Battlecry: Sten: Omnibus One (Sten Omnibus) (28 page)

The Jann cruiser suddenly looked more like a dolphin school as the Vydal close-range ship-to-ship missile stations fired. Fired, cut power, and looked around for a target.

VYDAL-OPERATOR INPUT. TARGET. NO TARGET. CLUTTER ECHO HAVE TARGET. TARGET TARGET DOUBLE TARGET DOUBLE LAUNCH. FIRST TARGET NONACTIVE FIRST TARGET POSSIBLE POWER. TARGET I HAVE A TARGET HOMING ALL SYSTEMS HOMING. ALL OTHER UNITS SLAVE TO HOMING.HOMING.

New, the Vydal-series missiles were not the brightest missiles the Empire ever built. After twenty years’ hard service, several in the less-than-adequate maintenance the warriors of the Jann used, they were no longer even what they had once been.

Most of the Vydals obediently followed the tarted-up decoy launch as it blasted into deep space. But one, more determined, more bright or more iconoclastic than its brothers, speared flame from its drive tubes and homed on the
Cienfuegos
.

In the Jann cruiser, its operator cursed as he tried, without success, to divert the Vydal to its ‘proper’ target. But the lone missile detonated barely 1000 meters from the
Cienfuegos
as the ship began the first white-hot skip into the atmosphere of the unknown world.

Ida had been trying to bring the
Cienfuegos –
a vehicle with the glide characteristics of an oval brick – successfully in-atmosphere for a landing, but the one kt detonation of the Vydal put paid to the plan. The
Cienfuegos
flipped, turned, spun. No problem in deep space – down was only where the McLean generators defined it – but entering a world?

The explosion crushed the
Cienfuegos
’ cargo holds and flipped the crablike ship a full 180 degrees. Top-to-bottom, of course, since disaster never comes as a solitary guest, just as the
Cienfuegos
finally hit solid atmosphere.

Doc was the only being who might have found the situation humorous as the craft spun wildly out of control, beyond the skew-path Ida had plotted, beyond even a conventional dive, beyond any kind of sanity.

But Doc was not chuckling. He was, after all, seconds from death.

As were Sten and the other members of Mantis.

The ship crackled out of the skies and plunged into the upper atmosphere. Sensors sniffed wildly for surface … any kind of molecular surface at all.

Figures danced and swirled across the ship’s computer screen and Sten shouted strings of changing numbers at Ida. Her fingers flowed across the controls, tucking in the impedimenta of the mining ship, sliding out two stubby wings. She tensed, as she felt the beginnings of atmosphere. Brought the nose down gently … gently … The ship hit the first layer of air and spun wildly.

Ida slammed on the right thruster, a short violent flare, then off again. Hit the left. And slowly brought the ship back under control. Nose in again. Just right. Slicing deeper into the air a degree at a time. Then the ship settled out, behaving like a ship again.

Sten glanced around. Bet was pale in her seat but steady. Alex was flexing excess gees out of his muscles. And Doc had the fixed stare in his teddy-bear face that he got when he was plotting revenge on someone. Ida shot a grin over her shoulder.

‘Now let’s find a place to hide,’ Sten said.

She just nodded and turned back to the controls.

Suddenly the jet stream hit them at twice the speed of sound. On
the
Cienfuegos
girders bent and groaned. Cables snapped and whipped, sparking and hissing like electric snakes.

The massive air current tossed the
Cienfuegos
again, further out of control and driving it helplessly down toward the surface of the unknown planet.

Ida cursed and fought the control board, trying not to gray out. One viewscreen flashed a possible crashlanding site, then blanked out.

Ida jammed out everything the ship had that resembled brakes from the stubby emergency landing foil to the landing struts to the atmosphere sampling scoops.

The ship juddered and jolted as the little winglets bit into the atmosphere, and Ida punched the nose thrusters, momentarily pancaking the
Cienfuegos
into something resembling control.

A moment later the
Cienfuegos
topped the high walls of the huge volcanic crater Ida had targeted on and then was booming low over a vast lake, sonic blast hurling up waves.

Everything not fastened down hurtled forward as Ida reversed the Yukawa-drive main thrusters and went to emergency power.

A prox-detector screen advised Ida that the current landing projection would impact the
Cienfuegos
against a low clifflet rimming the lake’s edge – something that Ida was quite aware of from the single remaining viewscreen.

Ida did the only thing she could and forced the
Cienfuegos
into a 10-degree nose-down attitude.

The ship plowed into the lake, slashing out a huge, watery canyon.

And Sten was back on Vulcan, running through the endless warrens after Bet, Oron, and the other Delinqs. The Sociopatrolmen were closing in on him and he shouted after his gang to turn and fight. Help him.

Something stung at him beyond dream-pain and Sten was clawing his way back up into bedlam. Every alarm on the ship was howling and blinking.

Doc was standing on Sten’s chest, methodically larruping him across the face with his paws. Sten blinked, then wove up to a sitting position.

The other Mantis soldiers were scrambling around the room, in the careful frenzy that is normal Mantis-emergency.

Alex was lugging gear to the open port – wrong, Sten realized, it was a gaping tear in the ship’s side – and hurling it out into bright sunlight. Bet had the tigers out of their capsules and was coaxing the
moderately terrified beasts out of the ship. Ida was piling up anything electronic that was vaguely portable and self-powered.

Alex lumbered over to Sten and slung him over one shoulder. With another hand he grabbed Sten’s combat harness and rolled through the tear in the
Cienfuegos
’ side.

Alex dumped Sten on the pile of packs and went back for another load. Sten staggered to his feet and looked at the
Cienfuegos
. The ship was broken almost in half longitudinally, and various essentials like the winglets and landing struts had disappeared into the lake mud. The
Cienfuegos
would never fly again.

Sten battled to clear the fog from his brain, trying to conjure up a list of the supplies they’d need. He stumbled toward the rent in the ship.

‘Wait. We should—’

But Alex ran out with more gear then spun Sten around turning him away. ‘W’ should be hurrin’, lad. Tha wee bugger’s aboot t’blow.’

Within seconds, the team was assembled, packs shouldered and stumbling up the low clifflet.

They had barely passed over its crest when, with a rumble that echoed around the vast crater walls, the
Cienfuegos
ceased to exist save as a handful of alloy shards.

The egg-shaped crater they had crashlanded in was huge, almost seventy-five kilometers long. The lake itself filled about half of the area, even though it was obviously drying rapidly, from the ‘big end’ of the egg toward the ‘point,’ where Ida had glimpsed a break in the crater’s walls.

The ship had cashed it in about ten kilometers from the gap, leaving the team with a nice hike to clear their still muddled brains.

By now they’d taken stock of their situation, which bore a close resemblance to dismal. They’d lost almost all their gear in the wreck, including emergency protective suits and breathing apparatus. They did have their standard ration/personal gear/water filtration packs that, rumor had it, no Mantis soldier would walk across the street without.

The arms situation was equally bleak. The only weapons they’d brought out were their small willyguns, a sufficiency of the AM
₂
explosive tube magazines for those guns, and their combat knives.

No demo charges. No hand-launched missiles.

A slackit way f’r a mon, Alex mourned to himself. Ah dinnae ken Ah’d ever be Alex Selkirk.

‘Does anyone have any plans?’ Bet asked mildly as she pushed her way through a clump of reeds. ‘How the clot are we gonna get off this world?’

‘Plans could be a bit easier if Ida would tell us where she committed that landing.’

‘Beats me,’ the heavyset woman growled. ‘If you recall. I didn’t have much time for little things like navigation.’

‘Regardless,’ Bet put in. ‘It’s all your fault.’

‘Why?’

‘It always has to be somebody’s fault,’ Bet explained. ‘Imperial Regulations.’

‘An’ who better’n the wee pilot?’

Alex should have kept his mouth shut. It had been a very long day for Ida, and she decided the joshing was no longer funny. She turned on Alex.

‘I’d push your eyes out,’ she said, ‘except it’d only take one finger, you bibing tub of—’

And Sten stepped in before tempers could in fact heat up. ‘Words. Just words. They don’t cross klicks.’

‘Leave them be,’ Doc suggested. ‘At the moment, a little spilled blood would cheer me enormously.’

Alex whistled suddenly. ‘Willna y’have a lookit this!’

They’d broken out of the reeds and were crossing an open section of terrain. Here the ground had once been covered by fine, volcanic ash, which had hardened over eons into solid rock.

Alex was pointing at a cluster of enormous footprints, bedded deeply into the rock surface. Sten followed the prints with his eyes: they came out of what must’ve been the lake’s edge, moved about twenty meters along it, then the being who had made them stopped for a moment – the prints were deeper there. Then they turned, hesitated as if the being had looked at something, then went on, disappearing gradually.

Sten stood in one of the humanlike prints and raised an eyebrow. It was at least twice as large as his own foot.

‘I hope we don’t meet his cousin,’ he said fervently.

Ida turned her little computer on, measured the rock. She laughed and snapped it off again.

‘You’re safe,’ she said. ‘Those footprints are at least a million years old.’

Sighs of relief all around.

‘I wonder who they were?’ Bet asked.

‘The People of the Lake, obviously,’ Doc answered.

Alex gave him a suspicious look. ‘An’ how w’ye be knowit thae, y’ horrible beastie?’

Doc shrugged his furry shoulders. ‘What else would a being call itself if it lived on the shores of a lake this size?’

‘Doc,’ Ida said, ‘if I were a gambling woman – which I am – I’d say you just outfoxed yourself. You couldn’t possibly know something like that.’

Everybody chortled in agreement.

Doc trudged on without comment.

*

The spectacle from the top of the low rise was interesting enough, Sten admitted as he frantically scrabbled the willygun off his shoulder.

First was the slow descending of the crater walls as the crater opened out to flatlands and brush.

Second were the tiny thatched knots of huts scattered around the crater’s opening – possibly two or three hundred of them, clustered in knots and hidden on tree cover.

But far more significant was the solid wall of warriors. Lined up, almost shoulder to shoulder, were hundreds of beings, each nearly three meters tall. Evidently Ida was wrong and the beings that’d left the mooseprints in the rock were still alive and quite healthy.

Also hostile.

They were huge, slender creatures, with straw-colored skin like the savannah around them. They wore bright-colored robes, caught at one shoulder with elaborately carved pins.

And each was armed with a spear that towered even higher than himself.

‘What was that you said about being safe, Ida?’

‘I haven’t been calling them very well lately, have I?’ ‘What do we do?’ Bet asked.

‘I think somebody’s coming to tell us.’ Sten nodded in the direction of one warrior who was advancing up the hill.

Guns came up, level.

‘Put ’em down,’ Sten hissed. ‘We don’t want to look threatening.’

‘Threatenit? Ah dinna ken who threatenit who, Ah must mention.’

The being stopped about ten meters away. Closer up, he was even more formidable. His height was accented by an impossibly long, narrow face, with flowing, feathery eyebrows and hair greased high into a tan helmet shape. He was carrying a bundle of what appeared to be weapons.

The group jumped involuntarily as he hurled the bundle toward them. It dropped in front of Sten.

‘/Ari!cia! /Ari!cia!’ the being shouted, pointing at a low grove of trees lining one side of the hill.

‘What’s he want, Doc?’ Sten asked.

Doc shook his head.

‘Except for the fact that he is speaking a heavy glottal-stop language, I haven’t the faintest idea.’

‘/Ari!cia!’ the being shouted again.

Then he turned and strode back down the hill and disappeared into the trees.

‘Projection,’ Doc theorized. ‘Given a primitive culture … warrior-herdsmen. No longer nomadic, their wars have most likely become raids and meetings of champions.’

‘Oh.’ Sten got it and walked forward. He knelt and took the weapons from their hide wrap. There was quite an assortment: one short spear; one atlatl, throwing-stick; one medium-size club; one long war spear; and one hand-shaped and polished curved chunk of hardwood. A throwing-club, Sten theorized, wondering about the open vee at one side.

‘We have been challenged,’ Doc continued. ‘One of us is supposed to face him in that grove. If our champion loses, our lives shall all be forfeit.

‘If we win, they will call us brothers and try to fill us with whatever mind-altering potion these primitives have been able to create.’ Doc preened at his own instant synthesis.

‘The question is,’ he continued, ‘which one of us heroes will enter that grove? I might suggest …’

Guard – and Mantis officers – are trained to lead from the front. By the time Doc had begun his suggestion, Sten had already shed his combat harness, picked up the weapons, and begun sprinting down the hill toward the grove.

His sprint became a dead hurtle as Sten hit the treeline at a run as behind him he heard the eerie ululating cheers of the warriors on the savannah outside.

Brush smashed up at Sten, and he flat-dove over a bush, twisted in midair, and hit the ground in a left-shoulder roll. Ground scraping, and then knees under him and
don’t do that
as Sten did a fast bellyskid to his right.

The air hissed and a short spear did a stomach-high deathdance in a tree where he would have been.

Sten stayed down. Diaphragm breathing. His hands running over the weapons. Trying for some kind of familiarity. He remembered something from Mantis Section’s thoroughly hateful primitive weapons instructor – if you have to even think about it, troop, you’re dead.

Don’t think. Automatic. Listen. See. A soft breeze, carrying the scent of unknown flowers, and a soft rustle. Dead ahead, Sten thought, sweeping his head from side to side, tracking the sound of the warrior moving away from him, deeper into the grove.

Sten was on his feet, the short spear notched into the atlatl. Move forward. Deep shadows became masses of vines and ancient tree roots. Silence became the rustling of small animals and insect buzzings.

Half crouched, Sten moved after his challenger. Ah. A snapped twig. The warrior had waited at that spot.

Nothing else – and then the frantic buzz of an insect and a blur as Sten snapped back the throwing-stick, hurled, and dove away in one motion.

Sten almost felt his enemy’s spear bury itself in the ground next to him. He heard a muffled yelp of pain – satisfaction, hit – and was on his feet again and plunging forward, the war club coming up to strike.

He smashed down at a tangle of brush. Nothing.

Wrong, and Sten spun behind a tree for cover.

Waiting.

If you will not come to me, he thought, and went flat, belly-crawling forward under that bush he’d clubbed. Not that far wrong – there was bruised vegetation, immense footprints in the soft soil, and a rusty smear of what he assumed was blood.

But from the amount, Sten was sure he’d done little damage. He scanned the area, looking for a sign. Grudgingly Sten had to admire his opponent. How could a creature that size disappear without a trace?

Up, and slowly moving deeper into the grove.

‘/Ari!cia!’

It was a muffled shout.

‘/Ari!cia,’ it came again.

Sten had been listening to the shout for nearly fifteen minutes. And for at least five of those, he had been trying to figure out what to do.

He gently parted a few stems and peered out. The warrior was standing at one end of a large glade smack in the middle of the grove. A large,
well-tended
grove, where, Sten was sure, many beings had met and fought and died before. The warrior had dropped all of his weapons except for the huge, woodenlike war boomerang. He was brandishing it and yelling ‘/Ari!cia!’ for Sten to come out to fight.

Sten had quietly circled the grove twice, trying to logic out the warrior’s game. Obviously this trial by combat, or whatever it was, consisted of formalized rules: creepy-crawly through the grove and then if everyone survived that, another test in the glade. One on one, one weapon at a time. At the moment it looked like it meant they were supposed to stand out in the open and hurl boomerangs at each other.

Sten had several problems with this proposition. First off, although this was obviously a fight to the finish, he was sure that the
being’s many friends, relatives, and stray drinking acquaintances wouldn’t be too pleased if Sten cut the warrior’s head off. Sure, it was probably a great way to get invited to a drinking feast, but leaving alive afterward might be a problem. Second, there was the problem with the boomerang. Sten hefted it for the eighteenth time. He had thrown such things during primitive-weapons training, but they were all built for beings pretty much Sten’s size, give or take a quarter meter or so. This weapon, on the other hand, was built for three-meter-high beings. Sten could barely pick it up, much less throw it in his enemy’s general direction.

Sten ran his troubles through his mind a few more times. And kept on coming up with the same answer. He grunted and walked out onto the glade.

The warrior spotted him instantly and the shouting stopped. What could only be an enormous grin split his face. To Sten it looked like it might be a relieved grin, as if the warrior had been worried that Sten wouldn’t be much of a contest.

The warrior went into a crouch, holding the boomerang edge-on in front of him. Sten, feeling like a damned fool, tried to copy the stance.

The attack came without warning. It was an explosion of motion, like a huge coiled steel cable whipping out. The throwing-club snicked out, knee-high across the grass, and Sten leaped upward, almost clawing the air to get higher. And then to his horror, he saw the boomerang slowmotion upward in a molten-edged glide. Sten was tumbling over in midjump … a numbing shock as something crashed into his arm and he thudded into the ground.

Sten rolled up to his feet spitting earth and grass. He checked to see where he had been hit, what was left him. and then he heard the hooting laughter of his opponent. At Sten’s feet lay his own boomerang neatly splintered in two.

A slight bloom of anger as Sten realized that his enemy was laughing because Sten had nothing to throw back, as if that would have done any clotting good, and the weird duel was dead-even again.

The warrior snatched up his huge spear and came running at Sten like an enormous cat. Sten ignored his own war spear, curled his fingers, and felt the tingling response and then a coldness in his hand as the knife leaped into his waiting fingers.

He stalked across the grass, bracing for the leap and the slash as the warrior hurtled toward him. Just before the collision, the warrior spun his spear end over end and then suddenly … he wasn’t there.

Instinctively Sten dropped flat and rolled. And in that instant of
the roll, he saw the most incredible thing: the warrior had polevaulted over him. Sailing, sailing, like a giant heron, over Sten’s body … hitting the ground … spinning and laughing back all in one motion.

Sten back-somersaulted. And again and again like some mad tumbler, leaping more than two meters with every turn.

Stop.

Forward somersault, dodging under the spear, slicing over and downward with his knife.

And the warrior was standing there, in an instant of helplessness, gaping at his half spear. Sten tackled him, trying to put all his weight into the fall, and he heard the warrior’s breath woosh out, and then Sten was astride the warrior. Knees locked on each shoulder. His knife at his enemy’s throat. A long hesitation.

‘/Ari!cia!’ Sten finally said, pressing knife against skin.

The warrior looked up at him. Panting. And then a long, slow, grin. ‘/Ari!cia,’ he gasped. ‘Clotting hell! You won!’

If the warrior had taken advantage of Sten’s amazement, he could have killed him on the spot.