"Privilege is accepted, sir. May I advance?"

Grayson took a deep breath. It was unlikely that they would violate Privilege. Still . . .

"You may advance, Mr. Ambassador."

The lead vehicle stirred into motion once more, approaching the silent line of fire lance 'Mechs, meeting it, passing through. Grayson guided his massive Marauderforward a few steps so that the envoy would not mistake who was the Gray Death commander, then locked his machine in place.

Realizing that much would depend on the events of the next few moments, Grayson opened a private channel. "Lori?"

From her battle-stained Shadow Hawk,his company Exec acknowledged, "Here, boss. Are we going to trust them?"

"We have to, Lori. They've claimed Privilege.”

“We never used that much, Beyond.”

“Mmm. Maybe not."

Lori Kalmar had been born and raised on Sigurd, one of the half-barbarian wolf worlds in the vast Periphery beyond the Inner Sphere. For her, war had never been balanced by civilized conventions until she'd joined the Gray Death Legion.

"What's the matter?" he joked, but with a voice still taut from command. "Is warfare becoming too civilized for you?"

"No, it just makes me wonder who to trust. Heads up, Gray. Here he comes."

A lone figure stepped from the ground car, the man's face muffled by the goggles and mask humans needed to breathe in the cold, deadly Sirian atmosphere. He looked very small next to the bulk of the vehicle, and then smoke boiling from the twisted wreckage of a Vindicatorlying crumpled on the icy gravel momentarily hid the man from view.

"Time to go," Grayson said. "Keep an eye on things, Lieutenant."

He removed his neurohelmet and hung it on the support rack above his chair, unstrapped himself, and squeezed his way aft toward the dorsal hatch, past the instrumentation that filled the Marauder'scockpit. Maraudershave several points of entry. In the field, the one most commonly used is located on the upper back of the fuselage, just ahead of the autocannon mount. Grayson's lanky height made for a tight squeeze between the storage racks of 120 mm cassette rounds for the Marauder'sdorsal cannon, even though his supply of AC ammo was more than half-depleted. It would be the same throughout the regiment, Grayson thought. If the Liaos elected to continue their fight, the Gray Death Legion was going to have to pull back their DropShips to restock ammo stores.

From a small locker, Grayson removed a lightweight environmental suit and mask and began to perform the contortions necessary to don them in such cramped quarters.

So far, the Gray Death Legion's campaign for Sirius V on behalf of their current employer had been swift and unrelenting. They had been onplanet for almost two weeks now, had fought three major battles and innumerable skirmishes, and not once had their line broken in combat. This final encounter had been fought at the very gates of Tiantan—the "Heavenly Palace"—and had left the defending 'Mech force beaten and scattered.

The war should be over, and yet Grayson had to shove a deep and persistent unease from his mind. The campaign is over,he thought. Now to make peace for our new lords and masters up there in orbit . . .

* * *

The thought held no bitterness for Grayson Carlyle. The fortunes of his mercenary Gray Death Legion had improved beyond all expectations, beyond all reason or hope, since the successful conclusion of their last campaign on far Verthandi. The pathetic, forlorn revolution against the might of the Draconis Combine had ended with the impossible—independence for a people too stubborn to sit quietly while Kurita's legions raped their world. The Gray Death Legion's victory had made the unit wealthy in BattleMechs—the hardest, most secure currency that existed within the unraveling fabric of galactic civilization. Their share of the spoils taken on Verthandi had raised the Legion's 'Mech force to a full operational company, with parts and reserve 'Mechs for a company more. They also had enough captured tanks, recon vehicles, personnel carriers, and infantry weapons to create the bare-bones framework of an entire regiment. When the Gray Death returned to the mercenary hiring centers on Galatea, they found that word of their victories had preceded them. There had been no lack of volunteers for either Grayson's BattleMech or infantry companies. Every unattached mercenary warrior, it seemed, wanted to share in the Carlyle luck.

And so, it seemed, did House Marik.

Grayson squeezed into the tiny, metal-walled cubicle that served as his Marauder'sairlock, checked again the fit of his breathing mask, and cycled the outer hatch open. They hadbeen lucky, he thought. After Verthandi, the Gray Death mercenary combined arms regiment had had its pick of prospective employers. Of the five great Houses, both Steiner and Davion had offered more-or-less standard contracts that would have continued to pit Grayson and his people against the implacable red dragon of House Kurita. Both houses had also offered tempting terms: money, of course, and the far sweeter coin of vengeance.

After Verthandi, however, Grayson found that his driving hunger for vengeance against the murderers of his father had diminished, replaced now by a vague, uneasy emptiness. Hate, it seemed, was difficult to sustain year after year. After leading his forces in a crushing victory over his old foes on Verthandi, he felt not satisfaction, but the weary realization that his personal crusade would never halt the march of evil directed from dread Luthien's Imperial Palace.

In the end, only one great House had offered what Grayson and his people could not refuse, what all of them sought with a hunger greater even than the craving for vengeance. House Marik had promised them a place, a homeworld of their own.

The victory the Gray Death had won this day would seal their right to the Legion's landhold at Helm.

A viciously cold, thin wind whipped and tugged at Grayson's protective clothing as he swung his legs out of the narrow airlock hatch and sat astride his Marauder.He kept one gloved hand against the support of his 'Mech's dorsal-mounted autocannon while the other hand freed a chain ladder from its storage compartment, then unrolled it in a long, clattering fall toward the ground. The air of Sirius V was primarily hydrogen and nitrogen, the "water" was liquid ammonia. With a surface temperature that rarely rose above -40 degrees C, water was always a solid here. Mountains of the stuff stretched across the stark, yellow-green skyline, glittering harsh in the actinic glare of distant Sirius.

Grayson stepped from the dangling ladder onto cold rock. Now that he stood unsupported, rather than lying back against the cushioned cockpit seat of his Marauder,Grayson felt the pull of the planet's 1.5 G gravity dragging at his knees and back.

Sirius V was empty of life, save what men had imported here early in the history of human expansion to the stars. At a distance of 8.7 light years from Terra, Sirius was one of old Earth's nearest neighbors in space. The first manned outpost on this frigid, barren landscape had been established some nine centuries ago, not long after faster-than-light travel had become possible. Stars as young as Sirius were not even supposed to haveplanets, according to the astrophysical understanding of those long-gone times, and so the sole purpose of the first Sirian colony was to research the improbabilities of the Sirius system. It took nearly a century before Sirius V's considerable resources of heavy metals and transuranic minerals were discovered.

The world was now a minor fief of House Liao's Capellan Confederation. Chinese warlords serving the Terran Hegemony had constructed the industrial and city complex known as the Heavenly Palace in the 26th century in order to exploit the planet's resources. Liao had taken over Sirius at the outset of the Succession Wars. The world had been a target for Marik raiders and tactical strikes during the ongoing, deathlock embrace between the two houses ever since.