A deep voice blared from the overhead speakers. "I'm in position."

Riviera leaned forward and touched a console plate. "Riviera, private channel. Your son's here, Captain."

Captain Durant Carlyle's voice emerged from the console's private line speaker, and it was still uncomfortably loud in the hush that had fallen across Combat Command.

"Oh, he is, is he? Tell him he's earned an extra five hours in the simulator this week."

Riviera's grinned as his eyes flicked back to Grayson. "Message received, Captain."

Grayson frowned, but said nothing. It rankled that he was as subject to discipline as any of the Lance's ground troops, but he'd learned not to make a fuss about it. MechWarriors were, after all, the elite. They were like modern-day knights who held the course of battles in their charge, and he was in training to take his father's place at the con of a BattleMech one day. THAT BattleMech, in fact — the Phoenix Hawk.

Anyway, simtime wasn't so bad, as punishments went. Grayson not only enjoyed the simulator, he was good at it. It was the closest thing to piloting a 'Mech in combat without actually being there. The only problem was that the five hours would come out of his free time with Mara. But then, he'd already said his goodbyes, hadn't he?

Funny how Mara had been so sure he wasn't going to be leaving Trellwan after all, but she'd just have to get over him, poor kid. The next stop for Carlyle's Commandos was the Commonwealth capital. Now THAT would be a piece of decent duty, for a change! He'd never been to Tharkad, but the troopers who had been were more than willing to yarn about the place. Cool and rocky the world might be, but nightlife in the strip outside the capital's starport had a decidedly warm reputation. He was looking forward to it.

Grayson had become very tired of Trellwan, with its endless succession of long cycles of dark and light dragging through years so short that seasons came and went in mere days. "Ari, my father has this pact of his pretty well wrapped up, doesn't he? I mean... this means we'll be leaving Trellwan, right?

"This meeting'll make it official, Master Carlyle, with nothing more to do but go through a ceremonial changing of the guard. It can't get any more wrapped up than that"

Grayson watched the monitor image. "But could anything go wrong?"

Ari shrugged expressively. "When dealing with Periphery bandits, keep one hand on your account files, and the other over your eyes."

"My eyes?"

White teeth flashed in Aristobulus' dark face. "So they don't rob you blind."

"Better still, shoot the lot of 'em," Griffith said. He was obviously and gloweringly displeased at the situation.

"That would take a lot of shooting, my muscle-massed friend. And maybe with this treaty of Vogel's, we won't have to. Then you could spend your time shooting Kuritists instead."

"Ah, well, there is that! You have a way of finding the bright side of everything, Ari."

They laughed, but the Weapons Master was still troubled. Worry went with his title and rank, of course, but the situation was tricky. Consider, as Ari was fond of saying during his more pedantic moments, the Trell system lying at the ragged boundaries of the Lyran Commonwealth, an isolated sentinel against an unthinkably large and empty unknown. Inward was so-called civilized space, the Inner Sphere, where the

Commonwealth of House Steiner and four other warring heirs to a sundered Star League jockeyed and scuffled for fleeting advantage of arms or diplomatic positon.

At their backs lay a wilderness of unknown or long-forgotten worlds, the darkness of the void, the rabble of petty tyrants and Bandit Kings scratching ragtag empires from the ruin of a war-shattered glory-that-was.

Hendrik III was one such bandit king, and his raids for water and technological flotsam had savaged scores of worlds both in Lyran space and among the other systems of the neighboring Draconis Combine. It was those raids that had brought Carlyle's Commandos to Trellwan in the first place five standard years before, and there'd been some sharp fights between bandit raiders and Trellwan's garrison in the meantime.

Somehow, between raids, Hendrik had forged a tottering alliance of a dozen Bandit Kings, an alliance that had made the man a power worthy of recognition... and caution. The coalition, which was centered at Hendrik's capital of Oberon VI, controlled the firepower and transport capacity of a minor House. That was something mere bandits could not be trusted with.

Olin Vogel had arrived from Tharkad with a plan, a plan smoothed over with the veneer of diplomatic tact. By treating Hendrik III as just another Bandit King, making raid for raid and challenge for challenge, the Commonwealth would simply get more raids and challenges, requiring more garrisons strung along more dry and half-forgotten worlds clear across the Commonwealth's Periphery. But treat Hendrik as a House ruler, treat him as lord of an empire as legitimate as the Commonwealth by suggesting a mutual defense pact with generous territorial inducements and guarantees... that changed the situation, and for the better.

Vogel's maneuverings had taken the better part of two local years, which was almost three standard months. As neither side trusted the other, a local trading house, House Mailai, had been hired to ferry the negotiators between Trellwan and Oberon VI. Neither party was quite ready to allow heavily-armed DropShips from the other side to ground on home territory. Worse, Hendrik already had a treaty (or at least, a rough understanding) with the Draconis Combine, and the Combine was at war with the Lyran Commonwealth. Technically, this made Hendrik an enemy, though not a particularly active one. It had taken time, and that most fleeting of human commodities — trust — but at last a pact had been hammered out

With the Trellwan Concord, Hendrik would become the Lyran Commonwealth's partner and ally. It would now be Hendrik's JumpShips and 'Mech battalions guarding the Commonwealth's peripheral worlds in this sector, freeing up the Steiner garrisons there for duty in the Inner Sphere against the latest maneuverings of the Draconis Combine. This would discourage further bandit raids because the military arm of Oberan's minor empire was already stretched to the limit

In return, Hendrik would gain more worlds to rule, more resources to tap. Trellwan was one of those worlds, a minor pawn in a political game played out across light years. Trellwan's own native population was governed by a kinglet named Jeverid, a man with fealty sworn to House Steiner and the Commonwealth, but what of that? When worlds are traded, the wishes of individuals do not count for much. Besides, Trellwan would still technically belong to House Steiner. That was the agreement. The only difference was that the outpost's 'Mechs and troopers would now be Hendrik's instead of the Commonwealth's.

The negotiations for both sides had overcome severe obstacles to such an agreement In fact, the worst problem had come when word of the secret negotiations had somehow leaked out to the Trells, who were the unsuspecting objects of the planned transfer of power and real estate. Captain Carlyle's staff had intended to keep the Trells ignorant of the deal until after it was achieved. After all, nothing would change for them. One garrison Lance at the Castle was pretty much the same as any other. But Hendrik had raided Trellwan in the past, and the Concord might be interpreted badly by Jeverid and the more short-sighted of his people if they got wind of it too soon.

Carlyle's advisors had been correct. When news of the impending agreement reached the people of Sarghad, at the base of the mountain where the Castle stood guard, city-wide riots had broken out, and the fires had turned that hot Firstnight to day. The Lance's two light 'Mechs had been tied down with patrol duty in the city almost constantly since.