The Tech made an unpleasant face. "Who knows? The natives're 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 Trellsll 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 Hendrick, 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'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.