She looked up at him and smiled strangely, her teeth gleaming through the mask of black stain. "You needn't worry about me, Captain. It took time, but...I'm all right now. Thanks to Lori."

She read the question in his eyes and smiled. "It seems we were both pretty lonely, Captain. We began talking. It's so easy to talk to her, you know. She... she helped me pull through a pretty rough time. Lori...Lori was myfriend, too,"

He had no answer for that. Besides, the time had come to move out.

* * * *

Grayson peered ahead through his night vision goggles, then nodded to Ramage at his side. The factory entrance was just ahead.

The unit accepted the reason for going in without comment or surprise. They were volunteers, of course, but they followed because the man who had trained and fought with them said he needed them. If anyone resented that they were about to do what Tollen Brasednewic had been ordered not to do, no one showed it. Grayson knew, however, that it would be different for most of the regular line troops.

The operation, as he, Ramage, and the other Gray Death Mech Warriors had worked it out, required the commando team to slip into the University grounds. They were fairly certain they could get as far as the Courtyard, because of the broad, high-ceilinged passageway that ran between factory and University Courtyard. This was the old avenue for students on work-teaching programs or for AgroMechs to travel to ‘Mech demonstrations in the Courtyard. That passageway still existed, and Grayson knew where it was from Thorvald's maps. It would be guarded, certainly, but that was work for the commando.

In the darkness behind them, in the dry gully that led by winding ways back to the Basin Rim, three of the four remaining BattleMechs of the Gray Death lay hidden, awaiting Grayson's signal. There had been some last-moment reshuffling. Khaled now piloted Grayson's Shadow Hawkinstead of his Stinger.All had agreed that in the fight to come, they would need the Hawk'sfirepower, and Khaled had readily agreed to switch to the larger machine. As for Grayson, he would have preferred to be at the controls of a BattleMech— anyBattleMech—but Brasednewic's words still burned.

He would not ask of his own people something he would not do himself. The chancy part of this operation would be the initial penetration. Once the team was inside, the BattleMechs would lay down a diversion to distract the Kurita troops from the true nature of the assault within their walls. The diversion would be necessary if the commandos—and Grayson and Lori, if he could find her—were to make good their escape.

Grayson carefully refused to think about what would happen if he found Lori but was unable to get her out of the University. His mind went no farther than the certainty that either he and Lori would make it out of the University... or that neither of them would.

The Ericksson-Agro factory was deserted, a place of dust and shadows and bare ferrocrete floors and walls. The streets outside were deserted, too, save for a solitary Regis Blue sentry on a roving patrol. The commandos had watched the man go, then slipped across the street behind his back. Guided by their infrared goggles, they slipped through the factory to an unguarded stair well, then made their way to a lower level to the yawning mouth of the tunnel they sought.

The gate was padlocked, but the lock yielded to a hand torch wielded by one of the Verthandian raiders. Every man took that moment to check his weapons and gear. Grayson carried a TK assault rifle cradled in his arms and a 12 mm automatic pistol holstered on his right hip. Three grenades, including a pair of smoke grenades, were clipped to his harness. In various pouches, he carried spare magazines for the TK and the pistol and a spare battery clip for the stunner. A combat knife was sheathed and fastened at his right ankle outside his boot. A single-channel combat communicator was clipped to his throat and his ear, though he could use it to talk to his comrades only across very short ranges. It would not penetrate the walls of the University at all. To reach the BattleMechs outside, he had a more powerful hand transceiver fixed to a pouch at the small of his back.

The door opened, rusty mountings creaking and booming protest into the dark. Anxious eyes probed this way and that through the dark, but no sentry appeared, no voice shouted challenge. In single file, the commandos plunged into the Stygian black of the underground passageway. The tunnel extended through blackness absolute for two hundred meters, then slanted upward along a flat-sloped ramp. There was another steel door at this end, and a brief inspection showed Grayson why the tunnel was not better guarded. The door was welded shut.

Ramage looked at Grayson, who nodded. Ramage gestured, and a pair of Verthandi Rangers dashed up, slipping heavy canvas pouches from their shoulders. One examined the welded door and grinned through the dark at Grayson. "Five minutes, Captain. Better have everyone move back up the tunnel a bit."

Waiting in the darkness, Grayson was startled by a light touch on his shoulder. He turned and found himself staring into a blackened face that was recognizable—just barely—as the face of a young woman. "Don't worry, Captain. We'll do it."

"Eh?"

"I'm sorry," she whispered, her voice carrying no further than the two of them. "But the expression on your face. Even through those goggles, you looked so...so intense.I just...just wanted to let you know that we're with you."

"Did I look that afraid?"

"Not afraid. More like you were going to go through that door without waiting for the guys to blow it."

Grayson peered at her face but couldn't recognize her. For a moment, seeing the glint of almost savage purpose in her eyes, he thought it might be Sue Ellen. This woman was taller, her hair longer when he saw it escaping from under her cap. "Uh...do we know each other?"

Her teeth showed through the blacking. "Janice Taylor, First Squad, Special Commando, Free Verthandi Rangers," she recited with matter-of-fact crispness. "Just one of your new recruits."

"Janice!" Then the darkness exploded in flame and thunder, and he had no time to think about anything more at all.

35

 

Governor-General Nagumo heard the dull, hollow boom and briefly wondered if someone had dropped a heavy section of armor in the maintenance area across the courtyard. Then the piercing ululation of the emergency siren keened warning of attack.

A light flashed at his interrcom. He stabbed the accept switch. "What is it?"

'This is Gordoyev, my Lord, Captain of the Guard!" There was no picture with the voice, which was pitched high with shock or fear. "I'm on Level Two and...and...rebel troops. General, in the lower levels! They're pouring through a hole blasted through from an abandoned tunnel!"

"You have a guard. Use it!"

"Yes, my Lord! We'll hold them as long as we can, but...”

“But what?"

"My Lord, there are hundreds of them down here! We need reinforcements!"

"Help is coming. Hold where you are!"

He opened a channel to the barracks and found that the alert had already roused the city's garrison commanders. Between elements of four infantry regiments, there were close to two thousand Kurita troops in Regis, not counting the unreliable Regis Blues. He did not for a moment believe Gordoyev's assessment of "hundreds of troops", but it was always better to overreact to such a threat than to respond with half-measures. He relayed orders to the Third Strike Regiment. Companies A and B were both just outside the University, stationed in the streets of central Regis. They would be in the courtyard in moments.