He spared a second to look down at the battle. With the sun so low on the southwestern horizon behind him, the battlefield was already in the shadow of the com station's ridge. Flashes of autocannon fire stabbed repeatedly through the gathering gloom, and the funeral pyre of a loyalist Waspglowed like a flare. There were perhaps a dozen Loyalist ‘Mechs on the field, more than the rebel scouts had reported, and many support units as well. Yet, the rebel assault was going well anyway. Five rebel ‘Mechs were sweeping forward onto the field, plowing through the Loyalists' center. Ramage easily recognized Montido's big Dervishamong them. Meanwhile, the three heaviest Legion ‘Mechs—the Shadow Hawk, Rifleman,and Wolverine—stayed on the edge of the Basin Rim, pouring round after high-explosive round into the scattering defenders.
At a soft noise behind him, Ramage whirled, stunner up. It was only Gundberg and Willoch slipping over the wail, followed by Chapley, Sorenson, and six more commandos clambering up the rope close behind. Their faces showed relief that the Pantherhad not come around the corner of the building on a check-and-see.
The ten Verthandians hauled up the grapnel rope and began unshouldering their assault rifles. Willoch handed Ramage his. Not knowing what waited on that third-floor roof, the sergeant had not wanted to make the climb encumbered by a rifle.
Tight-lipped and silent, Ramage deployed his men with nods and hand gestures. The next step was to get inside the building. He reholstered his stunner, clicked back the bolt on his TK to bring the first round into the chamber, flicked off the safety, and advanced toward the open trap door, rifle probing ahead.
Ramage got there just as a third Kurita officer was coming up the steps. Painfully young, he wore the collar pips of a junior lieutenant and carried three brimming cups of coffee in two hands.
Ramage stopped his finger before it could complete the trigger squeeze, swinging the butt of the rifle up instead. Planting the stock against the boy's sternum, he gave a firm shove that sent officer, cups, and coffee clattering backward down the stairs. Ramage followed feet-first, not bothering to use the steps. He landed with a knee-jarring crash close beside the shrieking heap of the Kurita Lieutenant.
Three other Kurita officers were in the room, just turning from the communications consoles that ringed the ferrocrete- walled room. His TK bucked three times with carefully placed four-round bursts that picked up the black-uniformed figures and flung them against the consoles in one-two-three order. The Lieutenant's wailing ceased abruptly as the smoking muzzle of the TK swung down level with his nose.
"You!" Ramage barked. "Any more?”
“D-down... downstairs..."
Five of his men descended the steps, rifles ready. Ramage gestured them toward the door leading to the first floor, but that door flew open before they could reach it. The narrow confines of the building's upper story rang with the chatter of automatic weapon bursts and small arms fire. Two Kurita soldiers pitched back from a wooden door suddenly pocked and splintered by bullets, and Chapley went down, arms clasped across his belly. Three other commandos slammed the door shut and dragged a table across to brace it while the fifth guarded the prisoner. Ramage slung his rifle and hurried to the com station.
The console was similar to those he'd used aboard the Invidiousand the Phobos.For that matter, it was like those he'd used on his homeworld of Trellwan. The main panel was already warmed up and tracking, the antennae trained on the Norn system's zenith jump point.
He'd thought it would be. If Captain Tor had kept to his timetable and his promise to return in 900 hours, he should have jumped in-system sometime earlier that afternoon, certainly within the past three hours. The arrival of the Invidiouswould have sent an electromagnetic pulse racing out from the jump point at the speed of light. A little over eleven minutes later, that signal would have raced through near-Verthandi space, triggering computer-guarded alarms on planetary bases and ships. It had been Grayson's guess that every deep-space tracking antenna on Verthandi would have immediately been trained on the newcomer, beaming challenges and listening for a reply.
He was right. A computer screen at Ramage's right hand showed what little was known about the newcomer. It was a freighter, its IFF transponder code that of an independent trader. Mass was estimated at 80,000 tons. Its solar collector sail was already unfurled, but thus far, no communications had been received.
Ramage smiled. It could only be the Invidious,right on schedule.
He found another com channel and adjusted a setting. Holding a microphone to his mouth, he pressed a transmit key. "Skytalker, Skytalker, this is Climber One...Do you read me?"
The voice that came back almost immediately was Lori Kalmar's. "Climber here, Skytalker. I read."
"Jackpot! I say again...Jackpot! Ready to feed on kilo hotel seven seven niner thuh-ree."
"Got it, Climber. Channel open. Here she comes."
Grayson had appointed Lori to the task of carrying the precious, recording tape once it had been cut in the Phobos'scommunications center. Grayson's Shadow Hawkwas needed for the battle with the Loyalist defenders, for a stray hit could put a key antenna out of commission at a vital moment. Ramage was not able to carry the tape himself in something as risky as a ranger assault. Besides, no one in the rebel forces could know what sort of equipment they might find in a communications center supposedly belonging to the Loyalist government, but more likely staffed by Kurita ComTechs. To carry the transmitter gear needed to play the tape into the Kurita equipment would have seriously encumbered the commandos.
Though Grayson was certainly listening in, it was Lori in her Locustwho had carried the tape and listened for Ramage's signal. She had followed the battle line but remained hull-down below the crest of Basin Rim, with only her transmitter antenna protruding above the ridge. On Ramage's signal, she had transmitted the signal to the captured Kurita com gear, where Ramage fed it into the station's recorders. Having compressed the message to a fiftieth of a second's zipsqueal, he then brought his finger down on the button that sent the signal flashing out toward the zenith point at the speed of light.
He looked up from the console. There was a thudding at the door, which shivered, raining flecks of splintered wood. Four pale faces looked across at Ramage.
He shrugged. "I don't think we're going back the way we came, boys." As if to back him up, there came a blast of light and sound from overhead, then a cascade of dust and smoke down the steps into the room. Three of the five commandos that Ramage had left above dropped into the room, their faces ashen, their knuckles white on the grips of their weapons.
The Pantheroutside had been alerted to their presence.
Ramage had cycled the recorded message as a zipsqueal loop going over and over, and he kept it playing now, sending burst after burst of computer-coded data into the sky. It would be eleven minutes before the first signal reached the Invidious,and eleven minutes more before any possible reply could make the return trip. He doubted that they could last over twenty-two minutes to hear it.
The north wall thundered, a sledgehammer of sound that rang in his ears and jarred dust from the bare ferrocrete blocks. The hammering blasted again, and the commandos looked wildly at one another. Would the Pantheractually tear down the com station it was supposed to protect in order to get at the raiders inside? The thunderclap of sound exploded a third time, and the meter-thick walls visibly trembled. Apparently it would.