"So how'd you wind up in a back alley with the derelicts?" Grayson asked.
"Good question. Like I said, the Invidiouswas in need of repairs, and I didn't get all of them taken care of during the refit. Seems there was a loose insulation panel in that hold, one I could pry loose, then pull back in once I'd squeezed myself into the 'tween heads. I stayed there until I heard them come back to find out I was missing, then slipped out of my hide-hole, made my way aft to a hold where they were off-loading 'Mechs, and slipped off with some soldiers." He paused, seeing Grayson's lifted eyebrow. "Well, I'd acquired a uniform by that time. That helped."
"That one?" Grayson pointed at Tor's muddied tunic. "Hardly. I'd hoped to talk with someone here, maybe the local port authority, about what I could do to get my crew freed. They... uh... don't take kindly to offworlders here. At least, not now."
Another troop of soldiers tramped past. These were members of the planet's Militia, Grayson noted, in brown uniforms instead of green. Barracks talk in the Castle had generally held Sarghad's Militiamen to be superior soldiers, though few of Carlyle's Commandos held either of the two local military forces in high esteem.
What was going on? Grayson wondered. Did he now have the Militia searching for him, too?
9
Grayson and Tor continued watching the soldiers in the street. It didn't appear that Jeverid's Guard was engaged in anything like a serious search, but they were definitely on the alert, patrolling the major streets for... what? Offworlders escaped from the attack at the Castle? Or suspicious characters, in general? With a bandit camp so close by, the local government forces might well be watching for any gathering of armed or unpleasant-looking folks who might be the first line of a raider assault.
Why were so many of them moving north? A small convoy of ground-effect weapons carriers — HVWCs — whined past.
Grayson kept turning Tor's story over in his mind. A freighter boarded, her diplomatic passengers slain? He'd been tempted at first to dismiss the idea as outright fabrication, but why would Tor lie about something like that? Bandits engaged in deception and subtle treachery as frequently as any organized government of the Inner Worlds, but this secret transfer of cargo and personnel at a nav check sounded pointless. That had to have been one of Hendrik's ships that stopped the Invidious.Only Hendrik's people would have known the freighter's exact course as she jumped from star to star on her jump series from Oberon to Trellwan.
The distance between the two systems was about 145 light years. Because JumpShips could only manage about 30 lights at a jump, they had to plot and execute a number of system-to-system transits called the jump series, often in long and round about fashion from star to star. Most of those stars — like the one where Tor had been ambushed — were planetless, or were circled by barren and useless worlds of dead rock and ice. The chances that a ship would just happen to be there waiting for another ship were impossibly slim. Which meant the ambushers knew the Invidiouswas coming that way. Which meant Hendrik had ordered the ambush.
Or did it? Hendrik ruled an uneasy coalition of twelve minor Bandit Kings and their worlds. Perhaps someone on his staff represented a dissident faction — a revolutionary faction, one working against Hendrik. That might explain the greatest mystery in Tor's story, the mystery of why Hendrik would bother to take the Invidiousin deep space instead of right at home in the Oberon system.
But that still left so many unanswered questions. Why would anyone in Hendrik's camp bother attacking the Trellwan garrison, when the entire planet was to have been handed over to him peacefully within a few hours? Even a rebellious faction would likely have been advised to wait. Grabbing the Trell system for themselves would do nothing for dissidents in a showdown with Hendrik's forces except tie up needed men and machines.
It just didn't make any sense, Grayson thought. There was also the question of what Tor had seen when his ship had been taken. He'd said the men who boarded her had worn Oberon livery, but the 'Mechs transferring the cargo had been better cared-for than the equipment they'd been passing over. Bandit kingdoms — even large and powerful ones like that of Hendrik III — could rarely field anything better than patched-together and many-times-salvaged 'Mechs that had been through scores of battles. From where had those gleaming, fresh-painted machines come? Could Hendrik afford to hire a mercenary Lance from the Inner Sphere? From Kurita's Draconis Combine, perhaps?
And if he could manage that, why not use them in the attack? Why the deception? Why? Why?
"Hey!" Tor touched his shoulder, startling him. "They're clearing out!"
The Guards seemed to be withdrawing from the streets, some piling onto a rusty, six-wheeled personnel carrier, the rest hurrying up the street. Grayson could make out an officer in the APC's hatch talking with animated gestures on a transceiver handset
"Something sure has stirred them up," he said. "Wonder what?"
The answer came with a flash and a bang that struck Grayson like a blow to the chest, leaving him momentarily breathless. Across the avenue from where Tor and Grayson crouched, a storefront exploded like a geyser of flame, brick, glass, stone, and black smoke. People were screaming, and above the shrieks and yells came the measured rumble of heavy machinery in motion.
Grayson knew that sound. He squirmed forward on his stomach until he could peer around the corner of the sheltering building and look up the street. What he had heard was a Marauder,twelve meters tall and massively armored, hung with weapons that gave it a lumbering, top-heavy look. Grayson knew from experience that that machine was anything but clumsy.
He saw the stylized, slit-eyed emblem brightly painted on the heat-seared metal of the left leg and knew that this was the black-and-gray-painted machine that had killed his father.
A fascination born of sick horror gripped him, held him frozen there at the mouth of the alley. Almost in slow motion, the armored monster straightened slightly, then brought its right arm up as though pointing. Recessed in the swollen bulk of the forearm were a pair of the 'Mech's primary weapons, a medium laser and the massive bore of a particle cannon.
The laser flashed blue-white, a brilliant pulse that shrieked and ionized the air in its wake. The beam struck the APC, setting aflame the Guardsmen who had been clinging to its hull. Grayson squeezed his eyes shut against the blinding light, but still saw the afterimage of a Guards officer writhing in the carrier's hatch as the steel around him blossomed into a fireball.
A chain of staccato cracks carried above the roar of flame and crumbling buildings. The Marauder'sautocannon, a tree-sized barrel mounted across the 'Mech's left shoulder, was spewing 120 mm high-explosive destruction in three-round bursts that shattered the street behind the burning carrier, and transformed clumps of running green uniforms into bloodied shreds of rag. The smoke roiling down from the APC was acrid and black, and it stank of oil and charred flesh.
Grayson felt a hand on his shoulder, tugging, insistent. "Grayson!" We've got to get clear!" C'mon!" But, eyes locked on the Marauder,Grayson couldn't move. The 'Mech took one huge step, then another, pausing after each step as though testing the fooling. Fire flickered around its crab's head from the ineffectual shoulder-portable missiles and lasers of the city's unarmored defenders. Grayson found himself willing the Sarghad fighters to concentrate their fire, to seek out the vital nexuses of control circuits and servoactuators that might — might! — give them a slim chance of bringing the giant down. There was one such nexus where the legs joined the body, under that flat head. If they could just work together...