Despite the war, the Dracos had attempted to keep up the flow of the world's lifeblood of commerce. Verthandi's puppet government in Regis continued to collect taxes in the form of a percentage of each harvest, and DropShips loaded with jute, rubber, garlbean, cotton, or blueleaf periodically roared skyward from the prairie north of Regis to freighters waiting at the system's jump points. The image of trade and a productive economy was largely show by this time, however. All across Verthandi, many abandoned plantations had fallen into rot and ruin, while villagers went to war against one another. Like all revolutions, the war on Verthandi was as much a civil war of neighbor against neighbor as it was a revolt against foreign masters.

Grayson had learned or guessed much of this from conversations with Erudin on the voyage from Galatea. He learned more in the night-long march through the jungle, speaking with Tollen Brasednewic on a short-range, directional microwave com circuit that allowed them to question one another without alerting possible eavesdroppers on the mountain ridges above. He was, therefore, somewhat prepared for it when the rebel hovercraft led the mercenary ‘Mechs and hover transports across a shallow stream and into the village.

Fox Island was a large and fertile wedge of solid ground lying at the confluence of a pair of rivers flowing from the foot of the Bluesward Plateau. The Ericksson family had owned and operated the Fox Island Plantation since the world was first colonized by Terrans of Scandanavian descent, over six hundred years before. Gunnar Ericksson was clan head and owner now, and his landhold was a fair-sized village tucked away in the verdant blue-green of the jungle-shrouded island.

Everywhere, knots of people busied themselves uncrating supplies or disassembling machinery. The knocking of hammers could be heard farther back among the trees where a new warehouse was being hastily constructed. High in a treetop, a pair of rebel troops stood on anarrow camouflaged platform, TK assault rifles cradled in their arms. Not that the rifle or the lookouts would be of much use in a sudden airstrike, but the discipline was necessary and the routine Of military duties comforting. Indeed, the whole camp had a reassuringly professional but relaxed atmosphere. Erudin reminded Grayson that these rebels had been fighting Kurita soldiers and the troops of the Kurita puppet government on Verthandi for nearly ten years, and those who had survived this long were very good at what they did.

They fought to keep their world from dying, for the Draconis Combine was systematically stripping the world bare. The government DropShips that ferried goods skyward were carrying them to freighters bound for Luthien and other worlds of the Combine. When the ships returned, they brought back, not machine parts or automated equipment, but Kurita soldiers and BattleMechs. Propaganda had it that the legitimate Verthandian government had "hired" these as protection from attack by the Lyran Commonwealth or the rebel bandits who skulked in the forests of the Silvan Basin.

The existence of the rebel base fascinated Grayson. According to Tollen, Kurita satellite photos of the area revealed only workers in the Fox Island fields, with no unusual activity among the countless clearings and inhabited areas that dotted the island. In fact, those workers were rebel soldiers. On those infrequent days when the skies were clear, however, most of the rebels went indoors or underground to avoid detection by the enemy's spy satellites. When officials from the puppet Verthandian government arrived to assess taxes or to investigate rumors of armed men or jungle-based smugglers, they saw nothing out of the ordinary. Or at least, so far they hadn't.

As Grayson brought his Shadow Hawkto a halt in the broad clearing in front of a long, low mansion with a sweeping, roofed veranda, rebel soldiers and technicians gathered to watch the arrival of the six mercenary BattleMechs. It was still raining, though the high winds and lightning of the night before had fallen off. Despite the weather, the rebels' work went on. They seemed to be raising a new building, with the help of a Waspand a pair of civilian ‘Mechs of unfamiliar design. Here, too, the rebels made the best use possible of chance clouds and rain. Judging by the progress on the building, the structure would be up and well-camouflaged by the time the sun shone into the village clearing again.

The members of the Verthandian Revolutionary Council met Grayson as he descended from the ladder of his ‘Mech. Devic Erudin was there, looking far fresher than Grayson felt after his trek through the jungle. For the first time since Grayson had known the man, Erudin was smiling broadly as he introduced the other members of Verthandi's Revolutionary Council.

Gunnar Ericksson seemed to be the group’s leader. Though there was no indication of relative rank, Grayson sensed the others deferring to him. With his prematurely white hair, he had the bearing of a man born to his world's aristocracy. As the village, the plantation, and the island were all his, Grayson gathered that he spent much of his time playing the Loyalist landowner who paid his taxes and who maintained a small, private army on his own plantation to guarantee the loyalty of those who lived there. In reality, his island had become the headquarters for the largest rebel army in the region, for reasons geological as well as political. The grip of his handshake was strong, and when Grayson admitted he'd heard much about the man, Ericksson's laughter was hearty and genuine.

James "Jungle Jim" Thoryald was another descendant of Verthandi's Norse settlers. Tall, blond, and broad, his politican's smile had won him a seat on the Council of Academicians before the coming of Kurita's legions. Outlawed for anti-Combine agitation after the New Order was proclaimed, he had fled to the jungle plantation. When Kurita forces levelled Thorvaldfast and poisoned the water, he had became General Thorvald. He vanished into the Silvan Basin, emerging only to raid Kurita camps for food and supplies, and eventually gathering an army in the lowland regions north of the Bluesward. Fox Island became his alternate headquarters, the storehouses and barracks on the northern fields his army's secret camp.

The tall and lovely Carlotta Helgameyer was scarcely more than a girl, but one of those rare individuals able to convey an air of aristocratic elegance while clad in grease-stained Tech coveralls or camouflage fatigues. She was, in fact, on the academic staff at Regis and still maintained her teaching post there. She explained that the Kurita masters commanded that life go on as it always had to foster the illusion that life wasnormal now, that the rebels were nothing but misguided bandits, and that happier memories of self-government were the warped maunderings of ungrateful malcontents. Academician Helgameyer was the rebel alliance's link with rebel groups within the city of Regis itself. There were, she assured Grayson, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of brave men and women within the walls of the University, only waiting for the chance to join the uprising that would drive the Kurita conqueror off Verthandi forever.

Doctor Karl Olssen was from a plantation village further to the east, in the Vrieshaven District, and represented one of the largest and best-organized of the rebel bands on the planet. He said little but admitted to Grayson that his own son was among those whom the mercenaries were expected to train.

Grayson already knew much about Devic Erudin. Born and raised in the city of Vyomess several hundred kilometers west of Regis, he had been elected by his fellow rebels to represent them when the Revolutionary Council was formed. Quiet and retiring to the point of timidity, he resembled nothing so much as an owlish university professor. Though he might not resemble a rebel leader, Grayson knew that Erudin was the one who had volunteered to board a DropShip under the guns of Kurita troops and then to take passage on a freighter to another world where he could find and hire mercenaries. It had been Erudin entrusted with vanadium stolen from Kurita convoys to buy supplies the rebellion needed, and Erudin who had found and hired the mercenaries needed to forge an army capable of fighting against Kurita ‘Mechs. Grayson found himself admiring Devic Erudin more than any of the other Verthandians he had met so far.