"BattleTech 06 - Gray Death Legion 01 - Decision at Thunder Rift - William H Keith" - читать интересную книгу автора (Battletech)

Remembering a fragment of the evening's fun, Gray-son only smiled and shrugged. Kai Griffith shared the prejudice of most old-time garrison soldiers against the local civilians they were supposed to protect. He would never understand.
They paused at a massive steel door set into a wall of rough-cut stone, guarded by a gray-uniformed trooper holding his submachine gun at a stiff port arms. The door was decorated with the design of a clenched, mailed fist against a sky-blue background. Griffith shook his head resignedly, knowing the stubbornness of this boy staring at him with pale gray eyes.
"We haven't finished with this, Master Carlyle. You're being trained to con a BattleMech someday, to be a Mech Warrior of Carlyle's Commandos. But warriors have to learn a damn sight more than how to pilot a walking metal mountain. Get me?"
Grayson had heard the lecture and all its variations before-about discipline and dedication to the unit and working as a part of a team. He made himself look attentive as he stifled an insistent yawn. There hadn't been much sleep for him during the past rest period.
Griffith finally stopped when he realized Grayson was simply tuning him out. "C'mon, son," he said, gesturing at the door. "Let's get in there and watch the reception."
The Combat Command Center was a bare-walled room lined with consoles and carpeted with enough power-feeds and cables to make footing hazardous. Clusters of gray-uniformed men stood or lounged here and there, some talking quietly over cups of dew or hot chava, others studying the pale flicker of monitor screens or the eerie green glow of radar trackers. From somewhere overhead, a woman's amplified voice announced, "Mai-lai DropShip now entering atmosphere. Her captain confirms presence of the Oberon representatives on board. Estimate time to grounding at eleven minutes."
Two men sat at one near console. One was a dark-eyed Senior Tech in official gray-and-blue coveralls and the other a slight, swarthy-skinned man wearing a high-collared, richly worked civilian tunic. Beside them stood another civilian, silver-haired and erect, a silver-chased quarter cloak fashionable on the Inner Worlds draped across his left shoulder.
The dark-haired civilian looked up sharply at Grayson. Though his eyes were angry, he said nothing. Grayson knew Nikolai Aristobulus was keeping his reprimand silent only because of the outsider standing behind him.
"Hello, An," Grayson said, as though he neither saw nor felt his tutor's disapproval.
"Master Carlyle," Ari replied stiffly, with only the slightest inclination of his dark head. "You're late."
"What's Carlyle's boy doing here?" the silver-haired civilian asked, turning toward Griffith. "These negotiations are extremely delicate."
It was Ari who replied. "He is here at my request, my Lord, and at the direct order of Captain Carlyle."
"Indeed? And since when does a battlelance tutor set staff policy?"
"When he is charged with training the CO's successor ... my Lord." Ari's hostility was barely restrained. "The boy may have to handle this someday."
"Let him stay, my Lord," Griffith interjected, nodding toward the monitor. "That trader DropShip's almost in."
Lord Olin Vogel scowled, then moved away to another monitor console, trailing his ruffled dignity. Behind Vogel's back, Griffith made a face at Ari. Seated at the communications console next to the tutor, Chief Tech Riviera could not conceal his own grin.
Grayson was completely uninterested in politics, but found Representative Vogel's presence with the Lance annoying. He had arrived from Tharkad 80-some standard days before, brimming with plans to forge an alliance with the nearby stellar empire of a troublesome Bandit King. None of the men or women in Carlyle's Commandos liked the stiff-necked and arrogant viscount, and the necessary formal etiquette of dealing with Katrina Steiner's personal emissary often failed to veil their black looks. Few in the unit agreed with Vogel's plan for pacifying this sector.
Fortunately, that had nothing to do with Grayson. He peered across Ari's shoulder at a console monitor. "So what's happening?"
"If you'd been here on time, you wouldn't have to ask. Your father is at the spaceport. The Ami-LAN shuttle has entered atmosphere and should ground in ... about ten minutes."
The monitor showed the spaceport's empty expanse of ferrocrete. The image moved in peculiar, swaying bobs and dips caused by the lurching of the transmitting camera, which rode on a BattleMech.
Grayson needed no explanation of the monitor scene. The camera transmitting that ponderously shifting image was mounted on the unit's lead BattleMech, a Phoenix Hawk, 45 tons of battle-scarred and endlessly patched and rewired walking combat machine. And Grayson's father was at the con.
Griffith frowned at the image. "I still wish he'd been able to take all four 'Mechs."
Riviera shrugged. "The Shadow Hawk's in the Repair Bay, and the Captain wanted the Wasps on patrol in town, just in case." He made a slight gesture toward Vogel still standing at a nearby console. "THAT one wasn't going to see his plan sabotaged for anything!"
Griffith watched the government representative with narrowed eyes. "Did we have to send both Wasps to patrol Sarghad?"
The Tech made an unpleasant face. "Who knows? The natives are none too happy about this deal."
"I wouldn't be, either," Ari said. "The line between a legitimate interstellar empire and a pack of bandits can be rather fine at times. The Trells'll have to live with them when we're gone. They have a right to be nervous about old Hendrik's . . . intentions."
The meeting this hour would seal the hard-fought pact between the Lyran Commonwealth, which was using Carlyle's Commandos to garrison Trellwan, and the new and blossoming empire of Hendrik, the Bandit King of Oberon VI. It was unfortunate that the Trellwan natives had no love for Hendrik's legions, but that did not affect the secret negotiations one single jot.
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 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 position.
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 Ami-LAN, 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.