Finally, there was Renfred Tor and the twenty men and woman who crewed the starship Invidious.This former merchantman crew were now the Legion's Transport Division.

Counting MechWarriors, troops, specialists, and Techs, the Gray Death Legion had grown to more than 600 strong. The total approached nearly a thousand when the Legion's "family" was considered. These were the total non-combatants, wives and husbands of warriors or Techs, children, teachers, servants and retainers, barbers, private Techs in the employ of specific families, and the small army of administrators and bookkeepers who kept the business end of things running smoothly.

This minor army was not all on Sirius V, of course. For each of the Liao campaigns, Grayson had deployed to the combat zone only the troops absolutely necessary for the job at hand. A world near the border in Marik space, Graham IV, had served as a staging area. For transport, the Legion had only the one aging freighter and its two DropShips. In these merchanters converted to troop transports, conditions would have been unbearably crowded with even half that number of personnel. Besides, a mercenary unit had to feed itself when campaigning, and that task became logistically complex and devastatingly expensive on a non-Terran and hostile world such as Sirius V. This time, Grayson had with him only the Gray Death Company itself, plus several reserve 'Mechs from Company B, and one of Captain Ramage's infantry companies. The tanks, with their internal combustion engines, would not have worked in Sirius V's atmosphere, and diesel fuel was hard to come by in such places, anyway. The rest of the training company, the support personnel, even most of the unit's Techs, had all been left behind at the Legion's new home at Helm.

The Legion's contract with House Marik had promised them a landhold, a charter granting the regiment a lease on the planet known as Helm. Cold and glacier-locked, Helm was a savage world. Even the habitable equatorial region was raw and largely barren. The entire planet had a population of perhaps fifteen million, divided among numberless villages and small farming communities rather than cities. There were no factories, no mines, no massive industrial complexes, little, in fact, to make it attractive by the standards of modern galactic civilization.

The contract with Marik had been struck a year ago, and the final details of the landhold worked out six months after that. In exchange for its services against Liao, the Gray Death Legion formally received title to a large part of Helm's North Highland Plains in an investiture ceremony at Helmfast Castle, near the village of Durandel. Two months later, the regiment's 'Mech facilities had begun rising from the plains to the east.

The bulk of the Gray Death Legion—the cooks and teachers, spouses and children, the computer and logistics technicians, the army of astechs raised from among the local population, the training company and infantry reserves and Baron's tank company—all were on Helm now, building the Legion facilities at Durandel.

Despite the pessimism that gripped Grayson, he had to admit being anxious to return. Home.

"Uh oh. Recon lance approaching at Sector Front-Center, Colonel," Lori snapped in mock-official tones.

Francine Roget, Harriman Vandergriff, and Sylvia Trevor approached Grayson and Lori arm in arm, forging relentlessly through the crowds of civilians that thronged the Silver Way.

"Ho, noble Colonel!" Lieutenant Roget raised the green glass bottle in her free hand and nodded an elaborate bow to Grayson. All three were well past the limits of sobriety. "A salute, comrades, to Colonel Carlyle, the Victor of Sirius V!"

Grayson saw black glances among the nearest of the civilian passersby, heard a change in their murmured conversations.

"Damp it, Lieutenant," he said, gently disentangling his arm from Lori's. "The celebration is over."

"Aw, Colonel . . ." Vandergriff began, but Grayson stopped him with a look.

"That will be all,Mister!" He glanced at his wrist-comp, noting the time. "Muster with your DropShip Captain, the lot of you."

"Vandergriff," Lori said. "I thought you had the duty tonight, walking perimeter." As the unit's Exec, she was in charge of duty schedules and watch bills.

"Aw, Lieutenant. Graff swapped with me. Said he didn't care for the nightlife here!"

"When he comes in off duty, you can tell him your whole lance is confined," Grayson said. "I'll want to see all of you logged in and ready for boost by the time I come aboard."

The lance commander came to a reasonable approximation of attention, and the others struggled up after her. Hilarity was replaced by sullenness in Vandergriff and evident confusion in Trevor, the newest member of the lance, but they obeyed.

"Is it the Colonel's orders that my lance miss out on the fun, sir?" Lieutenant Roget's words were tightly bitten off, her fists clenched at her sides. "We have been fighting hard . . . sir."

"Boost is in eight hours, Lieutenant," Grayson said. He spoke quietly, but his tone and pitch carried authority with them. "You won't be missing more than a few hours' fun." He leaned forward then, voice lower rather than louder. "And I damnwell am going to see to it that you miss out on causing a riot before we boost! Dismissed!"

The three managed a ragged salute, then turned and made their way with the flow of the crowd. Grayson turned back to Lori.

"I imagine most of our people are . . . ah . . . celebrating. It's been a rough two weeks."

"Maybe. But if they disgrace us now, with the Formal Peace ..."

"I know. But they're good people. Gray. The whole company! They're all good people!"

What was Lori trying to tell him? Grayson wondered. He knew they were good people. The past year had seen them forged together in the furnace of a fast, bloody, hard-hitting campaign. He had watched them come together, watched them become a fighting unit. Some of them had been with him on Verthandi before they'd signed on with Marik. He knewthey were good.

"Are you saying I'm too hard on them? Because I grounded Graff as well?" He shook his head. "A lance stands together. It suffers together. I'll not weaken it by having them resent one another. They can resent me all they want, but not one another!’

"I didn't mean that. You're not as hard on them as you are on yourself, Gray. But they are human. Sometimes, I wonder if youare."

"If I am what?"

"Human . . . or just a Colonel ..."

Grayson suppressed an icy, internal twist at the words. With her characteristically keen inner vision, Lori had seen through to the personal devil that had been gnawing at Grayson more and more.

Full regiments were generally larger than the Legion was so far, but there was considerable latitude in the organizational tables of mercenary units, which only rarely were able to carry full combat rosters. Grayson, who had taken the rank of Captain to justify his command of a BattleMech company, was listed as "Colonel" on the organization charts to justify his command of the entire Legion. He still felt uncomfortable with thattitle. At only twenty-four years old, he was far too young to wear such rank comfortably or gracefully.

As a twenty-four-year-old mercenary who had built the Legion from scratch in the heat and blood and fury of half a dozen hard-fought campaigns, he was beginning to realize that the job was rapidly outgrowing him, that with every order, every command decision, he was becoming less certain that what he was doing was right. In the meantime, so many people were depending on himto make the right decisions.