The Price of Glory

"That makes no sense at all," she said. "It looks . . . deliberate! An earthquake? You said there could be earthquakes here ..."

"I estimate that that stone slab weighs something like ten billion kilograms . . . ten million metric tons. Yes, an earthquake couldhave moved that large a weight . . . but could it have moved onlythat slab of stone, and not brought down these cliffs here ... or here? Or made the river banks collapse? What about this building, in the modern view? Maybe it was built after the . . . earthquake . . . but when you put it together with the lack of changes elsewhere in the area, well, I'm having trouble believing in an earthquake thatselective."

"That isthe same rock, only turned on end?"

"I'm convinced of it. It's not very thick, actually, from what I can see. It looks like it was deliberately pulled up and stood on end. I've been wondering if it wasn't trimmed a bit to fit here, across the river valley. And it looks to me as though the river valley itself was dug out some, to make the stone fit."

"Then what you're saying—." She stopped. He's right! He really has found it!

Grayson set the pointer on the enigmatic, vertical rock cliff. "Lori, my love, I think that what we are looking at here is a door. A very large, very strong, and very deliberately placed door."

'The Star League weapons cache."

"Makes sense," he said. "It's only about a hundred kilometers from Freeport. The fact that the river flowed down into the mountains suggests that there was some sort of a cave entrance there. I think that Star League engineer . . . what was his name?"

"Keeler."

"I think Major Keeler and his people diverted the river somehow, maybe by damming it off in Freeport. The river bed went dry, and left a large, clean, dry cave or tu

"So he destroyed the world ..."

"And in doing so, probably killed everyone who actually knew the secret of where the weapons were."

"So how come ComStar couldn't figure this out?"

"I doubt that anybody thought to compare the two maps, side by side. Maybe they worked with old maps that showed things as they were before the cache was hidden. They probably worked mostly with maps made after the destruction of Freeport. But you have to see them both, side by side, to realize that that"—heused the pointer to indicate the out-of-place cliff—"simply doesn't belong there!"

"Next question. How do we get at it? That isyour idea, isn't it?"

He smiled, but exhaustion distorted the smile into something closer to a grimace. "How does brute force sound?"

"I can just see you walking your Marauderup to that cliff and kicking it in."

"I doubt that would do the trick. But we do have a healthy supply of explosives from the storehouse down in Durandel. And we have a former mining engineer who knows how to use it."

"You think we could bring down the cliff?"

Grayson used the pointer again. "I don't know geology that well, but I'm engineer enough to know that this cliff has to be supported . . . braced somehow . . . and it looks to me like that might be here, and here, on top of the cliff and at opposite sides of the valley. Or maybe our real engineer can come up with something better. And if DeVillar can't take three tons of high explosives and bring that cliff down, I'll be willing to tu

"But why? Oh, sure ... we could use some new 'Mechs . . . and there're spares and repair facilities in there, certainly. But we can't use all that stuff, and I doubt that Langsdorf will give us time to enjoy it. All the equipment on Helm won't help us if all we have is our under-strength regiment . . . and no time to work out a decent defense."

"For whatever reason, ComStar wants those weapons, Lori. I daresay they've promised a share of them to the Marik people working for them. Garth, for example, must be convinced he's going to get something out of all this, and that something would have to be pretty valuable."

"Like a regiment or so of mint-perfect BattleMechs."

"Right. Whether it was ComStar or Rachan working on his own, millions of people were slaughtered simply to get usout of the way, so that they could get their hands on that stuff." Grayson's mouth set again in an unyielding, bitter line. "They will notget away with that. If the cache is that valuable, let's see to it that they don't get it!"

"You're going to destroy it?"

"We'll see what Lieutenant DeVillar says. I suspect, though, that we'll either be able to break in, or we'll be able to so smash up the face of that mountain so that no one will everget in. If we can enter, perhaps we'll be in a position to bargain with Langsdorf, and still cut out ComStar so that theydon't profit from . . . from Sirius V. If we can't get in, we'll ruin it so that neither Marik or ComStar will ever find a way to get at the cache.

"One way or another, Lori, Rachan is going to pay for Sirius V!"

22

Grayson still had not slept, and only the fire burning within his mind and heart kept him moving. He and Lori had returned to the encampment, where he had explained his discovery to the senior people, including all of A Company. The Legion was about to attempt something very difficult, he explained, and it would be good if the men knew just what would be expected of them.

It had taken him five minutes to sketch an outline of the proposed plan: move south, find the cache, and seize it either as a bargaining tool or to prevent the Legion's betrayors from getting it. When DeVillar saw a printout of the cliff face area from the Marik map, he was confident that it would take only a small amount of explosives to bring it down. What he could not promise was whether or not the collapse would also cave in the cache tu

Grayson did not go into details about the possible location of the weapons cache, of course. There was too much chance that someone who knew the cache's secret would be captured, and fall into Rachan's or Garth's hands. Right now, the Legion had a slight head start, and Grayson would need every instant of it. If they could race south to the Nagayan Mountains as they'd originally pla

Whoever controlled Helm's secret would be in a powerful bargaining position and Grayson knew it. He was also tactician enough to realize that it would not be difficult to defend the approaches to that artificial cliff, perhaps making it possible to strike a deal with Langsdorf.

If Langsdorf can keep Garth and ComStar off our backs, we could agree to split the cache with him,Grayson thought. Or maybe we could make a separate deal with Garth.That thought revolted him, because Garth had apparently been a willing participant in the destruction of Tiantan. It was Garth's report, and holographs taken by men in Garth's employ, that had shown the 'Mechs masquerading as Legion 'Mechs among Tiantan's ruins.