White light touched her blonde hair with silver. Grayson thought she looked tired. "Hello, Captain," Lori said, but she did not look up at him.

"I hoped I'd find you here." She sighed. "It's...beautiful."

"Lori, what's wrong? You're looking worn to a frazzle."

She did look at him then, twisting her body around the anchor of her handhold. There were circles under her eyes. "Oh, nothing, Captain. Trouble sleeping, I guess."

'Too much work?"

She didn't answer at first. "Captain..." She almost reached out.

"Gray...I don't know if I can face it again."

"You'll do fine, Lori." He hated the platitude even as it passed his lips. He didn't know that she would... and neither did she.

Grayson wasn't sure what had happened to Lori on Trellwan, except that it had been a deep, perhaps horrifying shock. He did suspect that it had to do with a critical moment during the battle when her Locusthad been sprayed with liquid fire. She'd called out to him over their combat frequency and he had heard her, kilometers away. He'd turned from his own battle, hurrying across rugged terrain to where Lori's small band of ‘Mechs and troops was holding out against the Red Duke's legions. His arrival had scattered the attackers and ended the battle. The fire on the Locustwas out, and Lori was safe.

But she had changed. Before that battle, they'd been so close. Afterward, she had become...had remained...distant. He'd approached her before their boost-off from Trellwan, and she'd asked him for time to sort things out, to heal.

The warning voice gave a ten-second alert. The power feed to the Invidious'sjump drive built around them. She released her grip on the handhold, the slight motion setting her adrift into Grayson's arms.

"Gray, I'm..."

Jump! Vision blurred, an inner twisting assaulted their senses. Time became timelessness, an endless suspension of now, as space opened around them, a funneling black maw...

"...afraid."

He moved apart from her, his hands still grasping her shoulders. Outside, the sky had changed, the diamond brilliance of Galatea's sun wiped away and replaced by the closer, dimmer glare of a sullen red dwarf. That would be Gallwen, first stop in a long chain of jumps that would take them to Norn.

Grayson swallowed hard, forced himself to draw a deep, even breath as his head cleared itself of the transit effects. Jump affected some more than others, but it was never pleasant.

"We all are," he said, when he could finally speak.

She looked away from him, her shoulder-length hair a swirl of gold in zero-G. Damn!he thought. I'm talking in platitudes again! But what is it she's afraid of?

He decided to risk confronting her. "Lori, was it the fire? You told me once your parents died in a fire on your homeworld...on Sigurd."

"I don't know." Red light illumined tears in her eyes, tears unable to fall in the absence of gravity. "I don't know. I have...dreams. I wake up and can't get back to sleep. Captain, I'm afraid I'm going to fold the...the next time. I'm just no good...."

His fingers closed tighter on her shoulders as he held her at arm's length. "That sort of thinking isn't going to get you anywhere, young woman! It's only natural that you get the wobbles after the close call you had. But you'll be fine, once you have your ‘Mech around you, once you're doing what you've been trained to do. Do you think the rest of us aren'tafraid?"

Gently, she broke free, drifting back until her hand found the bulkhead grip. "I'll...be all right, Captain. I just need...time."

Was she upset because he'd gotten too close? Perhaps she thought his coming here had been a romantic advance, a hope that they would get to talking, that she would come into his arms. Well? Hadn't that been why he'd come? He couldn't deny it. And she hadcome into his arms. But what had gone wrong between them?

Perhaps the best thing for now was to keep up this strictly professional wall. She needed time, and he needed an efficient second-in-command. The new MechWarriors, that's where their minds should be focused. How was he going to handle them, weld them together into an effective unit? Yorulis and Debrowski, young and inexperienced. Clay and Khaled, silent and secretive. McCall, a stark individualist unafraid of speaking his mind... unintelligibly. As the Legion's Exec, it would fall to Lori to help him bring those people together as a combat team.

"You need sleep," he said, all business. 'Talk to Tor's medic. He might have something that'll help you sleep." She started to protest and he sharpened his voice. "That's an order! I can't have my Executive Officer wandering around with circles under her eyes!" She shrugged and turned away. "Yes, sir. As you say." He watched her move from the observation lounge, pained by the dullness of her response, concerned that nothing was resolved.

Lovely as she was, as much as he would have liked to resume the pleasant closeness their relationship had held before Thunder Rift, the fact remained that he didneed her first as his Exec. Her depression worried him.

* * *

Lori returned to her cramped quarters aboard the Phoboswithout visiting Invidious'ssickbay. She had already tried various sleeping drugs, and now detested the dullness they imparted to mind and body, the false sense of well-being, the empty leadenness of the sleep they brought.

Besides, drugs could not change the growing ache she carried within her. She'd admitted to Grayson that she was afraid, but she had not admitted all. Let him think she was afraid of combat. She didfear death or injury, as any sane person feared the hell of BattleMech combat. Like the others, she had learned to submerge such fears; you acted, and you let your training and your mental preparation carry you past the numbing paralysis of fear.

She was afraid, but it was a fear of her own feelings and not a fear of combat. The hell of it was, she wanted to be able to confide in Grayson, wanted to recapture the closeness they once had shared, but somehow she could not. There was a barrier between them, and she knew that it was she who had changed, not him.

Lori did not know what that barrier was, though. She was afraid of her own feelings, because she dared not probe too deeply within to examine them. She caught sight of herself in the mirror on the cabin bulkhead, and it was as though she were gazing into the face of a stranger.

5

The Invidiousmaterialized in normal space at the Norn system's zenith jump point, 1.28 AU from the star. Norn was a K2 class star, cooler, smaller, and redder than Sol of man's birthworld. Three worlds circled the primary, along with the usual collection of asteroidal debris and cometary junk. Centuries before, Scandanavian settlers had named those planets for the three fates of Norse mythology. There were cloud-shrouded, hot, and poisonous Skuld. There was distant, glacial Urth of frozen ammonia seas and methane gales. Arid between these extremes of fire and ice was Verthandi, nearly the size of Terra and circling close to the inner boundary of Norn's ecozone. Here, water remained liquid, but its sun's long days and high percentage of infrared made a desert of most of Verthandi's surface.

From the zenith jump point, Verthandi was visible only as a bright, silvery star at an angular separation of 23° from Norn. The Invidioushung suspended there, her sensors alert for the telltale flutter of fusion drives or starship power plants. Citizen Erudin had told them that the Combine forces did not routinely patrol the system's jump points, but much could have changed during his months of absence.