Mercenary's Star

She laughed, and the sound turned Grayson cold. "Help? I've helped you. Captain. The place you want is down that corridor, then to your left, then to your right. Room 6. There will be sentries outside the door."

"Sue Ellen! What's...what's wrong with you? Come on..."

"No, Captain. I'm not going there." She hurried past him, moving in the other direction.

"Sue Ellen! What about Lori! You said...she was your friend..."

She paused next to the still form of a Kurita guard, stooped quickly, and retrieved a sonic stun pistol. As she tucked it into her combat harness, she looked back across her shoulder. "She was my friend, Captain. And...I think you were, too. You accepted me, even after...after what I'd done. But I can't help you any more. Or her."

"Of course you can..."

"No, Captain. But...thanks anyway, for trying. There's something else I have to see about- someone I have to see."

Almost, he called to her again, but the look in her eyes burned through to the marrow of his bones. He would have to try to track down Sue Ellen later.

The sentries were where Sue Ellen had said they would be, a pair of grim-faced Kurita troops flanking a door marked Room 6. They shifted the black and vicious-looking automatic weapons in their hands to aim at Grayson as he stepped around the comer and into the main passageway.

Grayson’s TK spat fire first, hammering one of the sentries back against the wall. The second man returned the fire, the roar of his subgun murderously loud in the narrow space between the dank stone walls. Grayson was already on the floor and rolling to the opposite side of the passageway. The TK bucked and yammered again, then cut off with a silence as deafening as its roar, the chamber clicking empty.

But the sentry was dead, his body sliding to the floor, leaving a heavy trail of blood smeared down across the stone wall at his back.

The door to Room 6 swung open, and Grayson plunged through into a scene of horror.

* * * *

Sergeant Ramage crouched low behind the crumbled pile of stone facing as submachine gun bullets ricocheted against unyielding stone, spraying him with tiny fragments of powdered rock. He touched his throat mike and yelled to be heard above the battle's roar. "Jared! Three o'clock from my position! You see him?"

"Got him!" a ti

There was a thump from the darkness behind and above Ramage's position, followed by a crashing blast of noise from the doorway thirty meters to his right. The subgun's chatter was chopped short by the scattering shrapnel of the 20 mm grenade from Jared's launcher.

A chorus of shouts and yells sounded from straight ahead, through the archway under the main tower. Ramage brought his laser rifle up, then froze, his finger still off the trigger. It was another wave of freed Verthandian prisoners, ragged in the gray uniforms they'd been given by their captors, haggard but still defiant. There were about thirty in this group. Many brandished weapons wrested from now-dead guards and chance-encountered Kurita troops. Ramage stood, shouted, and waved his own weapon until the band saw him. It was risky, but he thought his black night-fighter's garb set him apart enough from the usual denizens of the citadel that he would not be shot out of hand.

Shot by accident, maybe, he thought, but out of hand, no...

The prisoners surged toward his position with a cheer. Ramage's eyes widened as he recognized one of the faces, owlish behind the thick glasses he still somehow wore.

"Citizen Erudin!"

The former rebel council member gri

"It's good to see you, sir. We...we thought all of you were dead."

"If you mean the Council members..." His mouth twisted. "They shot poor Ericksson. They were keeping the rest of us alive, though, in case they needed us for a public hanging." He glanced past Ramage to where a blue uniform showed beside a fallen mass of stone. He stepped over to the body, stooped, and pried a submachine gun from stiffening fingers. "Are you in charge of this show?"

"I am up here. Didn't the Captain let you out?"

"Some of my fellow guests in this hotel let me out, Sergeant. I couldn't quite make out how they had been freed. Captain Carlyle's behind all this, then?"

Ramage gri

"A glorious mess. Sergeant. I'm glad to see I didn't make a mistake choosing him...and you...after all."

"Well, recriminations later, Citizen. How about you take charge of your people. Round 'em up. Get them Under cover over there. Any that have guns, send 'em along to that entrance over there...see it? Through there, fifty meters, then down. There's a tu

"Ericksson's AgroMech plant. I know."

"Some of our ‘Mechs are waiting out there. They'll get your people to safety."

"Right." Erudin turned, and began shouting orders.

Altogether, Ramage estimated that there must be a hundred or so freed prisoners in the Courtyard already, with more arriving from the passageways leading under the main University Tower every moment. One large party had consisted of prisoners who had not burst into the courtyard, waving guns or shouting. They had shambled out, men and women led by the hand of their fellows, eyes staring but unseeing, their faces etched with shock, pain, or a blind emptiness. Some showed the scars or bruises or bloodied bandages of rough usage in those hell pits under the tower. All showed evidence of more serious scars somewhere behind their eyes. Ramage had taken time to give directions to the people guiding these walking wounded. He wasn't sure how the rebel army was going to take care of them without permanent facilities in the jungle, but he knew he had to get them away from these walls.

A dull, low, booming thunder sounded from the main courtyard gate, the one to the south, leading to the downtown center of Regis.

He touched his throat mike. "Kev? Can you see into the street?"

"Kev's bought it, Sergeant," a woman's voice answered. "This is Greta. There're BattleMechs out there, coming up the main street A Warhammerjust fired a round at the main gate."

"O.K. Keep your head down, but watch 'em for me! Vince?"

"Here, Sarge."

"Company. Round up any anti- ‘Mech teams you can find, and bring 'em up here, fast!”

“We're on our way."

Hurry up. Captain,Ramage thought as he stared across the barrel of his gun at the courtyard gates. We can't stay here much longer!

36

As Grayson burst through the doors to Room 6, he took in the scene as isolated and unrelated fragments, with the unreality of a dream. He saw Lori—alive! Alive!He shouted in triumph at the sight of her, and she shrieked his name in answer. She was stretched out, bound at wrists and ankles and strapped to a hellish-looking steel table that had been tilted up to bring her face to face with her captors.

There were three of these, a pair of brawny types in Kurita uniforms with pistols at their belts. In their midst was a smaller figure in a stained white smock. The one with the smock was just pulling a rod tipped with tightly wrapped rags from a shallow basin set on a tripod in the center of the room. The basin held some liquid that had been ignited, as well as a chilling array of sinister-looking, long-handled tools. The fire danced and flared halfway to the high, vaulted ceiling, casting weirdly distorted shadows on walls and floors, along the massive wooden beams that supported the ceiling, and across the stacks of crates and kegs that lined the room.