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Rachan could not permit the secret these six would learn within the next few days to spread to other worlds, even among other Adepts sworn to secrecy. It had to be buried here on Helm.
The Precentor smiled, nodding to each of the men.
"I've brought you together because I know that you all are trustworthy," he said. "What we are dealing with here is a secret that must never fall into the hands of those outside the very highest ranks of ComStar! It is a secret that holds the future of ComStar itself!"
One of the men was Senior Adept Larabee, a man in his late twenties and the ComStarTech in charge of Helm-down's HPG station. "Excuse me, Precentor," Larabee said. "Does this have to do with this weapon cache in the south? Rumors have been flying through this city for days ..."
"ComStar is not interested in the weapons," Rachan interrupted.
Another Adept looked startled. "I thought that was the whole purpose of the Marik operation! This renegade Carlyle had the key to a lost Star League treasure, and ComStar was helping this Duke Garth recover it!"
"Silence, and attend!" Rachan spoke the time-honored formula used by ComStar instructors with Acolyte apprentices. Having been an instructor for many years, he knew well how to assert his authority over the wills of others. "The weapons cache is a blind, merely a pretext to win Garth's obedience. That Star League facility contains something more precious than BattleMechs or laser weaponry.
"It contains a treasure, and I'll need your help to win it!"
* * *
The rising of the sun had not brought the attack on the captured DropShips. Tracy Maxwell Kent lay flat on her stomach on the wooded slope 100 meters from the Deimos,practically in the DropShip's shadow, and wondered what they were going to do now.
The plan had depended on their rendezvousing with Kurita troops under Duke Ricol's command south of Cleft Valley. The idea had been to surprise the DropShips with their equipment bays open. When word came that the Legion had marched south, the Marik troops would surely relax security around the captured DropShips.
First of all, Ricol's forces had never shown up. There was no telling what had happened there, though the rumor spreading through the assault force was that the Kurita warlord had betrayed them.
That figures,Tracy thought. So now we face two DropShips with fifty troops. Great!
The enemy had not relaxed his security, either. So far as Tracy could see, no one had bothered to tell the Marik forces there that the Legion had gone. The woods were silent, and the BattleMech bay doors were shut, the rampways tucked safely away. Outside each ship, six Marik soldiers in full, bulky combat armor walked nervous patrols. Their attitude suggested that they expected Carlyle's 'Mechs to appear out of the woods at any moment. Tracy turned her head, looking south. Lieutenant Dulaney lay stretched out behind a clump of weeds, and what she could see of his face through all the camouflage paint showed that he was as perplexed as she was. On Tracy's other side, Janice Taylor shifted the position of her TK assault rifle, almost in slow motion, so as not to alert enemy sensors.
So what now? They could lie here in the weeds all day, but it didn't look like the DropShips' captors were going to give them the opportunity they were waiting for, and every passing minute increased their risk of being discovered. Someone among them would sneeze or perhaps be a
The sun continued to rise. Tracy was sweating heavily now, her face paint smearing into a grotesque caricature. She stared at the Deimoswith hungry fascination. Somewhere aboard, strapped and racked along with the rest of the Legion equipment stored in the ship's cargo bays, was the Dutiful Daughter,her Phoenix Hawk.If she could get in, if Tracy could reach her 'Mech, the whole situation would be transformed.
If! If! The word mocked her.
There was a noise, a thrashing in the underbrush 500 meters to the south. She turned her head, searching the light-dappled woods. There was a stir around the Deimosas well. Turret-mounted lasers high in the ship's hull swiveled toward the sound, while the guards in the shadows by the landing legs turned, their weapons at the point.
What emerged from the brush startled Tracy so much that she nearly cried aloud. It was a man dressed in the tattered and dirt-smeared coveralls of someone who had traveled a long, long way through woods and rough terrain on foot. He was too far off for her to recognize his features, but there was something about his form, his posture and the way he moved, that was familiar. The next moment, it came to her in a flash who the man was. Graff!
Somehow, he had escaped from the Legion, had made his way back here. How? Perhaps he had stolen a hovercraft and abandoned the machine nearby, so that he would not be mistaken for the enemy. He entered the clearing between the DropShips now, his hands upraised, still chained together, a white cloth in his fingers. She could hear his voice as he called out to the DropShips. "Hey! Hey! You in there! This is Captain Grass, Marik House Guard! I have news! Don't shoot! I'm friendly! Don't shoot!"
Two of the Deimos'sguards consulted with the others, then left their posts, approaching Graff cautiously with their rifles leveled. Two more sentries approached from the Phobos,to the south, joining Graff midway between the two vessels. As Tracy watched, the five men talked excitedly. She could not hear them, but there was much gesticulating and waving of arms.
A moment later, there was a sound from inside the Deimos,and the BattleMech bay door ground open, the ramp extending out and down to the ground. Two more sentries took their places on either side of the open door, weapons at port arms. A moment later, a pair of Marik officers strode down the ramp and turned toward the conference in the clearing. Half a kilometer away, Tracy could see a similar delegation approaching from the south. Graff's message could only be that the Legion was far away, and that he had escaped to warn his Marik comrades. She could see the subtle shift among the sentries taking part in the conference, the lowering of weapons, the slouching of their postures.
She let her eyes shift over to Dulaney, and he looked back, and winked. Slowly, very slowly, he raised his thumb in a universally understood thumbs-up gesture. Thiswas the opportunity they'd been waiting for!
Dulaney moved his hand, bringing the small hand-held transmitter to his lips. "All units . . . this is it! Go! Go!"
Listeners aboard the DropShips would hear, of course, but they would lose long seconds to surprise and confusion. As a single body, the fifty hidden men and women along the ridges on both sides of the landing zone rose from the weeds and brush and scattered boulders. Laser and submachine gun fire lanced and stabbed into the valley. Tracy saw the sentries under the Deimoswhirl, eyes wide, their weapons searching the ridge slopes, looking for a target. By the time they found their targets, though, by the time those targets had registered on their brains, they were already dying, cut through by a hail of automatic fire.
Tracy held down the trigger of her TK as she ran down the hill, hosing the entrance to the Deimos's'Mech bay with a small and deadly cloud of 3 mm slivers. One of the sentries on the ramp threw down his rifle and clasped his face with his hands as blood erupted from the ruin of his face. The other sentry pitched off the ramp, blood pumping from multiple, shattered craters in his body armor.