The Marauderlurched forward into the street, completing the destruction. The front wall of the house rippled and collapsed inward, sending a galaxy of red sparks into the smoky pall above it.
Tor was watching Grayson's face. "That was the house of your friends, I take it."
"Yes... yes, it was. But I don't understand.. Why did they destroy just that one house?" Berenir's house had been eliminated with surgical precision, but none of the other buildings on the block had been touched. Grayson wondered if Claydon had survived. As the Maraudermoved on to the north, leaving rubble and flames behind, Grayson thought it was unlikely. He watched grimly as another wall of Berenir's house collapsed in a shower of sparks.
Grayson and Tor edged back away from the street. "Sorry about your friends," Tor said.
Grayson nodded acknowledgment. He felt curiously empty now, drained of all but the need to strike back against the bandit 'Mechs. But how? How? A feeling of helplessness weighed heavily on him now.
"I'm heading for the port," Tor said. "Technicians are always in demand, and I've got enough ship teching skill to find me a billet. You can come along as my assistant and we'll find a way to dye your hair. Then you won't have to take mud baths, right?"
Grayson thought for a moment, then shook his head. "Go on without me, Captain. I've got something else to do."
Tor was taken back. "What?" he wanted to know. "Where?"
I've... never mind," Grayson said, distracted by his own musings. "I've just got to do some thinking, is all. I'll find you at the port later."
"When?"
Grayson shrugged. "I don't know." He glanced down at his hand, wondering why it was not trembling. His legs and arms felt weak, as though the surge of emotions that had drained away at the sight of the Marauderhad left him a husk, scarcely able to stand. The adrenalin high that had kept him going till now was vanishing, leaving him exhausted.
He turned to face Tor. "Just go. I'll join you when I can."
Tor grinned, but worry showed in his eyes. "Don't take too long. Us aliens have to slick together now, right?"
Go to hell and leave me alone, Grayson thought with a viciousness that surprised him. He said nothing, however, but nodded and turned away. He was going to have to find transportation to the mountains, and was not entirely sure that he had the strength to manage it.
* * * *
The junior officer stood stiffly at attention and felt the sweat pooling in the collar of his black body armor. "No, Lord, he is not here," the man reported. Looking up from the paperwork on his desk, the seated man regarded his officer with a cold and level gaze. "He must be. I shot him myself. I saw him fall, right at the spot I marked on the map of the Vehicle Bay I gave you."
"He was not there, Lord." There was fear in the young man's face. His commander had a reputation for ruthlessness. "We have searched the Castle, and checked all the bodies. There... there is evidence that someone was moving about the Castle after our departure. Perhaps this is the boy you seek. A storage compartment door that Sergeant Wynn remembers seeing closed after the battle was open when we returned, and the manifest for that room shows a hovercraft missing. Carlyle's son must have taken a machine and escaped."
Captain Lord Harimandir Singh considered himself a just man — ruthless, yes, and demanding — but not given to whims of raw emotions. He had fired the single shot that had hit the enemy commander's son in the head. It had been his order that had led the attacking party and its prisoners out of the Vehicle Bay,to follow the surviving Commandos to their spaceport perimeter. If Grayson Death Carlyle still lived, it was Singh's responsibility, and not that of the Lieutenant trying so unsuccessfully to mask his terror.
So, the fault is mine, Singh thought. I should have sealed the matter with a second shot, or at least had someone stay and check for wounded in the Bay.
But things had been happening so fast down in that Repair Bay. Only rapid decisions and swift movement would have accomplished the mission.
And the mission HAD been accomplished, had it not? Carlyle's Commandos were broken, the survivors fled, and their base in Singh's hands. If this one boy had managed to escape to Sarghad, could that seriously jeopardize the grand plan? Singh's specific orders had been to make certain of the death of Carlyle's senior Tech, Riviera, of all Mech Warriors remaining in the Castle, and of Carlyle's son. The orders had been carried out, except for the very last.
Singh considered the matter carefully. The boy had not escaped with the surviving members of Carlyle's Lance, of that he was certain. If he lived, he could only be hiding somewhere in Trellwan's desert wilderness, or in that sprawling refuse heap at the foot of this mountain the indigs called Sarghad.
If he hadmade it to the wilderness, his time was running out. Periasteron would bake those deserts with killing heat in only a few more standard days. And even if the boy survived THAT by hiding in a cave somewhere, the -50 degree weather of Trellwan's brief winter would finish him by Secondnight.
That left the city. There was no way to search the entire city for one boy, and no real reason to attempt it. Young Carlyle would not be able to get off the planet, would not even be able to approach the spaceport without being challenged by the perimeter guards. He was effectively marooned on Trellwan. The rest of the Plan was proceeding smoothly, and it seemed that Carlyle's son would pose no obstacle to its final stages.
Besides, there was always the chance that he would be picked up by a patrol unit. Singh decided that it would be best to issue a patrol order requiring that he be notified if anyone of Carlyle's approximate age were taken in Sarghad or at the spaceport. . .no, make that any offworlders, whatever their age. One way or the other, he would learn the boy's whereabouts or assure himself that he was dead.
The officer was still standing at attention before him. "That will be all, Lieutenant You have done well. Thank you for your report"
The Lieutenant sagged visibly with relief, then stiffened and executed a smart right-fist-to-left-chest salute. "Yes, Lord!"
Singh watched the man turn on his heel and leave. No, Carlyle's escape should not affect the Plan at all.
He returned his attention to the work on his desk, a report he was writing for the Duke. A fast courier was scheduled to arrive at the jump point within 24 hours, and Singh's report would bring the Duke and his armada to Trellwan before another local year had passed.
Singh knew that His Grace, Duke Ricol, known throughout the Successor States as The Red Hunter, was eager to begin execution of the next phase of the game.
* * * *
Above Mount Gayal and the brooding, truncated pyramid of the Castle, there rose a series of jagged, cliff-faced peaks, part of the braid of rugged mountain ranges circling Trellwan's equator. The Crysander Mountains were raw and new, shaped by the incessant tidal twistings of Trellwan's very close sun, which continued to fold and refold those uplhrusting layers of igneous rock and, on occasion, literally turned them inside out in lava flows and eruptions. Many of the peaks along the 35,000-kilometer-long range were enthusiastically active volcanos, and mild seismic quakes were a daily occurrence.
Although most of Trellwan was arid, there were two small, snaking, mineral seas nestled among the equatorial mountains. The planet's human colonies had grown in the relatively fertile regions within a few hundred kilometers of these bodies. The slow tidal swell raised by red Trell once each fifteen standard days was too high to encourage seaside settlements. Also, the high sulfur and hydrogen sulfide content of those acid waters made the air for kilometers around heavy with a sour, rotten-egg stench. However, much of Trellwan's power came from unmanned tidal generator plants along the foul-smelling shores of those seas.