"His Grace reminds you of your duty under the terms of your contract with the Governor General," the aide continued.

"We thank His Grace for his kind words," Grayson said carefully. "And I respectfully submit that we know our duty.May I ask, though, why our regiment is being diverted to the provincial capital?"

"Orders, mercenary,"Duke Irian spoke for the first time. The voice was high and gratingly unpleasant. He kept his eyes on some unseen point above and beyond Grayson's left shoulder, as though refusing to acknowledge him or his people. "I understand the Captain-General himself is planning to meet you there. Perhaps he has further—ah—matters of a financial nature to discuss with you. Or perhaps he seeks to do you . . . honor. I wouldn't know. Whatever the Captain-General's reasons, my forces will relieve you. Now."

"Do you accept relief, Colonel?" the aide prompted.

"Eh? Yes, of course. At your orders, Your Grace." Grayson saluted again. The amenities of ceremony had to be observed. "This world is yours, Your Grace."

* * *

"I don't like this one bit," Lori said. The three of them were in the observation lounge of the DropShip Phobos.The steel shutters normally closed against the threat of enemy attack had been rolled back, opening the small room to a view of the Sirian spaceport and the gray mass of the domes beyond. Sirius had set some hours before, and the Tiantan city domes were marked by the clusters of lights and the steady wink of air navigation beacons.

The field below them encircled the Phobos'sblast pit in blackness broken only by pools of work lights. Each pool revealed steady, hurried activity as the regiment made its final preparations for boarding. Most of the Gray Death's BattleMechs were already aboard, racked and cocooned in their cavernous storage bays deep within the ship. Ramage's infantry company was boarding now, a winding line of pressurized, tracked, all-terrain infantry transports. Pressure-suited traffic marshals directed traffic with circular waves of red-tipped handlights. Small, brightly lit vehicles crawled beetle-like from light pool to pool, bearing technicians intent on disassembling electronics gear still on the field, carrying support grades gathering caches of stacked and crated weapons, carrying officers making final rounds or bearing orders for harried NCOs.

"There's not much about it to like," Grayson said. He stood at Lori's side by the viewport. The lounge was in darkness, and their features were stagelit by the work lights below. "We've got damn little choice, though."

"Orders are orders, then?" Ramage asked. He was seated at a small table set back from the port. A heavy plastic headpiece embraced the back of his head from ear to ear. In the near dark, the com unit glowed and flashed with tiny lights of red, green, and amber at uneven intervals as Ramage monitored reports from his various field NCOs and Techs on the progress of the boarding. He had, in particular, been monitoring the progress of a patrol across one sector of the landing field perimeter. Two sentries had been found dead in the early morning hours—presumably the work of Liao snipers in the wilderness who had refused to surrender.

"Mmm," was Grayson's reply. "There's nothing particularly unusual about the order to report to Marik. Except, of course, that Marik is as far from here as Helm, but in a different direction. That's a long, expensive trip for us, just to pick up a new set of medals."

"If Janos Marik pays the bill ..." Lori began, but she didn't finish the sentence. Nowhere in the contract signed with the Marik government was a provision for the Legion's transportation stated or implied. It had the taste of one of those no-win scenarios the bookkeepers and paymasters for mercenary units dreaded: resources expended to please a client, with nothing in return but the hopeof that client's good will.

"It's not the money that's bothering me, Lori," Grayson said. "There's politics afoot, and I don't like it."

"Anytime a Marik Duke puts his foot in it, there's politics to contend with," Ramage said grimly.

"But this is unusual . . . damned unusual," Grayson said. "You know, at the procession today, all I saw was the Irian Guard, old Lord Garth's personal household troops. I didn't see The Hawk in Garth's entourage, or among the officers that came off his DropShip." Colonel Jake Hawkings, informally known as "the Hawk," was the short, red-haired and irascible commander of the 15th Marik Militia, a man Grayson and his staff had worked with before on several occasions during the Marik contract. According to the Legion's contract orders, it was Hawkings's unit that was supposed to relieve them when the operation on Sirius V was complete.

"You're right, he wasn't there," Ramage said. "I wondered about that, too. I had one of my Techs ask one of theirs about it. The 15th isn't due onworld for two weeks yet. They've only just now jumped in-system, and their DropShip is still in deep-space transit."

"Two weeks!" This was unexpected news, and Grayson wasn't sure how to interpret it. He had been informed that the 15th had arrived with the Duke's forces at the start of the campaign, two weeks before. If the 15th was not with Lord Garth, what unit wasaboard the Dropships that had waited and watched from space during the course of the Sirius campaign?

"Maybe we shouldn't have accepted relief," Lori suggested.

"Yes? And how would you have phrased it?" Ramage said. "No, Lord Garth, I'm not going to turn over command to you. I'll just wait here for Colonel Hawkings."

"It's a moot question at this point," Grayson said. "We've been relieved, and we've received our orders. His Grace is here, and we've been gently but firmly shown the door."

Ramage brought one hand to his comset, listening intently. "The door's open," he said after a moment, as lights winked in the darkness from the set. "All infantry companies are aboard and secure. MechWarrior Graff is boarding the Deimosnow, and that's the last of our recon lance. The last of our gear is coming aboard too. The duty cargo officer reports that we can boost in ninety minutes."

"Maybe," Grayson said carefully, "Maybe we should hurry and leave, before Lord Garth changes his mind.

There's something seriously wrong here, and I don't think I want to know what it is."

* * *

Aboard the House Marik DropShip Gladius,Lord Garth, His Grace, Duke of Irian, paused in his inspection tour of the four freshly painted BattleMechs in the ship's Mech bay. Those machines looming among the shadows created by the harsh overhead work lights were newly freed from their restraints and protective locks. All four were painted in the mottled gray and black camouflage patterns used by 'Mechs in combat on airless worlds. The grinning visages of new-painted, stylized gray and black skulls on scarlet unit patches leered down at the Duke and his party from high on the left leg of each battle machine.

A tall man in an unadorned brown tunic and shortcloak approached the ducal inspection party and executed a correct but perfunctory bow. The slim dagger in his forearm sheath flashed in the light of the overhead fluoros as he straightened.

Garth licked his lips and acknowledged the bow. The man made him nervous. His manner, his bearing, the hint of power that he represented, all served to magnify the threat, real or imagined, behind those dark eyes. "Call me Rachan," he had told Garth at their first meeting, on Irian, months before. "Not 'my Lord,' not 'Precentor' Simply 'Rachan' will do."