"I'll be ready to join Ramage's commandos after this," Tomlinson said, and Grayson laughed. Ramage had been boasting of late how he would put the Verthandian rebel recruits through a Trellwan-style commando training course. For reasons not entirely clear to Grayson, that included plenty of digging.

He walked on, pacing slowly across the beach past others of his command preparing their trenches or gathering crates washed up on the beach from the Phobos'sgashed-open hold. "Steady, everybody," he said, keeping his voice low but penetrating. "They're coming. Be ready... my command."

He found Erudin squatting close by the fire that several troopers had coaxed from a pile of damp driftwood with a hand laser. "Your friends are on their way. Are you sure you don't have any kind of password or recognition signal we can use?"

Miserable, Erudin shook his head. "We're a good 200kilometers from where we're supposed to be. The local commander mayhave heard I'd be bringing help back, but he wouldn't know when...and he wouldn't expect it here. There's a password I was to transmit on a certain radio frequency once we were grounded to let him know it was me. I doubt anyone patrolling out here would know about that." He gestured toward the wreck behind them. "That black dragon on your ship isn't going to help, either."

"Don't you have any way of maintaining communication throughout your... army?"

Erudin spat into the sand. "Army? Captain, the Resistance is made up of maybe eighty or a hundred 'armies' wandering all over Verthandi's northern latitudes. I think the biggest must number something like a thousand men and women, but they're scattered among towns and plantations throughout the Vrieshaven District The smallest numbers exactly one—usually some lone scavenger who likes to slit the throats of drunken militiamen in Regis alleys. They—"

A signal keened in the speaker in Grayson's ear. "Hold it," he said. "Here they come."

In a glimmering curtain of spray, a skimmerfoil burst from the cover of an arm of jungle reaching out onto the mudflats. At the same moment, bands of ragged men bearing awkward weapons rose from rocks and from behind low sand dunes. There was a stutter of automatic rifle fire.

"Now! Everybody down!" Grayson yelled, and across the beach, men and women who had been waiting for just such an attack threw themselves flat into the shallow trenches they'd been scraping into the wet sand. Grayson alone remained standing. This was the riskiest part of the plan, for now he was the only target the attacking rebels had. At the same time, though, the rebels would know something unusual was happening if this lone survivor stood, empty-handed and defenseless, on the suddenly deserted beach. He was counting on surprise and curiosity to make them hold their fire.

Autorifle slugs cluttered through the air a meter above his head, and the deeper-throated wham of a hunting rifle popped a geyser of sand near his feet. Just as Grayson was thinking that guerrilla soldiers might not have the luxury of indulging their curiosity, someone began bellowing an order to cease fire. The charging rebels dropped in their tracks, wary of a trap, weapons ready.

"Hold your fire!" Grayson yelled. He remembered training sessions with Weapons Master Griffith in his father's regiment, and it all seemed so long ago. He shook himself. Was it only one standard year since those days? Pitch your voice so it carries, but keep it sharp with authority, with control. If you're talking to your own troops, they have to know you're in control. If you're talking to strangers, you can't let them hear your fear.

"We're friends," he continued, holding his arms out from his sides, showing that he was unarmed. "We want to talk."

"It's a trick, Colonel," a voice barked from behind a sand dune. There was a crack and something hot plucked at Grayson's sleeve.

"Hold your fire, dammit!" another voice replied. "Dober, put that thing up!"

"I'm Captain Carlyle, Gray Death Mercenary Legion," Grayson continued. He had to stifle the tremor at the back of his throat, and his knees felt weaker now than they had after the crash. He wanted very much to drop to the sand, out of sight, but he knew that any sudden movement would unleash a storm of gunfire. "We were brought here to help you!"

There was an angry mutter from some unseen watcher, but Grayson couldn't catch the words. The second voice called back across the mudflats. "How do we know this ain't some kind of trick?"

"One of your people is here! Devic Erudin! He brought us here. Talk to him!"

There was no answer. With his boot, Grayson nudged Erudin, lying flat in his shallow trench. "Come on. Citizen Erudin. Stand up...very slowly. Keep your hands where they can see them."

The two stood for endless seconds. Grayson could almost hear the discussion that must be going on among the dunes behind the beach. These strangers could be telling the truth. Or Erudin might be a plant, or a brain-channeled captive. It could be a trap, but if it’s not, thereal Dracos will be along any moment, and the beach will become a trap for all of us!

Grayson knew that his own success now depended on the daring of the rebel commander. The man stood up. He wore denim work clothes and a sleeveless, olive drab Kurita jacket with the insignias torn off. A heavy commercial laser rifle was clenched in muddy hands, its power pack strapped to the man's thigh, its muzzle steady on Grayson's chest. On his head was a shapeless black beret. His shaggy red beard was streaked with mud.

"You want to talk," the man said. "Go ahead an' talk!"

The rebels were not easily convinced, but it turned out that Tollen Brasednewic, self-styled Colonel of the rebel militia, had indeed heard that someone had been smuggled offworld to attempt to hire mercenaries.

"But, damn it all," the rebel leader said as he watched Grayson's men put out their smoky fire. "What if we'd been Dracos? You couldn't know we'd find you first!"

"I was given to understand that they don't come into the jungle that much."

Brasednewic spat into the sand. "And you say you came here to teach us? They'll know you crashed or landed somewhere along here, and they'll be looking for you! A DropShip, even a wrecked one, would be a real prize!"

"The idea was to land in the sea near a place where the ship could be camouflaged and easily hidden."

"It don't look like you're going to manage that now, unless you want to try to disguise that hulk as a rock!"

"No," Grayson admitted. "Still, we figured it would take them a while to get organized and to work out a search pattern."

"Maybe so. But damn it all! What if we'd a been a Kurita patrol? First lesson you'd better learn about Verthandi, feller, is don't take nothingout here for granted!"

Grayson smiled and touched the communicator at his throat "Lori, come on up and meet our hosts. Gently, now. Don't startle them."

One of the shapeless masses of metal lying in the surf between wreck and shore stirred, then rose, white water cascading from the flanks, joints, and the sleek, right-arm laser. Ten meters tall, the machine stood knee-deep in the surf, then strode forward, moving up onto the beach with a creak of interlocking metal parts and the dull thud of the ‘Mech's 55-ton step. Brasednewic's jaw dropped as he looked up...up...and up. The Shadow Hawkwas Grayson's own, with Lori Kalmar at the controls. On either side, a hundred meters up and down the beach, two more ‘Mechs rose from their watery hiding places, Delmar Clay's Wolverineand Davis McCall's Rifleman.