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By the time Tracy reached the bottom of the slope, someone aboard the Deimoshad awakened to the fact that the DropShips were under attack. A laser battery turret swung from high up along the ship's hull, its double barrels swinging around to cover the woods. Then laser light flared like a star gone nova, outlining in stark and hideous clarity the forms of ru
Then another laser fired . . . and another. Someone at the gu
They would alldie if they remained where the lasers could mark them down. Their only hope was to gain the DropShip ramp. Men were gathered at the top of the ramp as she approached from the bottom, and she felt a kind of plucking at the left sleeve of her uniform as her boot came down on the ramp's base.
Tracy fired her TK again, seeing gruesome wounds open like red blossoms among the men above her. Then Lieutenant Dulaney was rushing past her, ru
"Tracy!"
She looked down and back and wished she hadn't. The ramp was withdrawing into the ship, its end now meters above the ground. She looked down into the eyes of Janice Taylor, wide and white in her paint-smeared face.
"Tracy! Let go!"
But Tracy clung to the ramp as it swung into the air.
Dulaney was above and beyond her, firing his submachine gun in short, savage bursts. Somehow, the man kept his balance as the ramp moved, somehow he began moving again, step after uncertain step, still firing, moving toward the narrowing opening of the hatch. Why didn't he fall? He reached the hatch when it was three-quarters closed, stepping through into the red light that flooded from the opening. She heard gunfire, submachine gun rattles mingled with the throatier blasts of rifles. She heard Dulaney scream.
Tracy followed, clutching the TK's pistol grip with one hand, the ramp grating with the other, making her way up toward the hatch. She realized the Bay hatch had stopped closing by the time she had reached the top, and squeezed through the meter-tall opening.
Inside, the bay was red-lit and filled with struggling figures. She saw Dulaney's body sprawled nearby, the submachine gun lying beyond one outflung hand. She had only a moment to wonder at how so many of the attacking Legion troops had managed to get past her and up the ramp. Only she and Dulaney had been on the ramp when it began to move. The answer struck her with almost brutal force. The prisoners! They must have been kept on one of the DropShip's lower decks, must have attacked their guards when the Legion strike force's attack had begun!
Seeing two Marik soldiers run toward a hatchway, she cut them down with a swift, accurate burst from her TK. Then she found the bay hatch controls close by Dulaney's body. The Lieutenant had managed to punch the button that stopped the hatch from closing entirely, but had died before he could open the door and extend the ramp all the way once more. She touched the proper controls, then stood guard, crouched above the Lieutenant's body.
Once the rest of the assault force assigned to the Deimosarrived, the battle did not last. There had been only twenty Marik troopers aboard, less than the total number of prisoners. No wonder they had looked nervous!
Word came swiftly that the strike force's rush had taken the Phobosas well. That ship's defenders had not even had time to fire a laser or to try to cycle their hatch shut. Use Martinez had gutted a Marik guard with a combat knife she had hidden before her capture, and led the rest of the Phobo'screw against the bridge, even as Legion troops had poured onto the 'Mech bay deck. Even at that, it had been a close call. Seven of the assault force troops had been killed, including Dulaney. Six prisoners had died in the battles aboard the DropShips. Fifteen were wounded among both the rescuers and the rescued. The ships' doctors and medical perso
They found Graff's body, or what was left of it, some time later. A wild, slicing laser shot from the Deimoshad exploded most of his body from the waist down. Though Tracy felt Graff had gotten what he deserved, she had other things on her mind.
When she found the Dutiful Daughterintact, hung safely in its storage rack, she had been overjoyed.
Nowshe would show what she could do!
* * *
Grayson ran his fingers across the deeply engraved lettering in the ferrocrete facing of the building inside the underground chamber, and felt a profound shock to see those words in this place. He and his people had been looking for a weapons cache, and instead had found: STAR LEAGUE FIELD LIBRARY FACILITY, HELM, DE890-2699.
He had heard of such facilities, but had never seen one. Most, he knew, had been set up in the important cities of worlds across the I
"What is it, Gray?" Lori said. "What does it mean?"
"It means we might have some trouble explaining it to Duke Ricol," Grayson said. "I don't think thisis what he had in mind when he spoke of a Star League treasure." The door opened silently at his touch, and light flooded the single room when his boot touched the carpeted deck. This room was not dusty, as had been the engineering shack outside, but it held the same built-in desk and computer.
Grayson quickly sent a soldier for the memory clip still set into the slot of the computer outside. When the clip was plugged into the library computer, the entire wall opposite the computer terminal came to life in color and light. Some words flashed on: "The Advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only true guardian of liberty. "—James Madison.
When Grayson touched the engage key, the words vanished and were replaced by what, at first glance, appeared to be a listing of subjects. The room was indeed a library of sorts, and slowly, haltingly, Grayson began to learn how to use it.
Within the next two hours, he discovered a great deal. How a culture handles the dissemination of information to its population can be one of the most critical aspects of its vitality. A culture that restricts information to a select and militant few, or one that reserves learning only for those few able to afford expensive technical devices or expensive schooling—those cultures are flawed to their very cores, no matter how outwardly vigorous and expansive. The Helm library had been one technological answer to the problem that faces every advanced civilization: how do you put an explosion of new information into the hands of people who need it?
Grayson learned that, centuries ago, libraries such as this had been located on every world, in nearly every major city of the old Star League. Their design was simple: it consisted of a memory core that could easily be duplicated onto other cores, and read off the appropriate electronic hardware, either a computer terminal or a simple memory retrieval screen. The technology of the 31st Century, Grayson realized, was no longer up to building a device such as the library itself, but the memory cores and the means for duplicating that knowledge were commonly available. A sampling of the information stored within the computer's memory convinced Grayson that he had found a treasure far greater than any number of BattleMechs.