Had he been too harsh with Roget's lance? Especially Graff, who had not even been party to the lance's drunkenness, the cause for Grayson's explosion. He didn't know. Worse, he was coming to realize that he never knew, whenever he made such decisions.

He looked at his wristcomp again, needlessly. "I'd better head back to the Phobos.”

"Why, Gray? There's time." Lori took his arm again. "The Duke won't arrive for hours yet, and I'd say that you and I are long past due for some celebrating of our own."

Her words caught him off-guard, and disturbed him more than he wanted to admit. "I . . . really don't feel like it, Lori."

"Come on, Colonel. This time it's your Exec who's giving the orders. My spies found this little pleasure place off the Silver Way. Good food. Private rooms with swimming pools for baths ..."

"Lori . . ."

"Damn it, Grayson Carlyle. For once you and I are going to have some fun!"

He realized then that Lori did not know, could not know, how deeply she had touched him. He shook his head and gently pulled his arm free. For the past year, he and Lori had been close, and growing closer. In those months, they'd come to share far more than love and bed and friendship. Born of fire and pain, of death and respect for one another, that sharing had become a sharing of self.

For the first time in that year, Grayson felt that Lori not only didn't understand, but couldn't . . .

"No, Lord," he said, smiling. "The Exec doesn't always get her way. Not this time. I've got too much work to do."

He felt her hurt as they walked back toward the command vehicle that would return them to the spaceport.

* * *

Among the rock crags and broken, ice-crusted terrain beyond the dome wall, shadows rose and moved toward a line of low-slung vehicles resting on the icy plain. An armed and armored sentry glimpsed movement from the corner of his eye and spun to issue a challenge. That challenge died with him as the white-glowing blur of a vibroblade chopped through a short arc, cleaving armor, padding, and flesh with equal ease. Blood spurted, within moments freezing where it splattered on ice and the frost-rimed surface of the guard's personal armor. Other armored figures were climbing among the vehicles even as the sentry's lifeless form slid to the ice.

Working swiftly and silently, the figures flung heavy canvas satchels one after another into the cargo compartments of three of the company's scout skimmers. First one, then another, then a third of the lithe hovercraft stirred from their resting places, then rose, balanced on cushions of air blasted into their plenum chambers by high-speed, fusion-powered fans. As their piercing whine shrieked across the frozen landscape, another sentry scrambled from the temporary pressure dome erected nearby. His voice came across the general communications frequency. "You! Who's there! What . . ."

Laser light stabbed from one of the skimmers, spearing the Gray Death sentry through the dark-tinted plastic of his mask goggles. Polarized filters did nothing to attenuate that megajoule lance of energy. Hydrogen in the atmosphere and oxygen from the mask mingled as the visor shattered, then ignited in the intense heat of the laser light. There had been no oxygen in the tight-fitting inner suit of the first sentry to react with the surrounding atmosphere and the vibroblade's heat. Here, though, the chemical reaction was immediate, and explosive. Goggles, mask, and head burst apart in a fine spray of charred debris, water, and red mist.

Heavily laden, the three hovercraft tilted forward, bows nearly scraping the ice, and raced off toward Tiantan at maximum acceleration. As they swept around a low ridge, a BattleMech, a 40-ton Assassin,confronted them. The trio of hovercraft did not slow but continued to race at breakneck speed across the ice and gravel toward the city looming now on the skyline.

The Assassinstepped aside and raised its left hand in salute as the skimmers passed. Then it turned and continued its patrol.

The Assassin'spilot opened his commlink. "Graff here, on Sector Two. All clear. No activity."

Beyond the ridge nearby, two steaming bodies cooled in the frigid air.

3

Fifty kilometers west of the city dome complex, on the windswept expanse of ferrocrete and poured concrete that served as Tiantan's spaceport, Grayson and his regimental officers waited beneath the port's plex dome while members of the Irian Guard streamed from the lock leading out to the newly grounded DropShip. Captain Ramage, crisp and unaccountably sharp as always in the Legion's dress grays, muttered something at Grayson's left elbow.

"What was that, Ram?" Grayson said. The Irian Guards were forming up in twin lines, facing one another at attention on either side of the purple carpet that had been unrolled across the black ferrocrete deck of the dome. Through the port, Grayson and his men glimpsed a stir of activity in the extension tube that had just been connected to the main debarkation hatch of the towering UnionClass DropShip.

"I was just wondering at his Mightiness arriving ahead of his fleet," Ramage replied, sotto voce."There're three more Unionsto come, and he beat 'em all!"

"Anxious to survey what he's won by force of arms," Lori muttered from Grayson's right.

"Quiet, both of you," Grayson said. "Here he comes."

Lord Garth, Duke of Irian, was a big and florid man. The Marik crest, a stylized bird of prey with wings outstretched, was tattooed on his forehead in the fashion affected by many House Marik nobles. The medals across the gold-trimmed purple of his dress tunic appeared to weigh him down in Sirius V's one-and-a-half gravities nearly as much as did his considerable girth and bulk. Flanking and following him were his senior aides, a minor host garbed in silver, yellow, and violet.

The air temperature in the dome was pleasantly cool, but Lord Garth was sweating heavily by the time he reached the waiting Legion officers. Ramage, Lori, and Grayson executed precise House Marik salutes in carefully rehearsed unison, open right hands to left breasts, palms down. The salutes were acknowledged by a slender ducal aide who seemed to be struggling to hold herself upright against the drag of several kilos' worth of gold aiguillettes.

"His Grace wishes to extend his thanks to the Gray Death Legion for a job well-executed," the aide said. "In the name of House Marik and the Governor General, he declares your mission here at an end, and your contract complete. The 15th Marik Militia relieves you, sir."

Grayson repeated his salute, adding the required formal bow, stiff and from the waist. Even as he did so, his eyes shifted from Duke Irian's moist face to the ranks of brown-and-purple-garbed soldiers behind him. The 15th Marik Militia was a standard Marik line regiment, one that Grayson knew well. The Legion had fought beside them on several occasions during the past year, in missions and raids along the Liao border. Thesetroops, with their red-violet tunics and gold braid, were Irian Guards, the Duke's personal household troops.

"His Grace further directs," the aide continued, "that the mercenary regiment known as the Gray Death Legion board its transport vessels immediately and embark for Marik."

"Marik ..." Grayson suppressed a start. "The Marik system, Your Grace?"

The Legion's operational orders had directed them to report to their leasehold at Helm upon completion of their mission on Sirius V. Marik was the regional administrative headquarters for the Marik Commonwealth, one of the vast, semi-autonomous provinces that made up House Marik's Free Worlds League. Why Marik, instead of Helm?Grayson wondered.