“ Damnthe clients!"

"Damn it all,Ramage, do youthink I'm doing this for the money, too? It happens there's this small matter of our own survival, Sarge. Like whether we're ever going to get off this jungle rock!"

He looked away, beyond the mouth of the cave and into the jungle beyond. He was breathing hard, and felt his hands knotted at his sides. It nagged at him that he'd not yet heard from the Phobos,though the Revolutionary Council had assured him that their people would relay word as soon as anything was known. If the DropShip had made it to a safe harbor, it was going to take months of work— not to mention considerable stores of repair parts and a long stay in a drydock repair facility—before she would fly again. And the Phoboswas still their only ticket off Verthandi, providing her repairs could be completed. It was a vicious circle, because thatwould not be possible until the war was won.

"If we don't find a way to help these people win their war," Grayson added, "Governor General Nagumo is going to find us, and it'll be our lives andtheirs."

"You're sayin' better them than us?"

"No! It's not them or us, it's them andus! If we don't figure something out, Nagumo is going to come for all of us pretty damn quick, even if he has to uproot this jungle tree by tree to do it I just don't know what to do about it, yet"

Ramage shook his head. "I've read the contract, too, Captain, and I'll be damned if I can see a way out. Maybe we should turn the army on the rebel command! They might be able to take them!" He raised his hands, as if fending Grayson off. "All right, I'll keep feeding them the lessons. But you'd better find some way to keep them off the field for another three or four years, because as of now, any Kurita ‘Mech would grind them up like so much raw meat."

14

 

Governor General Nagumo hitched one thigh over the comer of his desk, leaned back with his arms folded across his unadorned black jacket, and smiled. The young woman seated before him cast glances nervously about the room, taking in the spartan furnishings, the azelwood desk piled high with hardcopy printouts, the floor-to-ceiling windows looking down onto the Regis University central campus. She had soft, short-cropped brown hair, and her eyes were cold and distant.

"So, Miss Klein," Nagumo said. "May I call you Sue Ellen? Good. How are you settling in at the barracks?"

"Fine, my Lord," she said. She brushed nervously at the sleeve of her Kurita-issue uniform tunic. "Everything is... fine."

"Good, very good." He waved toward a collection of bottles and glasses on a table along one wall. "Would you care for a drink?"

She shook her head. Puzzlement, a hint of worry showed on her face. "No, thank you, Lord."

"As you wish. Well, I suppose you're wondering why I wanted to see you."

She nodded, still refusing to return his gaze. "The Governor General cannot be in the habit of talking to every mercenary Aerospace Fighter pilot in his command. Lord. Or every...prisoner."

"Well, girl, you are a very special case. You must realize that, yes?"

She nodded again.

He continued. "You signed on with this new mercenary unit. The Gray Death Legion, you called it? Yes, and while running our blockade, you fought bravely but — for some reason — your comrades abandoned you."

She leaned back slightly in her chair, her knuckles showing white against the chair's carved wooden arms. "There's no mystery there, Lord. If my...my comrades had stopped to pick me up, they would have had to fight the Leopardthat was closing on them. They didn't have the armor or firepower to win such an engagement They were forced to abandon me and...and my wingman, to escape into Verthandi's atmosphere." Pain and a touch of fear crossed her face. "Lord, I went over all of this with your interrogators weeks ago!"

"Yes, well, I'm terribly sorry for what you've been to go through. Poor girl! The commander of the Subotaiwas quite right to pick you up when she found you in Verthandi-orbit, but Admiral Kodo should have informed me that he had you and not turned such a...prize over to his interrogation teams. It was a week before I knew that my people held you, and another week before the whole story was known and I could order you released! Certainly, you should have been offered the opportunity to join us at once, rather than having to endure that blundering fool Kodo's doubtful hospitality on Verthandi-Alpha! I promise you. Sue Ellen, that the officers responsible will be disciplined!"

She raised her head, her chin firm. "Thank you, Lord, but I really am fine now. As far as your officers were concerned, I was just another enemy prisoner. I'm not complaining about my treatment"

He looked at her thoughtfully. "You are a remarkable young lady, Sue Ellen. I wonder at the... * He seemed to grope momentarily for the word. "I wonder at the callousness of your commander in leaving you behind." He looked straight at her then, pursuing another line of thought. "And your comrade, the one who died. He was dear to you, I gather."

"Yes." Softly.

"You fired into the cockpit of his Chippewa.You followed his fighter into the atmosphere, firing into it until it exploded."

"Yes." Softer still. Her face twisted in pain. For a moment, she struggled to control it. "He was...burning. I heard him over my comlink. He couldn't eject, and he was wounded...bad... and as he started re-entry, he was burning alive. I...couldn't...I...couldn't..."

She cried silently, barely suppressed heaves wracking her shoulders. Her face was contorted and wet, her grief an inner torture become naked. Nagumo slid off the desk and stepped alongside her, laying a hand protectively across her upper back.

Sue Ellen Klein did not realize that Nagumo had learned of her capture less than a day after the event That, he thought with a smile, was something she need never know. The testimony of the officer who had made pick-up on her had made it clear that Klein was broken completely by the torment of having to Wow her lover to oblivion. As she was already numb with grief and loss, normal interrogation techniques had not been necessary. In any case, her state of shock would probably have made interrogation useless.

Nagumo's orders to Kodo had been quite explicit: hold her, observe her, question her, but under no circumstances allow her to come to harm! Nagumo sensed that Lieutenant Sue Ellen Klein was a very special catch indeed, perhaps the key to destroying the mercenaries recently come to Verthandi.

Dr. Janson Vlade, one of House Ricol's interrogation team psychiatric specialists, had been assigned to monitor Klein's progress in the weeks following her capture. It had been Vlade's recommendation that she was strong enough now for Nagumo to proceed with recruitment He had briefed Nagumo carefully in what to say and do in this interview.

"That was a brave thing to do," he was saying to her now. "I know how tremendously difficult it must have been. But it shows your special strength. You could not abandon a comrade to such a horrible death. You acted as you did to spare him that fate, at such terrible cost to yourself."

"I...I didn't know what to do." She gulped hard acouple of times, fighting past the tears and the constriction of her throat "There was no way to get Jeffrie out No way...Nothing I could do..."

"Your comrade fought bravely. I respect his memory."