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And then Grayson had made her first a Tech, and ultimately a MechWarrior under his command. They'd managed to win on Trellwan, through a combination of superb tactics and sheer luck, and had then gone on to form an independent mercenary unit. Already the unit was something of a legend. Against unbelievable odds, the Gray Death had helped the rebels on Verthandi win their independence, and at the same time, Lori had won a personal victory. In the torture chambers of Regis, she had finally overcome her fear of fire. More, she had come to realize that she did, indeed, deeply love this young, sometimes exuberant, sometimes exasperating man beside her.
Gently, she rubbed Grayson's back and felt his trembling subside. She reached up and stroked his blond hair, moving stubborn wisps away from his rugged face. At her touch, he roused, lifted her face to his, and kissed her with a sudden, desperate eagerness. She responded ardently, fiercely glad that of all the women in the Legion, she was the one to whom Grayson turned for love and comfort.
Strange. She still wasn't entirely sure that he loved her, nor if he was capable of loving any one woman. For now, it was enough that he needed her.
The early morning sun filtered through the trees, creating mottled shadows on the ground that the bubble tent's camouflage pattern mimicked closely.
It's a lot like Sigurd here,she thought, cupping her hands around a hot mug, and taking occasional careful sips. Cold . . . rocky . . . mountainous—but beautiful. There were mountains to the south, she knew, three thousand meters tall, the tallest spires capped with eternal snows, with endless glaciers. So much like home.
She stood up abruptly and strode to the edge of the clearing behind Grayson's tent. Home! She hadn't thought of Sigurd that way for a long time. Yet Helm reminded her so much of the land of her childhood, reminded her of a time before Hendrik of Oberon's troops had arrived in fire and fury and death to force that isolated planet to join his confederation. After her parents were killed and she had been orphaned in a conquered world, Lori had joined the Defense Forces partly as a way of combating her intense loneliness. She had found friends—comrades— that helped replace her lost family, only to see them torn from her, too.
It had been harder to make new friends in the Legion. At first, on Trellwan, the men hadn't trusted her, didn't respect her; she'd had to maintain distance in order to retain authority. Then, by the time they had begun to accept her as a fellow warrior, everyone assumed that she was the Chief's woman and so avoided getting close to her all the more. It wasn't until Janice Taylor joined up on Verthandi that Lori really found someone she could talk to.
Lori looked back at the encampment. There were signs of stirring now in the other tents, though Grayson apparently still slept. As one of the early risers this morning, she had enjoyed the solitude. In a close-knit community like the Legion, it was sometimes difficult to find a private moment. She walked back to the fire, refilled her mug, and sat down on a log, hoping that a good night's rest had refreshed Grayson's mind as well as his body. She, too, was wondering how they would get out of this fix, yet felt confident that Grayson would find a way.
A soft rustle and a low moan from the tent told her that he was waking up. A moment later, he poked out his head, sleepily trying to focus his gray eyes. Seeing her, he pushed some recalcitrant strands of straw-colored hair out of his eyes, and gri
"Morning, woman," he drawled. "Is that coffee I smell?"
"It sure is, Gray." Lori smiled back. "If you're good, I might even have a mug for you by the time you get out of that sack."
"Oh, I'm good, Lori, I'm real good." He pulled his head back into the tent and a moment later, emerged fully dressed. He sat down on the log next to Lori to pull on his boots.
"Did you sleep well?" she asked.
Grayson stretched luxuriously and then took the proffered mug from Lori's hand. "As always, after one of your delicious . . . ah . . . treatments, my love." He rested one hand on her thigh. "You're good for me, Lori. You know that?"
She smiled, but felt an inward twinge. She was not as free with endearments as Grayson was, and somehow could never fully believe his tender words. Few relationships in the Legion, or in any similar combat unit for that matter, lasted as long as theirs had already. She kept expecting Grayson to grow tired of her one day, but the thought always brought a tiny, distant chill.
"Do you have a plan, Gray? Do you know what we're going to do next?" She took a last sip of coffee and tried to steer her own thoughts away from matters personal.
The tall, blond leader took a deep breath, held it, then let it out slowly. "Yes," he said finally. "I know what I've got to do next."
Lori looked at him sharply. He had said "I," not "we." Whatever Grayson pla
At times, the burden of command seemed far too heavy for those broad twenty-four year-old shoulders. At others, he acted as though he might take on the universe and win. Lori didn't know which attitude exasperated her the most.
"So?" She reached for the battered coffee pot on its self-powered hotplate, and poured herself another cup, more for something to do than anything else. Coffee was already in short supply, but thatwas certainly the least of their worries. "So . . . what's your plan?"
Grayson's studied cheerfulness was another of his masks, one she had come to know well in four years. He knew she wasn't going to approve of whatever it was he had in mind, and so he assumed this outrageously cheerful facade. Of course, he couldn't assume the facade if he wasn't truly sure of which course of action to pursue, but following his shifts of mood could be frustrating.
"First and foremost, Lori, we need information. For one thing, do this Colonel Langsdorf and our friend Graff really represent the Marik government?"
"You still think we could be caught in a civil war?"
He shook his head. "I doubt it, but it's a possibility. We've got to know where we stand with these people, and with Janos Marik, before we take another step. Then, we must contact our friends."
"Friends? What friends do we have here on Helm?"
"Oh, you'd be surprised, Lori. Back in the old days, governments kept embassies in one another's countries. The idea was to have people there to keep an eye on what was going on in the other fellow's backyard, and to have someone convenient as a mouthpiece to that government when the need arose." Grayson sipped his own coffee, and scowled at its bitterness. "No sugar? Well, never mind. There's not much sense in embassies today, of course," he went on, "not with everybody fighting everybody else half the time, and with the Great Houses controlling so many worlds."
"There are embassies : . . and ambassadors. That negotiator on Sirius V, the Steiner Special Envoy ..."
"Right, but they tend to come and go only as they're needed, say, when a trade treaty or a defense pact has to be negotiated and signed. A world like Sirius V would probably have a regular envoy from House Steiner, and House Davion, and Kurita and Marik, just because it's a fairly important world on the Liao trade lanes. But an out-of-the-way rock like Helm wouldn't have anything like that.