbe peace in this city!

* * * *

Light years away, the spy waited in the shelter of a Galaport blast pit, this time searching the sky. This time, he wore the flowing robe and dress cloak of a moderately successful local trader, attired chosen to attract no more notice than had his earlier disguise as a Lieutenant of the Port Authority.

Days before, a Draco courier had dropped out of hyperspace and beamed a coded message. It had impinged on the sensitive receiver hidden amid the clutter of satellite receiver ante

Something glittered in the deep blue of the cloudless sky, and the spy brought his electronic binoculars to his eyes. In moments, the glitter had steadied to a pulsing jet of white flame supporting the globular mass of a freighter DropShip. He read off the lettering visible along the craft's flank. Deimos,DropShip One of the freighter Invidious.

He smiled to himself as the Deimossettled into a waiting cradle in clouds of dust and smoke. The target had arrived on schedule.

28

Renfred Tor matched his pace to the long-legged stride of the man who walked beside him. Salvor Steiner-Reese made Tor feel grubby and out of place, even on the streets of so egalitarian a town as Galaport. The Lyran Ambassador-at-Large was, as always, resplendent in scarlet trimmed with black. His elbow-length shoulder cloak was surely an inconvenience in Galatea's desert climate, but crisply immaculate nonetheless. The man was tall, powerfully built, autocratically handsome. His double-barrelled name openly proclaimed a much-publicized, if distant, relationship to the Archon of the Lyran Commonwealth.

For his part. Tor looked the part of a tramp frieghter captain, his shipboard coveralls greasy and bare of either rank insignia or a ship ID path. He carried a battered trade samples case in one hand.

"I'm afraid you don't understand. Captain Tor," the ambassador was saying. "There is simply no way the Commonwealth can involve itself in this matter!"

"You’re right, Your Excellency, I don'tunderstand. Jeri told me you'd at least be willing to listen!"

"And listen I have, sir! For the past hour! What would you have me do...involve House Steiner in interstellar war with the Draconis Combine...and for what? A handful of starving rebels on a planet givento the Combine by treaty a decade ago? Good lord, man, what do you take me for?"

Tor was not certain how to answer that one.

He had a friend at the Lyran Government building in the capital, a girl named Jeri whom he always looked up when in the Galatean system. She was pretty and fun. More important, she knew most of the important people in the stellar crossroads that was Galatea. She had put him in touch with "an old friend" at the Government embassy. Galatea, as a member of the Lyran Commonwealth, did not rate the exchange of diplomatic perso