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Ashamed of being so weak, Lori hurried to the chain link ladder dangling along the Shadow Hawk'sflanks and began swarming up the rungs toward the cockpit, ten meters overhead.
It was time to give the order to march.
* * *
All together, the muster rolls showed 612 survivors among the Techs, trainees, infantry, service perso
The unit's eight BattleMechs had been deployed, with Lori herself in the rear, McCall's Riflemanranging far out to the front, and the remaining six 'Mechs deployed three to each side of the convoy, as flankers. The convoy's speed was limited to fifty kilometers per hour. Though some vehicles could make better speeds, most could not. Grayson had insisted that the convoy stay together throughout the march.
They had been travelling for only five minutes when McCall gave warning over the taccom frequency.
"What do you have, McCall?"
"Motion, Lieutenant," McCall replied. "Bearin' a' one-niner-five, at a range a' aboot two hundred meters. Lieutenant ... ah read it as a man, movin' on foot."
A scout,was Lori's first thought. A Marik scout. Langsdorf must have thrown scouts out to warn of our movement! Damn . . .
"Command to all units," she transmitted on the general command frequency. "We have a possible infantry sighting on our front. Be alert for ambush." In the dark, small units of troops masked against infrared observation could be deployed across a 'Mech force's path, waiting in ambush with shoulder-fired infernos and short-range missiles. It would take very little indeed to cripple the convoy's march.
"Lieutenant ..." McCall's voice came again across the private tactical frequency.
She heard relief in his voice . . . and something else. "What is it, Davis?"
"Two more survivors, Lieutenant. Heard tha' recall but couldnae reach the encampment in time. They just stepped from the weeds an' flagged me doon ..."
Lori sank back in her seat, weak with relief. They were not ready to fight a battle . . . not now . . .
"And Lori ..."
"Yes?'
"Let's bring Delmar in on tha' cha
The news of the rescue of two more survivors of Durandel brought cheers and laughter across the general com circuit, and Lori heard Delmar's whoop of joy when McCall told him that Terri and his son were safe. Her own face was wet under the mask of her neurohelmet when, moments later, the convoy began moving again, southward and into the night.
* * *
"Colonel! Wake up!"
King nudged Grayson in the ribs, dragging him back to a sleep-sodden wakefulness. Grayson's neck and back were stiff from the hours of stolen sleep in the passenger seat of the skimmer.
As Grayson and Lori had worked out the Legion convoy's route south, Grayson knew when the convoy was leaving Durandel, and how fast it would be traveling. It should have been a simple matter of the math to know where to steer across the empty grasslands of the North Highland Plains in a direction to intercept the convoy on its way south toward the mountains.
There was a considerable gap between theory and reality, however. The plains were large, and even so huge an organism as a convoy of 'Mechs and skimmer transports snaking south across the prairie was vanishingly small among so much open space. As for a lone, two-seat skimmer, it was positively microscopic.
Grayson blinked himself awake. King had stopped the skimmer, and the night closed in around them. The sky was bright with stars. He recognized Aldhafera, one of the brightest stars in Helm's sky, high in the east. The dusting of faint stars of the Milky Way outlined the low, dark mass of the far horizon.
"What is it, Alard?"
"This is the place, Colonel. They should be here . . . now. I don't see 'em."
Grayson stood on the skimmer's seat and took a long, hard look into the darkness, first to the north, then to the south. Which way? If the convoy had already passed, it would be to the south now. If he and King raced at top speed, they might catch up with it. If, however, the convoy had not come this far yet, then it would be still to the north.
Grayson climbed out of the skimmer, took a small electric hand torch from King, and made his way through waist-deep prairie grass. Several meters from the skimmer, he stopped and studied the ground.
Hovercraft made little permanent impression on vegetation such as this tough, sturdy prairie grass. Their passage could have been detected on barren, dusty, or sandy terrain, where their fans tended to sweep broad swatches of loose soil or dust from rocks and to overturn lightly rooted vegetation. On these plains, an army of hovercraft could pass without leaving a trace.
A BattleMech, however, was something different. Weighing from twenty to a hundred tons, depending on the type, with all of that weight concentrated across only two foot pads in most models, 'Mechs tended to leave a lasting impression along any path that was not packed to the consistency of poured ferrocrete. Grayson struck out through the darkness, his torch probing this way and that, for a distance of about a hundred meters. It was possible that they could have missed the track; and that the trampled ruin of the convoy's passing might lie just another hundred meters farther east, but Grayson did not think that was the case.
He knew Lori's skill as a navigator. Further, he knew that Lori would not have left Durandel even one minute earlier than she absolutely had to when he had not returned on time. She was too good a soldier to delay the convoy by waiting for him, but she would not have left earlier, either. There was always the possibility of minor problems slowing down the column, however. When travelling with so many civilians, there were bound to be delays.
Grayson was certain that the convoy must still lie to the north. In fact, he was willing to stake his life on that certainty.
He started back toward the skimmer, but King's voice reached him midway. "There, Colonel! I see them!" McCall's Riflemanhad loomed out of the darkness from the north like a walking mountain. In another ten minutes, Lori was sobbing in his arms, with neither of them caring that they were hemmed in by tens, by hundreds of others of the Legion.
* * *
The Gray Death sentry could not see what all the commotion was about. He only knew that the convoy had stopped and that there was considerable excitement up ahead somewhere. Several soldiers ran past him, but he remained where he was, at his post.
Graff the traitor sat in the back of the hovercraft, and the sentry eyed the man warily. If it were up to him,Graff would be history. There didn't seem to be a whole lot of sense in dragging the prisoner along with the Legion to wherever it was going. What did the Colonel and the other high-ups plan? A big trial followed by a showy execution? That wouldn't help the poor bastards back in the DropShips, and it wouldn't help the Legion get off this dirtball of a planet.
The sentry shifted in his seat. The hovercraft's pilot had gone off to check on what had stopped the column. That wasn't according to route discipline, and so the sentry hoped that he wouldn't catch hell because the pilot had chosen to disregard orders. He looked at Graff, and Graff looked back.