So, the fault is mine, Singh thought. I should have sealed the matter with a second shot, or at least had someone stay and check for wounded in the Bay.
But things had been happening so fast down in that Repair Bay. Only rapid decisions and swift movement would have accomplished the mission.
And the mission HAD been accomplished, had it not? Carlyle's Commandos were broken, the survivors fled, and their base in Singh's hands. If this one boy had managed to escape to Sarghad, could that seriously jeopardize the grand plan? Singh's specific orders had been to make certain of the death of Carlyle's senior Tech, Riviera, of all Mech Warriors remaining in the Castle, and of Carlyle's son. The orders had been carried out, except for the very last.
Singh considered the matter carefully. The boy had not escaped with the surviving members of Carlyle's Lance, of that he was certain. If he lived, he could only be hiding somewhere in Trellwan's desert wilderness, or in that sprawling refuse heap at the foot of this mountain the indigs called Sarghad.
If he had made it to the wilderness, his time was running out. Periasteron would bake those deserts with killing heat in only a few more standard days. And even if the boy survived THAT by hiding in a cave somewhere, the -50 degree weather of Trellwan's brief winter would finish him by Secondnight.
That left the city. There was no way to search the entire city for one boy, and no real reason to attempt it. Young Carlyle would not be able to get off the planet, would not even be able to approach the spaceport without being challenged by the perimeter guards. He was effectively marooned on Trellwan. The rest of the Plan was proceeding smoothly, and it seemed that Carlyle's son would pose no obstacle to its
final stages.
Besides, there was always the chance that he would be picked up by a patrol unit. Singh decided that it would be best to issue a patrol order requiring that he be notified if anyone of Carlyle's approximate age were taken in Sarghad or at the spaceport. . .no, make that any offworlders, whatever their age. One way or the other, he would learn the boy's whereabouts or assure himself that he was dead.
The officer was still standing at attention before him. "That will be all, Lieutenant You have done well. Thank you for your report"
The Lieutenant sagged visibly with relief, then stiffened and executed a smart right-fist-to-left-chest salute. "Yes, Lord!"
Singh watched the man turn on his heel and leave. No, Carlyle's escape should not affect the Plan at all.
He returned his attention to the work on his desk, a report he was writing for the Duke. A fast courier was scheduled to arrive at the jump point within 24 hours, and Singh's report would bring the Duke and his armada to Trellwan before another local year had passed.
Singh knew that His Grace, Duke Ricol, known throughout the Successor States as The Red Hunter, was eager to begin execution of the next phase of the game.
* * * *
Above Mount Gayal and the brooding, truncated pyramid of the Castle, there rose a series of jagged, cliff-faced peaks, part of the braid of rugged mountain ranges circling Trellwan's equator. The Crysander Mountains were raw and new, shaped by the incessant tidal twistings of Trellwan's very close sun, which continued to fold and refold those uplhrusting layers of igneous rock and, on occasion, literally turned them inside out in lava flows and eruptions. Many of the peaks along the 35,000-kilometer-long range were enthusiastically active volcanos, and mild seismic quakes were a daily occurrence.
Although most of Trellwan was arid, there were two small, snaking, mineral seas nestled among the equatorial mountains. The planet's human colonies had grown in the relatively fertile regions within a few hundred kilometers of these bodies. The slow tidal swell raised by red Trell once each fifteen standard days was too high to encourage seaside settlements. Also, the high sulfur and hydrogen sulfide content of those acid waters made the air for kilometers around heavy with a sour, rotten-egg stench. However, much of Trellwan's power came from unmanned tidal generator plants along the foul-smelling shores of those seas.
Periasteron marked the beginning and the end of each 45-day year. It was the time when Trellwan was closest to Trell in its slightly eccentric orbit about the star, and always occurred over the same two spots on the planet's surface. The Periasteron called Far Passage occurred on the other side of the world in the middle of each Secondnight. It was heralded in Sarghad by mild storms sweeping in from the dayside, and by gradually rising temperatures that marked the beginning of Sarghad's brief spring-summer-fall.
The Periasteron called Near Passage occurred over the Nerge, the Black Desert, 2,000 kilometers to the west of the city, and was altogether different.
Trell was in the sky at that lime, just past the middle of Firstday for Sarghad's longitude. As the local temperature rocketed under the burning heat, water evaporated from the surface of the nearby sea at an accelerated rate. Clouds boiled skyward so quickly that their growth could be followed with the eye. As vast volumes of hot, wet air rushed from ground level into the chill stratosphere, they dragged in desert winds that howled across Sarghad from the mineral flats to the east