Steel Gauntlet (37 page)

The men who unloaded the hostages walked off. All was total silence for a long time. Dean lay there in the darkness, working on his vocal cords, but no sound would come out of them; he could only get a sibilant wheezing noise to emerge from his lips. A tingling sensation in his left little finger indicated that the immobilizing drug was beginning to wear off.

“M-Mac...” Dean croaked. He could feel his feet now. He tried again, “M-Mac...!” He coughed.

“MacIlargie!” he rasped He could move his left leg a little now. He kicked the container lid weakly.

“Dean! MacIlargie! It’s wearing off! Can you hear me?” Ensign Vanden Hoyt whispered hoarsely.

Dean still had not recovered enough to answer fully, so he kicked the lid several times again instead.

“Madame Ambassador?” Vanden Hoyt said, his voice stronger now. “Madame Wellington-Humphreys? Are you all right?” No answer. “Professor—er, uh...” A muffled response from one of the pods was all he got.

“I’m gonna kick somebody’s ass when I get out of here!” MacIlargie shouted in an almost normal voice. Dean smiled despite himself. Hey! He had the use of his facial muscles!

“Lieutenant—Lieutenant Vanderpool...?” It was Madame Wellington-Humphreys.

“Vanden Hoyt, ma’am, Ensign Vanden Hoyt. How are you?”

“It’s Benjamin, Ensign,” Professor Benjamin said.

“Sorry, sir. Good to know you’re okay, ma’am. Good to know you’re okay too, Professor.”

“Call me Jere, Ensign.”

After a few more minutes the five were carrying on a spirited conversation.

“Silence!” a powerful voice roared. They could hear many men moving about around them now. The fastenings on their pods were unsnapped and bright artificial light flooded in upon them as the lids were torn off. The hostages blinked in the light as strong arms lifted them out of the pods.

They were in a large cavern. Several corridors led off in different directions. In one wall was the elevator. Its doors were closed. They were surrounded by at least two dozen armed men in battle-dress uniforms.

Still too weak to stand or move by themselves, they were held up as someone applied manacles to their wrists. Black hoods were then placed over their heads and they were carried and shoved in different directions. Dean and MacIlargie were taken down one corridor, Vanden Hoyt another, the Ambassador and Professor Benjamin a third.

The two enlisted men were taken to a chamber just off the elevator shaft, and as they stood before an iron door set into the solid rock, their hoods and manacles were removed. Their escort shoved them roughly through the door and it was locked behind them. They found themselves in a room three meters wide by about four deep. The ceiling was perhaps five meters above them. It was lighted indirectly from an undetermined source. Bunks lined the walls, which had been faced with wood, and crude toilet facilities occupied one corner. Judging from the lockers and cabinets built into the walls, the place evidently had been someone’s living quarters at one time.

MacIlargie collapsed on one of the bunks. To his surprise, he found it comfortable. He was still too weak to move about much. Dean flopped on the other bunk. “I am gonna kick some ass when we get out of here,” MacIlargie growled.

“Silence!” a loud voice boomed from somewhere up near the ceiling. The two Marines were surprised at first, and then MacIlargie broke forth in a stream of profanity.

“Eavesdropping on us, you son of a bitch?” MacIlargie shouted. “I’ll give you an earful, you shitduk!” The voice demanded silence again. Both MacIlargie and Dean cursed back at it. The lights went out suddenly. In total darkness they screamed obscenities at the voice until they ran out of fresh insults.

Eventually the lights came back on, but the voice did not bother them again.

“How are my guests?” St. Cyr asked as Stauffer entered his well-appointed office suite. While he had never anticipated he would be defeated so soundly when he grabbed power on Diamunde, Marston St.

Cyr always had a fallback position. This complex and the hostages were his tickets to freedom.

“They are fine, sir. The Ambassador is outraged; the professor is curious; the ensign is threatening us; and the two enlisted Marines, well, they are acting like enlisted men.” He shrugged.

“Fine, fine. Pour yourself some refreshment.” He waved to a well-stocked bar in a corner. “Come, sit down with me, Clouse, and we will discuss our future.” The Woo that had been crouching in one corner got up and limped after Stauffer, hoping perhaps to get a handout from the bar. It was limping because St. Cyr had broken one of its feet in a rage the night before.

“Back to your place!” St. Cyr shouted. Clouse jumped involuntarily and the Woo scuttled back to its corner. St. Cyr grinned. The Woo trembled in fear. “Throw the damned thing a cracker,” St. Cyr commanded. Stauffer selected a heavily salted cracker from a basket on the bar and tossed it to the Woo. The creature snatched it adroitly in the two fingerlike talons at the end of its only arm and stuffed it into the slot in its torso that served as a mouth. It stared back at Stauffer with its large, round, wet eyes as if offering thanks for the cracker, then folded its five good legs under itself and turned a glistening brown, the sign that it was digesting, its pain and fear apparently forgotten for the moment.

The Woo was the highest life-form humans had ever found on Diamunde. The early colonists, surrounded by packs of Woos bobbing, weaving, murmuring, and staring at the newcomers and gesticulating menacingly with the talons on the ends of their arms, had killed them by the thousands, thinking they were some form of predator that took a while to make up its mind to attack. Eventually the colonists recognized the creatures’ seemingly natural affinity for the company of humans, and in time the Woos began attaching themselves to anyone who would have them. Since they reproduced by sporing, the early decline of the Woo population was soon made up.

They were moderately intelligent creatures. In time, most could understand enough English to respond to simple commands. How intelligent they really were, compared for instance with Terran canines, was a matter of debate, however. But for the majority of Diamundeans who owned one, the creatures were affectionate, obedient, and useful animal companions.

As a boy, Stauffer had owned several Woos—their normal life span was only about five human years—and he had lavished affection on the strange little things. But since becoming St. Cyr’s man, he had never owned another. Stauffer treated St. Cyr’s Woos with a compassion he never felt for his master’s human victims. You could, often should, hate humans, Stauffer rationalized, but Woos, after all, are only animals. Now, with everything lost in this ruinous war, and as a hunted man hiding underground, Clouse Stauffer began to realize what it must be like to be a Woo under the feet of Marston St. Cyr.

“My dear boy,” St. Cyr said as Stauffer took a seat beside his desk, “you think all is over with us, don’t you?”

“Uh, well, sir, things look mighty grim from where I’m sitting.”

“They’ll look up again, and soon, Clouse. These hostages are our ticket to freedom and ease for the rest of our lives. We lost the big prize, Clouse, but we’re not finished yet, not by a long shot.”

“Sir, something I don’t understand...” Stauffer hesitated but when St. Cyr nodded he rushed on.

“Well, why didn’t you accept the offer to negotiate with the Confederation? Then we could have avoided, well, this...” He gestured helplessly at the living rock that surrounded them.

St. Cyr smiled. “That is not my ‘style,’ as they say. As you know, Clouse, we have many friends in the Confederation Council. Why otherwise did the Confederation stop short of annihilating us?” He laughed bitterly. “Many of the delegates themselves are shareholders in our company. They fought against this war in the first place, and of course they didn’t want us destroyed. But you know what the Confederation was going to offer me? A comfortable exile somewhere out of the way, in exchange for my giving up all the power I worked so hard to achieve here. No! I’m going out on my own terms, Clouse, not like a Woo with its legs dragging behind it. No, no, no! I commanded armies larger and more powerful than any Napoleon ever led. I ruled a planet, Clouse, a whole world! Nobody’s going to exile me to some deep-space Elba.”

“Sir, do you think that’s what the Council would’ve done, had you negotiated with Wellington-Humphreys?”

St. Cyr shrugged. “Same thing, Clouse. Clipped my wings. Now I have the upper hand, and you, my boy, will play a vital role henceforth.”

“Me, sir? How?” Stauffer was not sure he wanted any more “vital roles” in St. Cyr’s plans.

“Clouse, you will deliver my demands to the Confederation forces. I have a little business to clear up with the hostages, and then you will proceed to New Kimberly. Deliver a message to Brigadier Theodosius Sturgeon, commanding the 34th FIST, Confederation Marine Corps.”

“Brigadier...? But sir, won’t you deal with the Fleet Admiral himself? Why a mere brigadier?” St. Cyr laughed. “Because I have his people, Clouse. And it was his job to protect the Ambassador; the Marines we captured with the Ambassador are his. He failed to protect her. I don’t know the man, have never met him, in fact, but it was his troops who spearheaded the breakout at Oppalia, and they did us a lot of harm. I’m going to rub the fellow’s nose in this business. Oh, don’t worry, Clouse, he’ll get the word to the admiral. But we start with him, my boy, and you have the honor of being my messenger.” Stauffer did not understand St. Cyr’s line of reasoning, but he knew St. Cyr well enough not to question him further about it. St. Cyr paused for a moment. “I have contacts on any of a dozen worlds who owe me, and we will be welcomed there.” He paused again and looked reflectively into his glass. “It was a great war, wasn’t it?” he whispered. “We almost had them. We gave those boys a run for their money, didn’t we?” Clouse nodded, but in the back of his mind he was horrified. The war had cost tens of thousands of lives. He would never forget the destruction he’d seen, the terror he’d felt, and the cries of the wounded and dying.

Privately, he doubted anyone would give St. Cyr safe passage to their home world. That would be like inviting a ravening beast into your family’s bosom. Never before had he doubted his master’s ability to get what he wanted. Something had happened to Clouse Stauffer during these last weeks, but nothing, apparently, had changed for Marston St. Cyr.

“Yes, yes, I had it all, everything—I took everything,” St. Cyr continued. Clouse was horrified when he realized St. Cyr was talking aloud to himself. “All right, Clouse,” St. Cyr said, getting a grip on himself and jumping up energetically, “time to interview our guests!” Despite St. Cyr’s optimism that he could pry concessions out of the Confederation by using the hostages as pawns, Stauffer could not shake off a profound sense of depression. Except for the two enlisted Marines, the hostages were being held in separate cells and, for the most part, treated decently.

St. Cyr needed them in good condition. So far he had made no overtures to the Confederation. When Stauffer asked him what his plans were, he only smiled and told him to be patient.

So Stauffer became friends with Professor Benjamin. The professor indicated he understood Stauffer’s position and sympathized with him. He gave the impression he did not hold any resentment against either himself or St. Cyr for what they had done. He was just curious about how St. Cyr had commanded his armies and made the strategic and tactical decisions that led to his ruin. Stauffer believed the professor was already plotting the book he would write about the war once he was released.

“You know, Professor, General St. Cyr was once a student at M’Jumba University,” Stauffer remarked one day. “He says he remembers you.”

Benjamin raised an eyebrow. “I don’t remember him.”

“He says he once took a course from you. He was in the engineering school there but he had to take some humanities courses to get his degree, so he took one of yours on twentieth-century warfare. Some survey course.”

Benjamin shrugged. He could not remember anyone like Marston St. Cyr in any of his classes. He would’ve remembered a student like that. “But Clouse, let’s talk about you. Why don’t you give up?

What St. Cyr has done is madness. Get out of this while you can. The Confederation will never negotiate with your master purely on his own terms.”

Stauffer did not reply at once. “No, Professor, I am General St. Cyr’s man. Where he goes, I go. I must share his fate.”

“You can be so devoted to a man like him?” Benjamin couldn’t believe that. He sensed that underneath his facade, Clouse Stauffer was human after all. Why couldn’t he see how twisted and evil his master was? He said as much.

Suddenly, the earth trembled under their feet as a shock wave passed through the rock around them.

From far, far below where they stood they could hear a muted rumbling. Benjamin glanced at Stauffer in alarm. “Cave-ins,” Stauffer shrugged. “They happen all the time. It’s the tunnels and shafts from old mining operations collapsing after being abandoned for hundreds of years. That’s one reason we didn’t go deeper. You can’t trust those old structures anymore. Still, we’re pretty safe here, and we’re still plenty deep to keep you from being rescued.”

The door burst open and St. Cyr stepped in. He signaled to two men behind him and they dragged Ambassador Wellington-Humphreys, bound and gagged, into the room, dumped her on the floor and left.

“This is outrageous!” Benjamin shouted, and moved to help Wellington-Humphreys.

St. Cyr drew his pistol and pointed it at him. “Sit. She is here for a special reason. Clouse, we have waited long enough. Now we shall open negotiations with the Confederation. But first, Professor, you really think I am ‘twisted and evil,’ I believe those were your words. That’s what you told Clouse here when you were trying to suborn him.”

“H-How did you—”

“Sir, he’s an old fool,” Stauffer said, trying to intervene. A look had come over St. Cyr’s face that was all too familiar to Stauffer, and he did not like it.

“I took a course from you at the university, and you really don’t remember me, Professor?” Benjamin shook his head; he really did not. “Well, let me refresh your memory. The course, as the colonel noted, was on twentieth-century warfare. I wrote my term paper on the United States in Vietnam. My thesis was that had the U.S. applied the right amount of military pressure on the communists early enough in the war and kept it on, they would have won. The war was lost because of their cowardly politicians.” Benjamin remembered the course, but still could remember neither St Cyr nor his paper.