12

It stormed during the night, but throughout the rest of the long, Verthandian day, Grayson's people had worked to refit the unit's BattleMechs, to unload necessary supplies and equipment from the Phobos,and to ready the DropShip herself for the sea voyage.

The conversion of a gut-torn DropShip into an unwieldy and practically unsteerable, steam-powered boat was risky enough that Grayson wanted to salvage all the equipment he could before consigning the vessel to the mercies of the Azure Sea. The actual refitting of the pumps and conduits that would gulp in sea water took only a bit more than five hours, speeded up with the help of ‘Mechs able to lift massive sections of hull plate or machinery weighing nearly as much as they did. The longest part of the refit was the transferral of bulky ‘Mech harnesses, booms, and repair rigs from the ‘Mech bays to the shore.

It was two hours past dark when the Phoboswas ready to set sail. It was already raining, with winds gusting in wave-flattening bursts that caused the lightened DropShip to shudder. The motion aboard was queasily uncomfortable as the DropShip moved with the slap and lurch of the waves. The tide was in now, and lightening the ship's holds had brought her up off the bottom. The motion was made worse by the fact that selected outboard holds along one side of the cargo deck had been pumped full of water, giving the ship a twenty-degree list. Movement along her decks was treacherous and accomplished by slowly and carefully planting feet and hands with each step.

Grayson picked his way across the Phobos'sbridge. Martinez was in her control seat, strapped in against the increasingly violent efforts of wind and wave.

"A storm is up, Captain,'' he said.

"It is, indeed, Major," she replied. Now that the Phoboswas again a ship in the purest sense of the word, Grayson had his honorary, if temporary, promotion back."That could be bit of good luck."

Grayson nodded. "It means the Dracos won't have recon aircraft up tonight, and you'll certainly be screened from enemy satellites. Their patrols won't be close enough to pick you up on infrared scan, either."

"Hell, it means they'll think we broke up and sank in the storm! Well, it's about time our luck changed!"

"I'm glad you feel that way. Captain, because you've got to sail this thing in weather I wouldn't care to face inside a Marauder!"

Martinez touched a panel on the armrest control block. One of her console monitors came on, displaying a computer-generated map. It was based on the Azure Sea charts they had been studying earlier in the day. She used a stylus to trace across an arm of the sea to a convoluted thrusting of water into the land. "The Skraelingas River. Any idea what's there?"

"None, beyond what Brasednewic was able to tell us," Grayson replied. “There are plantations nearby, and he says their owners support the revolution. You should be able to trade machine parts and such for food."

"Food doesn't bother me. It's hiding from the damned Dracos! This storm won't last forever, and a DropShip'll show up to a satellite like a big fat bug on a dinner plate!"

"Only if they catch you at sea. Captain, under clear skies. The cove Brasednewic told us about...here...you should be able to ground the Phobosthere, where the tide won't move her. Though you might have to wait for high tide to do it. It's close in under the rocks of these cliffs, just inside the mouth of Ostafjord. You've got camouflage netting enough to hide the ship, as long as you douse your reactor to kill your infrared signature."

"I'm not doubting the analysis. We just don't know what it's reallylike there. Suppose those rock cliffs are too low or there are unmapped sand bars that keep me from getting close? Suppose I can't get the Phobosclose enough under the cliffs? Suppose... oh, the hell with it. I'll worry about it when I get there." She looked at Grayson, her dark eyes somber under their tatooed wings. "I wish you well, Grayson," she said, the formalities of command forgotten for the time. "I hope to see you again...soon."

"You've got a skimmer ready in your number three hold. If you start to founder, let the old tub go, and abandon ship. We can join up later."

"It's not me I'm worried about. Major. It's you! I'm not sure I trust these Verthandians yet And you folks have got a long way to go." She laughed. "I'd rather face five hundred kilometers of open ocean in a storm than that damned, Kurita-infested jungle!"

He smiled and extended his hand. Use took it gravely. "I'll get word to you somehow," he said, shaking her hand. "Just as soon as we're set up with a decent headquarters, supplies, repair facilities, and so forth. Then we can see about getting the Phobosspaceworthy again."

"For now. Major, I'll just be happy if she stays seaworthy!"

The rain was driving up the beach in sleeting walls, pelting at Grayson's face and hair with savage fury. He heard the DropShip's engines throb to life, a deep, rumbling sputter that carried above the pounding of the surf and the roar of wind and rain. Visibility was so low, however, that he couldn't make out the ship as she got underway. Good. That meant that other eyes in the jungle wouldn't see her departure, either.

Moments later, the combined column of rebels and mercenaries set off into the jungle on their own voyage. The rain offered advantages to the land party as well as to the seagoing Phobos.Rebel forces travelling through the jungle were always threatened by Kurita satellites or orbiting spacecraft spying down from two hundred kilometers overhead. Though Verthandi's skies were frequently cloudy and the jungle canopy provided nearly unbroken cover across most of the Silvan Basin, there were frequent clearings and stretches of open ground. Even a fragmentary patch of blue-green sky might be enough for a satellite to catch sunglint and the movement of a hovercraft column. BattleMechs pushing along the jungle paths were harder still to hide. The rebels had long ago learned to move through the jungle by night and to take advantage of the blessed natural invisibility offered by clouds and rainstorms. The secret rebel base and the Verthandian Revolutionary Council lay across almost four hundred kilometers of jungle, and it took all night to get there.

Verthandi, was, above all, an agricultural world. There was heavy industry centered near the principal cities, of course, and petroleum and various metal ores. Chromite, principally, and bauxite, were dug or pumped from the edge of the deserts to the south. It was the fertile land along the jungle basin slopes that was Verthandi's most important economic asset, however.

Paradoxically, the soil of the lush jungle floor was impoverished, leached beggar-poor of minerals by constant water erosion. In most places, the jungle canopy was so thick that not enough sunlight entered to support undergrowth, resulting in surprisingly little dead vegetation or humus. The swamps were another matter, bottomless layers of muck and ooze stinking with decay. Neither terrain was suited to farming.

Verthandi's fertility existed in the area known as the Silvan Basin, which had been formed in ages past when a massive asteroid had smashed out a depression in the planet's jungle belt. The land sloped down sharply from the encircling high ground plateaus and rugged mountains. At the northern base of the slope, in a narrow circle clear around the world's pole at roughly 60° north, was a fertile zone where erosion from the southern slopes combined with runoff from the spring floods on the high plateaus. The land here was wet, laced with swamps and stretches of tropical undergrowth far more impenetrable than any true jungle. Scattered here and there among the bogs were islands, solid ground where plantations raised kevla, blueleaf, and garlbean as well as bananas, sugarcane, cotton, and grovacas. Further into the swamps were clearings for rice, rubber, and jute. High along the basin slopes, the steep-sided jungle ridge called Basin Rim, there were plantations that grew coffee and cacao.