"It's a peripheral circuit, boss," the traitor said. "I can't get it from here. I'll have to check the cameras down in the Repair Bay." He reached back into the circuitry access and flicked a row of switches from on to off with precise deliberation. "Your monitors'll be down for a bit."

"How long?"

"Oh, not long." He began gathering his tools and stuffing them into his canvas shoulder bag. "Fifteen minutes."

The watch officer glanced at his wristcom. "Make it fast," he said, penning a notation on the clipboard in his hand.

"Don't worry," the other man replied. "It will be."

The traitor was an astech and a native Trell, his sharp-chiseled features and black, curly hair typical of Trellwan's small native population, his complexion extraordinarily pale due to the world's UV-poor sun. The watchstation door passed the man at a touch of his fingertips to the security scanner plate, then hissed shut at his back. As he moved down the stone-walled passageway, the clatter of his footsteps echoed hollowly.

Cold stone steps led down and down, through deserted corridors and past rooms guarded by grey uniformed sentries. Twice, the Trell had to show his pass, a holographic ID pinned high on his shoulder. Other astechs passed him in stony silence or with nodded greeting. His coveralls and heavy toolbag were pass enough to get him through most doorways, as there were few areas in the Castle where a native as tech could not go.

The Repair Bay was part artifice and part natural cavern, a high-valuted room whose lingering gloom was broken by isolated pools of light One wall was brown-rusted and corroded with age. At the Bay's center, crisscrossed by spotlight pools and the snaking coils of power feeds and compressor lines, the 55-ton hulk of a partly disassembled 'Mech lay sprawled across an elevated rack. A Tech bawled orders and gestured from the deck at a pair of astechs working on the behemoth's chest. Wearily, they stooped above the actinic flare of a wielding laser. Armor plates weighing half a ton apiece dangled above in a tangled web work of lines and scaffolding.

The traitor looked around at the four 'Mechs that were the heart and soul of Carlyle's Commandos. Armored, ten-meter monsters, BattleMechs were all but invincible against troops or conventional armor, so powerful that only another 'Mech of equal or greater firepower had any chance at all of bringing one down. The Trell smiled to himself, thinking how he had accomplished just that with merely a forged maintenance order and fifteen minutes work.

Disabling the Lance's Shadow Hawkhad been the first part of his two-pronged mission. He had been given explicit instructions and training, as well as a replacement circuit board to be slipped into a 'Mech's servoelectronics control nexus if he got the chance. He'd found that chance and the board had crippled every power feed in the 'Mech's leg servoactuator series before melting itself into an anonymous lump of slag, all traces of sabotage erased. Now the Lance had but three 'Mechs — the Captain's Phoenix Hawkand the two 20-ton Wasps.Without the Shadow Hawk'sparticular balance of heavy firepower and maneuverability, the garrison would be crippled if it found itself in an all-out fight.

The Trell clutched his tool bag tighter under his arm, and hurried past to the rattletrap metal steps that led in dizzying zigzags to the Bay Control Center, a windowed booth suspended from the back wall fifteen meters above the stone floor.

The Repair Bay Officer of the Watch looked up from the glow of a monitor, lowered his feet from the console, and set his mug of chava aside. "Yes?"

"Maintenance, sir," said the small, dark man, turning his shoulder so that the officer could see his astech's card without rising from his chair. "They sent me down from Central Control to find a fault in the security camera circuitry. I think it's a bad line in here somewhere."

The officer nodded. "Damn junk," he said. "Like everything else on this sand-rotten ..." Realizing too late that he talking to a Trell, he bit off whatever else he'd been about to say and pointed at a row of dead monitors, "Access is back here," he said, then propped his feet back up and returned to the single live monitor on the console. The traitor glanced over the officer's shoulder, and noted that the monitor showed the spaceport, empty ferrocrete broken by overlapping patches of shadow and light under a chill, starry sky.

So they weren't down yet. He glanced at his wristcom silently counting out the minutes and seconds that remained, and began laying out his tools. It wouldn't be long now.

* * * *

Grayson Death Carlyle had long ago given up being sensitive about his grim middle name. He'd inherited it, so to speak, from an ancestor, Lord Grayson Death Thomas. Lord Grayson, it was said, had changed the pronunciation of his middle name's vowel from a long to short "e" after he became the Victor of Lysander and a landholder so powerful no one dared care how he pronounced his name. In a warriors' society that revelled in the deeds and exploits of heroes, the younger Grayson's name drew little more than occasional wry heckling from the other members of his father's Lance.

As soon as he stepped from the electric runabout that had brought him back to the Castle, Grayson knew he was in trouble. Shedding his cold-weather gear, he dropped it into the arms of a waiting Trell orderly who said nervously, "The Weapons Master's been looking for you, sir."

Grayson glanced at his wristcomp and winced at the time. "Yes, I expect he has."

"He seemed a bit upset," the orderly went on, sounding like someone who feared being caught any minute near ground zero of a long-expected blast.

Grayson shrugged, then turned to the electric heater the Vehicle Bay watchstanders had rigged to take the edge off the bitter air that came in whenever the Bay's outer doors were opened. Amid the grime-smeared walls of the arena-sized hall, about 20 other House troopers were about, either standing in the heater's glow, lounging with books, or playing card games. Grayson rubbed his numbed hands briskly to restore circulation. It was a typical Secondnight, 20° below, with a low-keening wind that plunged the windchill to -40° Centigrade or worse. Sergeant Griffith's reprimand was going to be worse than the cold, he decided, but the memory of Mara's caresses, the lingering warmth of her kisses, made up for it all.

A voice broke into his thoughts. "So!" Master Death has deigned to join us."

"Hello, Griff," he said amicably. "Sorry I'm late."

The shadow resolved itself into the unit's Warrant Weapons Master, Sergeant Kai Griffith. The harsh overhead lights gleamed from his hairless scalp and seemed to highlight the savage blue scar that twisted down his jaw close to his right ear.

"'Sorry,' the boy says! 'Sorry!'" Griffith's face, with its drooping mustache, wore a studied sneer. "What I want to know is where'n the bloody blue hell have you been?"

To mask his anger at being called "boy," Grayson continued to smile, but his voice was chill. "With friends," he said, thinking that someday Griffith would go too far.

'"Friends!' Off-base again, then. Seeing that Trell girl, I suppose?"

"Aw, Griff..."

"Don't give me that! You were scheduled for weapons practice four hours ago, and you're supposed to be in the Command Center observing right this minute. What the hell are you playing at, boy?"

Grayson touched fingertips to his shock of pale blond hair in mock salute. "Reprimand received, Sergeant Griffith."