Through the windows behind Stannic, green sky and red sun cast long shadows into the room. Seconday was passing with dragging hours. Outside, laborers worked to secure insulating panels to the windows. With the advent of Secondnight, the temperature would plunge in the final chill before the hemisphere's warming trend. In the distance, clouds hung grey and heavy over the mountains. It was still snowing up there, Grayson thought.
Adel stirred in his chair. "You lack confidence yet, youngster. Surely the Deliverer of Sarghad can be certain of his own accomplishments?"
Grayson turned to him with scarcely concealed impatience. "I can be certain we've been lucky so far, General. I can also be certain that three light 'Mechs are not going to get very far in a contest with heavies. General, do you have any idea what you're asking of us?"
"The people are expecting victory, Grayson," Stannic said. "In a way, your successes are working against you. After the capture of those two 'Mechs at the spaceport, they're wondering why you haven't gone on to take the Castle."
"Take the Castle!" Grayson hadn't expected that one. "Take the Castle — with three 20-ton 'Mechs?"
Varney stirred, his expression concerned. "What would you need to storm the Castle, Grayson?"
Adel snorted. "Seems to me the Castle was taken away from the Commonwealth garrison by three 'Mechs... and with four 'Mechs guarding it!"
"General, I don't think we need to get into needless recriminations," Varney said. He glanced at Stannic, then back to Grayson. "We're not ordering you, to attack, Grayson. But we would like to see some plan of action, some constructive use for the Lancers. See if you can work up a study, and have it on my desk in, shall we say, 70 hours?"
"But General..."
"Now, son. When you become a leader of men, you find out that everything you touch becomes political."
"Political? What do politics have to do with it?" Grayson had never cared for politics, had always been impatient with any system that produced more words and paperwork than anything else.
"I don't know if you realize it, son, but you and your Lancers are the focus of a lot of controversy just now."
Grayson shook his head. "I've been too busy."
"I should think so. But there are people who call themselves the Peace Party, and they have support on the Ministerial Council... people who argue that we have to make terms with the bandits."
"Terms!"
"Don't sputter, boy," Adel said. "You'll get spots on the furniture."
Varney cast a disapproving glance at Adel. "General, if you don't mind, I wonder if you would excuse us for a moment?"
The Guard General's jaw set in a hard line, but he relaxed after a moment, stood, and nodded to Stannic and Varney. "Very well. This is all nonsense anyway... you realize that, don't you? Stannic, you, of all people, ought to know better! You were a Guards officer before you became a politician! The Lancers must be put under a single, unified command, and it is the Guards who have the political clout to oversee their operation."
When Adel had left, Grayson said, "He doesn't like me, does he?"
Varney shrugged with a twitch at the comer of his mouth. "He's powerful, with powerful friends. He would like to control the 'Mech Lance."
"Why?"
"Because it represents more power. Grayson, I asked him to leave so that I could tell you frankly, without getting into a debate with General Adel, that there's a lot of trouble in the Defense Ministry over the Lancers. There are factions upset about the presence of offworlders in the unit..."
"I'man offworlder, General!"
"... and many who protest your use of known bandits. This woman — Kalmar — her presence on your staff is generating one hell of a storm. And now I understand you have a requisition in to use another captured bandit... Enzman?"
"Garik Enzelman. He knows as much about ‘Mechs as Sergeant Kalmar does."
Varney shook his head. "I tell you now, Grayson, the government is not going to be able to tolerate your use of prisoners of war in such an important military capacity. Really, son, you've got to see it our way."
"And with all respect, sir, you've got to see it mine! Kalmar and Enzelman represent valuable, Tech-trained resources. They know 'Mechs inside and out, as well as any Tech! We'd be stupid not to use them. General, I don't have anything else to work with!'
"That may be... that may well be. Grayson, I've got to give you all the support I can, but what I'm trying to say is that you've made enemies, powerful enemies who would like to see the Lancers handled differently... or eliminated completely. You've generated one hell of a lot of problems in the Palace with these offworlders. It gives the opposition ammunition... know what I mean?"
"What the General is trying to say," Stannic said, is that there are political careers at stake here, people who will rise or fall depending on whether your Trellwan Lancers succeed, fail, or just sit on their backsides and do nothing. We need action, successful action, and we need it fast, or we can't justify the expense or the controversy over this offworlder thing at the Ministerial Hall."
"I thought the King himself was behind the Lancers!"
Stannic smiled, but the look in his eyes was grim. "Even the King couldn't buck the tide if it turned on us. And son, if we lose this fight, so do you. Your Lancers won't survive if the government cuts its support. God help you if you screw up! Got me?"
Grayson wasn't sure what it was he had gotten, but its touch was ice-cold.
* * * *
The cold was bitter, an iridium blade carving through sneak suits and bone and marrow, borne on a keening wind. The air was so dry it leached moisture from exposed skin, but intermittent flashes of distant lightning revealed heavy snow clouds above the mountains to the north. It was the dark of mid-Secondnight. Trellwan was approaching the sun again, but this would be a Far Passage, with the sun high in the sky on the far hemisphere, while Sarghad remained gripped in sub-zero night.
With Far Passage would come the Secondnight storms, and then the gradual warming of Thirday. But that was a week of standard days away.
The team of men clothed in night-black slipped along a frost-rimmed ridge on the perimeter of the parade ground below the Castle. Lights on poles strung along the fenced perimeter cast stark illumination over the ferrocrete apron, and isolated the looming black mass of the truncated stone pyramid above them. There was activity in the open Repair Bay. Figures moved there, visible through the broad glass walls bathed in red light.
Grayson signalled to Sergeant Ramage: Move up. He used no words, as there might be sonic detectors nearby, listening with computer-controlled filters to eliminate the yowling wind and pick up a whispered conversation. Ramage nodded and moved forward with cautious, uneven actions calculated to fool sensors set to detect the sounds of ordinary movement
Grayson's mouth was very dry, and only partly because of the bitter dryness of the air. He realized that never, not even during the firefight in the Castle's central control, had he ever been so scared.
He had come up with the plan Jeverid's General Staff and the Council Ministers wanted, having worked it out during long sessions with his senior staff sergeants, Lori, Ramage, and Larressen. The plan approved, the four of them had then worked even longer and harder to select and train an assault force of 50 picked men.
Their targets were the Castle and the slumbering hulk of the Shadow Hawk.Sarghad's military intelligence insisted that the 'Mech had been damaged by thermite grenades during the delaying action at the spaceport, but was now almost repaired. Grayson's force would gain entry to the Repair Bay, clear it with small arms fire and grenades, plant powerful thermite melters at key points on the Shadow Hawk'sarmor, then withdraw into the darkness. With luck, the 'Mech would be hopelessly ruined for anything but spare parts. Even enough damage to require another few hundred hours of repair time would be worth almost any cost in men and equipment. And when he thought of it that way, Grayson knew he had to lead the mission himself.