Lori seemed to read his mind. "I don't see that we have much choice. Captain."

He smiled, though the expression required effort. Almost...he almost reached out to touch her, but the cool distance in her voice restrained him. After Trellwan, he had promised to give her time. Lori, what's come between us? We were close...once....

He cut off that thought immediately. There were problems enough without agonizing over that.He managed to keep his voice light. "You’re right. Either we starve on Galatea or we're stranded on Verthandi. But that doesn't make it any easier, does it? Not with our people counting on us."

* * * *

If it's true that the ideal spy would have trouble attracting a waiter's attention in a restaurant, the nondescript, middle-aged man in a Galatean Port Authority NCO uniform was just such a one. He'd been at Lieutenant Murcheson's side during the talk about port clearance with Captain Carlyle and had said nary a word. Syneson Lon had been alert enough, though, hoping to pick up something that Carlyle might have carelessly let slip about his plans or his destination. He'd been the one to point out to Murcheson that the Phoboswas very likely headed out on some covert mission, hoping the Lieutenant would mention it and elicit just such a slip from the young Captain-There were people, powerful people, who were keenly interested in the young merc leader and where he might now be headed with his men. Lon leaned now against an angle in the blast pit wall near Bay Twelve, studying the DropShip Phobosthrough compact, but powerful, electronic binoculars.

The spy had already amassed considerable information on Carlyle and his unit. He knew about the aged freighter Invidiouskeeping station at the Galatean system's zenith jump point and about its captain ... Renfred Tor. He knew about each of the MechWarriors who had signed on with the Gray Death Legion during recent weeks, and was aware of Carlyle's meetings with this fellow Devic Erudin at the Starspan Hotel. Lon still had not learned from where Erudin came, and that worried him. Erudin's homeworld was no doubt where the Gray Death Legion was headed next. So far, the spy's only clue was that the Legion's BattleMechs were being painted in camouflage suitable to a world of jungles or heavy forests.

When the groundcar carrying Lori Kalmar pulled up near to where the Legion's commander was standing, Lon focused the binoculars on her. Kalmar's dossier reported that she was a native of Sigurd, a world in some Bandit Kingdom beyond the Periphery, until she'd met Carlyle on Trellwan. Lon smiled, thinking she was well worth studying with his binoculars.

When he touched a control, the 'nocs focused in on the faces of the man and woman as they talked. He could see that Kalmar looked worried. Though these binoculars were equipped to record the movements of their lips for later study, the spy had become a lip reader himself through long practice. From this angle, he couldn't quite make out Lori's words, but Carlyle was easily visible.

"You're right," he was saying. "Either we starve on Galatea or we’re stranded on Verthandi." The words were as clear as if Syneson Lon was hearing them spoken aloud. Smiling broadly, he lowered the binoculars.

So, now he knew exactly where the Gray Death Legion was bound.

4

Even in his father's unit, Grayson had considered staff briefings to be interminable as the various department heads invariably wrangled over points that the young Grayson had found mindlessly tedious. So much of that wrangling had been over money, which had been of little concern to him then. Now that he understood how important a decent cash flow was to a mercenary outfit, he was sorry for not paying attention to those sessions in the briefing room of Carlyle's Commandos. Be that as it may, Grayson still hated staffings.

He'd arranged to be the first one in the Photos'slounge, which served as his command briefing room. Along with staff meetings in general, he also disliked the formality that many military commanders adopted in such situations. As the nine men and women filed in and took their seats, Grayson remained seated, forcing himself to adopt a casual, relaxed pose. He was aware that much of his unease was due to how little he knew of most of the people now in the Gray Death's leadership core. Except for Lori Kalmar, Sergeant Ramage, and Renfred Tor, the others were comparative strangers. While they studied the contract, Grayson studied them.

Davis McCall was a big, friendly Caledonian with an engaging grin, fierce pride in his Terran-Scots ancestry, and a frequently unintelligible Scots burr. He had brought his own BattleMech to the unit, a 60-ton Riflemanaffectionately known as the Bannockburn .

Next to him was Delmar Clay, lean, dark-haired, and stubbornly untalkative about his past—save that he'd been a member of Hansen's Rough Riders. He still wore the Rough Riders' distinctive green combat jacket, sanspatches. More important, though. Clay also had his own ‘Mech, a 55-ton Wolverine.

Hassan Ali Khaled was darker, quieter, and even more reticent about his past than Clay. Once, though, Khaled admitted privately that he had spent most of his life as an ikhwan,or brother, of the dreaded Saurimat Commandos of his homeworld Shaul Khala. Grayson had heard of the Saurimat. What MechWarrior of the Inner Sphere had not? The name meant "Quick Death", and the group had a reputation like that of ancient Terran martial brotherhoods such as the Ninja and the Hashshashin. Khaled piloted the Gray Death's lone Stinger.

The two youngest team members were Piter Debrowski and Jaleg Yorulis, an odd pair. Debrowski was a tall, lanky Slav with pale hair and skin, while Yorulis was short, stocky, and black-haired. Though not combat-experienced, they knew ‘Mechs, which was why Grayson had decided to give them a chance. He'd assigned them to the Legion's two captured 20-ton Wasps.

Seated together at the far end of the table were the most recent additions to the Legion, Jeffrie Sherman and Sue Ellen Klein. Only the day before. Tor had found them in a Galaport bar, sole survivors of an AeroSpace Fighter wing that had gone alone into action at the Steiner world of Sevren against overwhelming odds. When their destroyed unit was dropped from the Commonwealth's rolls, they'd come to Galatea looking for work with a mercenary unit that needed fighter support. The best of it was that they'd brought their battle-scarred but fully-operational Chippewafighters with them. One of Invidious's DropShips could carry a pair of AeroSpace Fighters, and so both had promptly been mounted in the port forward cargo bay of the Phobos.Erudin insisted that running the Draconis Combine blockade around Verthandi would not prove difficult, but Grayson was glad those fighters would be along for the ride.

Finally, seated between Captain Tor and Ramage was Use Martinez, an attractive, black-maned woman who was Tor's First Officer and senior DropShip pilot. Though she'd been with Tor for the past five years, Grayson had still not gotten to know her well, for she had remained aboard the Invidiousthroughout his campaign on Trellwan. Though she was loud, even brassy, Grayson was willing to trust Tor's assessment that Martinez was superbly competent when it came to handling a DropShip. She had volunteered—if that was the word for her loud insistence—to ferry the Gray Death down to Verthandi past the Kurita blockade.

Grayson watched each of them as they read the contract, feeling a growing sense of inadequacy. He'd been raised in a close-knit mercenary regiment that had been a kind of extended family for him, with his father at the head. Though it always took a while for newcomers to be accepted, they eventually became part of the family, too. Now, Grayson was head of a family of his own. He wasn't comfortable with so many newcomers at once. Nor did they seem much more comfortable with him. That was going to have to change, and change fast, if they were to trust his leadership in combat and if he were to trust them to carry out his orders. This group of strangers would have to be molded into a functioning unit whose members could rely totally on one another. Where to begin?