The Price of Glory

The river valley itself was perhaps ten meters wide at that point, a gentle depression lined with sand, gravel, and ancient, water-worn stones. On either side, the walls of the river valley proper rose more sharply, fifty meters high and capped by a blanket of heavy blue-green vegetation.

As the dry valley curved deeper in among the trees and rocks, there was a point where the valley walls stopped looking like accidents of nature, where even the most skeptical of the Legion's company could look to left and right and see the crisp lines where rock and dirt had been carved from the valley walls, widening the gap for the Wall.

There was no other name for it. Polished by eons of flowing water, it stood just as carefully shaped and set on end by unknown agencies as it had for the past three centuries. The rain and wind of those intervening centuries had softened the crisp contours of the valley cliffs on either side of the Wall somewhat, but they had not touched the granite structure itself. As Grayson stood before it, letting his hand run across its smooth surface, he could imagine that it had been set in place as a dam across that river valley only yesterday, that the builders themselves might step through some hidden door in that featureless expanse and demand to know what the Legion wanted.

Two hundred meters from the Wall was the lone building that Grayson had noticed on the modern map projection. Viewed from above, it had presented a curious sight. It looked even stranger up close, a squat, truncated, four-sided pyramid of cast ferrocrete and gray metal. Though it had no windows, an inset door opened inward on silent, floating bearings when Grayson set his hand against it. He stepped through quickly, with Lori and King close behind him.

"An engineering station," DeVillar said from the doorway, as others of the 'Mech company gathered outside. "Set up as an office or a construction headquarters by whoever built . . . that." Since they had arrived, most of the members of the Legion had avoided calling the structure across the river valley by name. Some called it "the Wall," but most referred to it obliquely as "that" or "it." The sheer scope of such an engineering feat had a numbing effect on those who saw it, for it would be impossible to duplicate it with present-day technology.

Grayson slowly turned, taking in the room. "Could be," he said. "They didn't leave much . . . except for the computer."

Though roomy enough to have stored a number of vehicles or large crates of machinery, which DeVillar suggested might have been the case, the one-room building was empty except for a table with built-in computer terminal and screen. The table was coated with a thick layer of dust, as was the floor and even the walls.

"You mean the engineers who built it worked here during the construction? Used the computer for their calculations, that sort of thing?"

"Seems likely," King said. He was examining the back of the computer. "Gods, how well they built things back then! This is the same sort of computer as up at Helmfast, but it has its own internal power cells, near as I can tell. You could turn it on right now . . . and it would probably work."

Grayson reached his hand out toward the keyboard, hesitated, then turned away. "Lieutenant DeVillar, let's take a look at that Wall. If we have to open it, I want to do it soon. Garth will be here soon, and I don't like camping in a blind alley like this. It would be too easy to catch us with no way out!"

A close examination of the wall confirmed Devillar's earlier appraisal. The granite block appeared to have been balanced on end, then anchored to the opposite sides of the valley escarpments with struts or bolts on the inside. Plastic explosive charges set at the upper corners of the Wall would shatter those struts, sending the wall falling outward, opening the way over the rubble to the storehouse in the tu

While DeVillar and a pair of Techs clambered along the escarpments looking for places to implant their explosives, Grayson studied the face of the Wall itself. The smoothness appeared to be completely natural, the result of mille

A door? The groove was so narrow that Grayson could not force his knife point between the two sections of rock, but it was deep enough that even with a hand torch, he could not see how deeply it cut into the stone. If it were a door, there would have to be a key of some kind. What that key was, Grayson hadn't a clue.

His hand communicator bleeped. He took it from its belt hanger and opened the cha

"Carlyle."

"Aye, Colonel, it's McCall. Ah go' a wee bit a' fell news."

"Bad news? What is it?"

"Ah'm trackit a large force ... a vurralarge force, to the north and travelin' south, fast!"

"You're tracking by their radio transmissions?"

"Aye ... ah can ae' hear 'em chatterin' away at one another. Multiple signals ... all in code ... ah di

"Anything about our DropShips?" The strike force should have attacked the DropShips before dawn, though with the communications blackout Grayson had imposed on the entire force, there was no way to know whether the attempt had succeeded or failed.

"No, sair. No' a worrd."

"Right. As of now, you're our tracker. Keep on them. And let me know if you hear anything about the strike force." McCall's Riflemanhad the best long-range sensors and tracking gear of any 'Mech in his command. It made sense for him to be responsible for watching the enemy force's approach.

Now that the Marik DropShips he had seen the night before had landed, the Marik 'Mech forces aboard would have been very busy indeed unloading their equipment and joining up with Langsdorf's forces already on the planet. The Marik DropShips still in orbit would have spotted the Legion force not long after sun-up, however, and possibly long before that if they had the correct and functioning technology for identifying 'Mechs from orbit in the dark.

Whatever their technology, it was certain that Garth's people knew precisely where the Legion was now, and they had to be on their way. He wondered if they had some inkling that Grayson already knew where the Star League cache was, that he was already preparing to blast his way in.

DeVillar began to gather his explosives.

* * *

Duke Garth entered the room, smiling. "All is in readiness, Precentor. The 15th Marik Militia is already moving. What is left of the 12th White Sabers and the 5th Marik Guards have joined with the House Marik Guard elements we have here. They are ready to move on my command!"

Precentor Rachan turned slowly, his face a mask of black fury. Garth stopped when he saw it, knowing that something was terribly wrong. The Precentor sat at a small tactical battlefield computer, an orbital photographic map projection displayed in color on the screen.

"Your command? Yourcommand?"

"Precentor . . . what . . . ?"

"I suggestedthat we would need AeroSpace Fighters in case we had to search for Carlyle, but you said they could not be spared from Irian! I toldyou that we should have landed our ships to the south, near the ruins of Free-port, in hopes of catching Carlyle if his force moved toward the Nagayan Mountains! You refused, telling me that landing at a spaceport at night was saferthan on open ground! I told you ... I insistedthat you set your 'Mechs moving without delay the moment we had grounded, and you found one trivial delay after another, until now the day is almost half gone, and now,only now,are you are ready to set out!"