Battlecry: Sten: Omnibus One (Sten Omnibus) (71 page)

Sten’s alarm should have gone off when he and Alex doubled into Arundel’s gates. But the fact that the two Praetorians on duty were in parade battle dress instead of their normal monkey suits just did not register. Nothing else would have given away the revolt. Clerks scurried about, dignitaries mumbled in corners, and the palace was normal.

Normal, until Sten and Alex came out of the lift on the Emperor’s private level. And then it was Alex who realized something was wrong.

‘Captain,’ he said. ‘Wha’ be y’r Gurkhas?’

And Sten came back to immediacy. Those Gurkhas the Emperor hadn’t taken with him on the
Normandie
should have been patrolling the corridors. Instead there were Praetorians, all in full Guards combat dress.

The realization was very late, as four of the Praetorians snapped out of an alcove, willyguns leveled.

‘Lads,’ Alex started. ‘Ye’re makin’t a wee mistake.’

And then Kai Hakone, in uniform, stepped out of the chamberlain’s office. He nodded politely to the two. ‘Captain Sten, you are under arrest.’

NG 467H was a maelstrom of blinding light and howling interference that blanked the two fleets hanging in the white shadow of the spinning neutron star.

The
Normandie
and the Tahn battleships were motionless in their orbits, support and escort ships patterning around them. Since the pulsar eliminated conventional navigational methods, the ships maneuvered using computer-probability screens, computers that were normally used only for navigational instruction and simulated battles. Communication between ships was either by probe ship or by unmanned message-carrying torpedoes.

Pilots, whether Tahn or Imperial, were of course well-skilled in instruments-only conditions, but so near NG 467H, most instruments were equally useless. So, using known (by computer projection) locations, cruisers eased around the bloated hulks of the
Normandie
and the Tahn ship, hoping none of the Big Ugly Clots had altered their orbits, and the destroyers and probe ships ran infinitely variable patrols using a central plotting point cross-triangulated from the three nearest stars, and crossed fingers.

The vicinity of NG 467H was the ultimate whiteout, and the two leviathans and their pilot fish and remoras were as blind as if at the bottom of a deep.

BOOK FIVE

THE RED MASS

Sten lay on his bunk, running progs.

After their arrest, Alex had been frog-marched away to join the Gurkhas in their dungeon. However, to his initial surprise, Sten was merely ordered to his quarters. But after analysis, the move seemed to make sense – at least sense from Hakone’s point of view.

Hakone was obviously thinking beyond the obvious next moves.

Nevertheless, having been involved in more than a few coups d’etat, Sten thought Hakone had his head up. If
he
were Kai Hakone, he would have ordered Sten, Kilgour, and the Gurkhas shot instantly, and worried about explanations later.

Sten may have been sent to his quarters, like any officer ordered under Imperial hack, but Sten’s room had been fine-combed for weaponry and three armed former Praetorians had been stationed outside. Sten’s only real weapon was the knife in his arm, which had gone undiscovered.

Sten was somewhat uncomfortably coming to the conclusion that he was gong to die rather quickly. He’d already checked his layered maps of the castle, but the nearest chamber that accessed the wall passages and tunnels was some fifty meters away.

Sten didn’t even consider the window, assuming that Hakone would have a couple of hidden sharpshooters on the ground below ready for Sten to try that exit.

Keep thinking, Sten. Assume, for the sake of stupidity, that you can go out the door, immobilize three guards, and then get into the palace’s guts.

Ho-kay.

Then you head for the radio room, the room with the sole link to the
Normandie
. Further assume that you have time to broadcast a
warning to the Emperor; that your broadcast gets through to the ship; and that the call isn’t fielded by Ledoh.

Clottin’ unlikely again.

But assume it, lad. Assume it. Then what happens?

What happens then is Hakone kills you. Then the Emperor comes back (hopefully), retakes his own palace, and, if that happens, gives you some sort of medal.

A very big medal.

Sten had never wanted the Galactic Cross. Especially posthumously.

He dragged his mind back. Hell with it, man. You can’t even get out of your room yet.

A fist thundered against his door, and Sten rolled to his feet.

‘Back against the far wall, directly in line with the doorway.’

Sten obeyed.

‘Are you against the wall?’

‘I am.’

‘This door is opening. If you are not immediately visible, I have an unpinned grenade ready.’

The door opened, and there stood a man he was already considering his chief warden, grenade ready. The other two guards stood slightly behind him, willyguns up.

And behind them was Kai Hakone.

Sten stayed motionless as the guards came in and flanked him, carefully staying meters to either side, as Hakone paced into the room.

‘Captain Sten, a word?’

Sten grinned – a lot he had to say in the matter. ‘Outside. As an officer in the Guard, will you give me your parole?’

Sten considered lying, then discarded it. He still had a job, and being inside the palace made its accomplishment slightly more possible. ‘No.’

‘I thought not.’ Hakone beckoned, and four other guards came into the room. ‘But I still would like to discuss matters with you.’

Sten had a fairly good idea that, if the Emperor survived and returned, he would have a major case of the hips. His gardens were being busily dug up and entrenched or sited for ground-to-air missile launchers by Praetorians. Hakone seemed to notice none of the activity as he walked beside Sten.

The seven Praetorians held diamond-formation around Sten, their weapons leveled and aimed.

These also Hakone ignored. He was, like any thinker-turned-activist, in the middle of a near-compulsive explanation. ‘It would have been simpler if Phase One had been successful.’

Sten, equally compulsive an intelligence officer, wanted more information.

‘Phase One, Sr. Hakone? I don’t have all the pieces. You were intending the bomb to stun the Emperor, correct? He was then to be hustled to Soward Hospital, where Knox would take over the case.

‘What would that have given you?’

‘The Emperor traditionally withdraws from the public after Empire Day for a rest. One, perhaps two weeks. During that time he would have been reconditioned.’

‘To follow whose orders?’

‘Ledoh and others of us who recognize that the Empire must be redirected to its proper course.’

‘But now you’re going to kill him.’

‘Necessity is a harsh master.’

Sten mentally winced – Hakone couldn’t
really
think in those clichés.

‘So he dies. Why did you take over the palace?’

‘Once the Emperor is dead, and with us holding the center of all Imperial communications, no false information will be broadcast.’

‘Like who really did it?’

Hakone smiled and didn’t bother answering.

‘By the way, Hakone, if you don’t mind my saying, who is going to be your judas goat?’

‘The Tahn, of course.’

‘Don’t you think that those delegates might have their own story? And be listened to?’

‘Not if they’re equally deceased.’

Sten’s poker face melted. ‘You’re talking war.’

‘Exactly, Captain. With a war starting, who will be interested in a postmortem? And a war is what this Empire needs to melt the fat away. That would also settle the Tahn question.’

‘When is this going to happen?’

‘We have no exact timetable. The Praetorians and I were supposed to take the palace three days from now. Your discovery of the
Zaarah Wahrid
forced us into premature motion. The actual termination of the Emperor will be decided by Admiral Ledoh.’

‘You really think this committee, or whatever you’re calling it,
could
run the Empire?’

‘Why not? Twenty minds are obviously superior to one, aren’t

they?’ Sten could have answered by stating the obvious – no, because any junta becomes an exercise in backstabbing as each leader tries to take out the others. Instead he went in another way.

‘Twenty minds don’t know the secret of AM
₂
.’

‘Captain, you really believe that drivel?’

Drivel, hell – Sten had spent enough time around the Emperor to realize the man
had
that ace up his sleeve.

‘There is no way I can believe that one man – one mortal man – controls AM
₂
. That the answer is nowhere in his files.’

They continued to walk, Sten maintaining silence, waiting for the offer.

It came.

‘The reason I wanted to talk to you privately,’ Hakone finally continued, ‘is that after the … event, there will probably be a certain amount of resettlement. You could be of service.’

‘To you personally, or to your committee?’

‘Well, of course, for us all. But I would want you to report to me.’

Sten didn’t let himself smile. Already Hakone was figuring on having his own people to guard his back. The man didn’t even believe his own theories. ‘What would be my new job description?’

‘You would be allowed to maintain your present position. But I – I mean we – would have you detached for special assignments in the intelligence area.’

‘You’re forgetting I swore an oath. To the Emperor.’

‘If the Emperor no longer existed, would that oath be valid?’

‘Suppose I say no?’

Hakone started to beam, then studied Sten closely. ‘Are you lying to me, Captain?’

‘Of course.’

Hakone’s smile was subtly different as he beckoned to the guards.

‘You are a careful man, Captain. Let us leave things as they are. You are restricted to your room until notified otherwise. After the Emperor’s death, perhaps we should rehold this conversation.’

Sten bowed politely, then followed the guards back toward his quarters. He was not interested in Hakone at the moment; he’d figured a way out of his confinement – and a way that gave him almost a 10 per cent chance of surviving the ensuing debacle.

That was better odds than was normal for Mantis.

Lord Kirghiz ignored the grumblings of his fellow Tahn lords, fitted himself into the lighter’s bare-frame jumpseat, and buckled in. After getting Kirghiz’s curt nod, the co-pilot hissed orders to the pilot, and the lighter broke lock with the Tahn battleship and arched toward the
Normandie
.

Kirghiz was showing less the stoicism required of a man worthy of ruling the warrior Tahn than that of a man with worries far more serious than the indignity of being chauffeured in a troop transport. To begin with, less than one third of the Tahn council had agreed to the summit meeting, and those who had deserted him were the most adamantly anti-Empire, pro-war faction of the Tahn lords.

Kirghiz’s control of the Tahn council was very tenuous, based on an uneasy agreement among a majority of the various Tahn factions. In his absence, he knew that the ruling council might very well change its entire structure.

Still worse were the demands he was required to make on this, the first day of the summit. Several were deal-killers, conditions which Kirghiz knew, from his decades as a diplomat and power broker, the Emperor could not agree to.

In fact, if he were the Emperor, Kirghiz would consider breaking off the meeting moments after hearing those demands.

He prayed, to whatever gods he disbelieved in, that the Emperor was the consummate politician he should be, and would recognize the demands as nothing more than cheap grandstanding for the Tahn peasants and the peasant-mentality of those lords who proposed them. Because if the talks broke down, Kirghiz saw no other alternative than war between the Tahn worlds and the Empire.

No computer he’d used could predict the outcome of such a war,
but all of them showed one thing: Defeated or victorious, the Tahn worlds would be in economic ruin at the war’s end.

Kirghiz being a Tahn, a Tahn warrior, and a Tahn lord, he did not even think about the other result to the talks breaking down – the certainty of his own trial for treason and execution if he returned without a treaty.

If he survived the breakout attempt, which was very unlikely, Sten made a note to put the cost of replacing his mini-holoprocessor on somebody’s expense account. Because sure as death and dishonesty, Sten’s hobby machine was ruined.

The holoprocessor was intended to create the illusion of very small – no more than 100-centimeters-high – figures, machines, or dioramas.

Cursing his ineptness at electronics, Sten had replaced all of the holoprocessors’s fuses with heavy-duty wiring stripped from a shaving light and cut the safety circuits out. He had searched through the holoprocessor’s memory looking for some sort of horrible beastie to use, then laughed and input the description and behavior of the wonderful gurions he and Alex had met shortly before.

That complete, the mini-processor was pushed to a few meters from the door. Its actuating switch was boogered to a remote, under Sten’s foot.

Sten took the required position, directly across from the door opening, and then considered cheap lies. Sick? Nobody’s that dumb, not even a Praetorian. Hungry? Still worse. Then Sten was struck by inspiration. He tossed a vid-tape at the door and got an appropriate clunk.

‘What is it?’ came the guard’s suspicious voice.

‘I’m ready now.’

‘For clottin’ what?’

Sten allowed puzzlement to enter his voice. ‘For Sr. Hakone.’

‘We have no orders on that.’

‘Hakone – you must have heard – told me to contact him immediately after our meeting.’

‘He didn’t tell us that.’

Sten let silence work for him.

‘Besides, he’s given orders that no one is to see him until further notice.’

‘Kai Hakone,’ Sten said, ‘is in the Imperial com bunker. I think he would like to speak to me.’

Any sergeant can fox a grunt, just as any captain can fox a sergeant. Or at least that’s the way it had worked when Sten was on duty in the field. He hoped things hadn’t changed much.

‘I’ll have to check with the sergeant of the guard,’ came the self-doubting voice.

‘As you wish. Sr. Hakone told me that he wanted nobody to know.’

There was an inaudible mutter, which Sten’s hopeful mind translated as a conference, consisting of
yeah, Hakone works things like that, nobody told us nothin’, that figures, what’th’clot we got to worry about if we just take him to a com center
. And then the louder voice: ‘Are you back against the wall?’

Sten held out his hands. Indeed, he was standing, obviously unarmed, against the far wall. The guard eyed him through the freshly drilled peephole, then unbolted and opened the door. He was three steps inside, his backups flanking him, when the two-meters-high image of the gurion rose from the holoprocessor and walked toward the guards.

The reaction was instant – the guards’ guns came up, blasting reflexively and tearing hell out of the ceiling.

Sten’s reaction was equally fast: he flat-rolled, hit, half rose over the self-destructing holoprocessor, his knife lanced before him, and then buried it in the chest of the lead guard.

Sten used the inertia of the guard to stop himself, and the knife came out, splashing blood across the room, through the rapidly fading gurion. And Sten was pivoting, his left, knuckled hand smashing sideways, well inside the second guard’s rifle reach, into the man’s temple, while his right arm launched the knife into – and through – guard number three. Cartilage and bone cracked and broke in guard number two, and Sten recovered into attack position before any of the three corpses slumped to the floor.

Wasting no time in self-congratulation, Sten catted down the corridor, heading for the palace’s catacombs.

Kilgour, too, was trying moves.

‘Clottin’ Romans,’ he bellowed down the corridor. ‘Y’r mither did
it wi’ sheep. Wi’ goats! Wi’ dogs! Clottin’ hell, wi’ Campbells!’ No response came from the guards outside the cell.

He stepped back from the window and looked apologetically at the 120 Gurkhas sharing the huge holding cell with him.

‘Tha’ dinnae ken.’

Kilgour’s plan, for want of a weaker word, was to somehow anger the guards so much they’d come into the cell to bust kneecaps. Alex hoped that, regardless of weapons, he and the 120 stocky brown men in the cell could somehow break out.

Havildar-Major Lalbahadur Thapa leaned against the wall beside him. ‘In Gurhali,’ he offered helpfully, ‘you might try one pubic hair.’

Alex laughed. ‘Now that’s the stupidest insult Ah’ve heard in years.’

‘Stupider, Sergeant Major, than calling someone a Campbell – whatever that is?’

Without warning a section of seemingly solid stone in one wall slid open, and Sten was suddenly leaning nonchalantly against the far wall. ‘Sergeant-Major, I could hear your big mouth all the way down the corridor. Now if you’d knock off the slanging and follow me.

‘The arms room,’ Sten continued, as the Gurkhas recovered from their astonishment and bustled into the low tunnel Sten had emerged from, ‘is three levels up and one corridor across.’

‘Ah’m thinkit Ah owe y’ a pint,’ Alex managed, as he forced his bulk after the Gurkhas. Sten looked very knowing as he palmed the rock wall shut.