Battlecry: Sten: Omnibus One (Sten Omnibus) (50 page)

It wasn’t much of a diversionary attack. But then it wasn’t supposed to be. But battle plans, including phony diversions, never work out exactly as they should. Mantis section and the seventy-odd mercenaries who weren’t immediately hospitalized had planned to assemble outside one of the Temple’s secondary gates, snipe any Companion stupid enough to stick his head above the walls, fire all the available pyrotechnics and light artillery at the gates, and, finally, whoop and holler a lot while Sten and Alex went for Mathias.

Even though she probably belonged in an intensive care capsule, Ffillips insisted on being present. She was quite happily functioning as Ida’s loader while the Rom woman directed bursts of 50mm fire at one of the Temple’s gates.

‘Of course I’m not saying there’s no place for mercenaries,’ Ida explained. ‘It’s merely a dumb way to make a credit.’

‘Some of us,’ Ffillips managed as she dumped another clip of shells into a loading trough, ‘don’t have any other choice.’

‘Clottin’ hell!’ Ida snorted. ‘There’s always a choice.’

‘Even for a mercenary?’ Ffillips asked dubiously.

‘Certainly. A good killer would be a wonderful banker. Or diplomat. Or in commodities, which I can tell you privately is a guaranteed mill-credit career.’

Ffillips was trying to decide whether Ida was joking when a burst caught the Temple gate on one of its hinges and proved that the contractor who had built the Temple had been no more honest than most public-works builders.

The entire gate pinwheeled into the air, leaving a clear entrance to the Temple. Suddenly the diversionary attack turned quite real as the mercs howled – a long, curdling wolfpack sound – and ran forward.

Lean, bloody men and women with death in their eyes and revenge in their guts.

Ida flumped into the self-propelled gun’s seat and cranked the engine. With Ffillips still loading, Ida gunned the SP track into the Temple’s main courtyard.

Behind her Bet and the two tigers followed silently.

‘Which way will it blow?’ Sten whispered while examining the tiny ring charge that was anchored to the top of the hollow column.

Sten, Alex, and Doc were five meters below the charge that when set off should let them into the Temple. They were locked in place with treble strands of climbing thread.

‘Ah, lad, questions ae thae be’t whae makit life in’trestin’,’ Alex breathed as he triggered the demoset.

The column’s cap lifted, as did the floorbeams above it and then the flagstone that was the central Temple’s actual flooring.

The flagstone tumbled in the air and chopped down two guards, one Companion, and a statue of the late Theodomir.

Alex, Sten, and Doc shinnied their way up the last few meters, and then they were inside the Temple.

They went looking for Mathias.

Ida was leaning half out of her seat and completely unprotected by the track’s armor when the Companion finished reloading. She was reaching for a banner that looked like it was made of gold when four rounds slammed into the Rom woman’s chest. She sagged across the track’s bow and rolled sacklike to the ground as the unmanned track stalled. A look of surprise, anger, and vast disappointment was frozen on her face.

Bet cradled Ida in her arms as Hugin and Munin finished their slow savaging of the Companion who had shot her. Then Bet lowered Ida to the ground and jumped to her feet, mind blank and firing, and the ground rocked and thundered as the Anti-Matter-Two rounds poured out of her willygun, exploding the platoon of Companions running toward her.

Mathias’ advisors died in the first burst of fire as Sten and Alex charged through the double doors, into the conference room. The advisors had been too busy watching the debacle in the courtyard one-hundred meters below the balcony to hear the death-rattles of the guards outside the chamber. For which minor error they became very dead.

Mathias stood, looking unsurprised at the carnage, as Doc slid out of Alex’s pack and unlimbered the hypo. Alex kept Mathias in the sights of his willygun as the Prophet walked slowly forward.

‘I have been expecting you,’ Mathias said. ‘My best friend and my worst enemy.’

He shrugged out of his red tunic and flexed his muscles. His hands knotted into fists. Sten waited.

‘And now we decide the Truth of Talamein,’ Mathias said softly as he came in.

Sten thought of the careful reasonings and appeals to friendship that he’d come up with to avoid this confrontation. Useless. He shrugged out of his pack and moved forward.

As Mathias’ hand flashed back, behind him to his belt, and came out with a small projectile weapon. The pistol came up and Sten double-stepped into him, right foot coming up in a sweep-kick, and the weapon pinwheeled out of Mathias’ hand.

Sten kept the kick moving, then recovered, his back to Mathias. Sensing Mathias was coming in he crouched, arm high, and half-spun back to face the Prophet, arm raised to block the snap-punch Mathias had launched.

Both men recovered and side-paced.

‘You don’t have to die,’ Sten said.

‘Of course,’ Mathias agreed. ‘And I shall not. Not now, not here, not ever. This is the Test of the Flame.’ And, gymnast that he was, he came straight in, a mae-tobi-geri flying frontal attack.

Sten one-stepped under Mathias, snap-punched straight up into his thigh, rolled away as the Prophet crashed back down, then recovered as Mathias drove a knife hand toward Sten’s head.

Sten flicked his head to the side, and Mathias’ killing punch slammed across his temple and ear.

Sten knife-blocked before Mathias could recover and thudded a flat palm into Mathias’ temple. Temporarily stunned, the Prophet back-rolled twice and came to his feet, half smiling.

‘You
are
a worthy opponent.’ He drove in again. Sten blocked his swing-punch, and then Mathias’ fist-strike came down on Sten’s skull.

The world blurred and went double. Sten snapped his blocking hand into Mathias’ gut and, contradicting conventional tactics, dove flat-forward, ball-rolling, rising, and turning as Mathias attacked.

A punching attack, blocked twice, in eye-blurring motion. Sten snapped a knee up into Mathias’ diaphragm, and the man sagged back.

Then Sten’s single, half-cupped hand swung, slapping Mathias’ eardrum. A two-hand stroke would have killed him, but the single blow merely sent his mind spinning, and, for the first time, Mathias lost his balance, stumbling backward.

And Sten paced in, step … punch … step … punch … knuckled fist turning and thudding in below the Prophet’s ribcage. Mathias doubled.

A final feint as his fisted, coupled hands came up for Sten’s face. Sten locked wrists, drove the strike up, and then, howling, leaped straight up into the air, his foot coming up and out and buried into the Prophet’s chest.

Mathias back-flipped and struck the floor behind him with a dull
thud
.

Then Doc was at Mathias’ side, quickly checking his pulse. ‘Adequate, adequate,’ he murmured, as he pressed the hypo’s trigger and the drug sprayed into Mathias’ veins.

‘You probably broke some bones, but you didn’t kill him.’

Sten was not listening. He was dropped down into semilotus, lungs sucking in air as he recovered.

Bet’s flashes in the courtyard: Ida’s body; Ffillips calmly sniping down Companions as they came into sight; Otho, evidently trying to find a Companion who could be thrown completely through a stone wall; the tigers, impossibly low, crawling under a firewall of tracers, then darting into a weapons pit. End tracers. Begin screams.

And then she heard the voice – the boom that turned the din of battle into a sudden hush as Companions, mercs, and Mantis people turned, to look up the looming wall of the Temple to the balcony.

On the balcony stood Mathias, with a hailer-mike hung on his chest. ‘
I SPEAK AS TALAMEIN.
’

The battle stopped instantly. The Companions flinched upward, then recovered, waiting for the war to start again. But the mercenaries were as captivated as any, staring up at the red-clad figure high above them.

The Companions made obeisance as the voice continued. Stiff, metallic, but forceful.

‘I have chosen to temporarily inhabit this envelope of flesh to speak to you, people of the Faith and the Flame.

‘And I have chosen to manifest myself in this sin-riddled flesh to keep my people from falling into the pit of heresy.

‘I, Talamein, took the Flame to give those I love freedom. And though I have passed beyond, I still have love for you people of Sanctus, and, beyond you, the peoples of the Lupus Cluster.

‘But I see you as a spider on a slender thread, hanging over the terrible chasm of destruction. My faith was of a crusader – a crusader who sought peace and also freedom.

‘And then, once having found freedom, each of us would tend his
own, whether farm or mercantile, each of us tending the Flame of Talamein deep within each of us.

‘Because my Faith is that of the person, not of the race of the world.

‘I thought, when I chose to pass into the Flame, that I could rest, knowing I had given my own freedom, wealth, peace, and security. And so I rested for half an eon,’ Mathias continued.

The speech wasn’t bad, Bet noticed, watching the frozen Companions. Doc would be very proud of his composition.

‘But then, from my resting, I felt a rumbling, a disturbance. And I was forced to remove myself from the warmth of the Flame, to examine my people.

‘To my shame, I found destruction looming for my people. And I found a young man who was attempting to speak in my name.

‘Not an evil man was your Prophet Mathias. He did suppress the heresy of the Jann. But he was a man who went beyond his mission.

‘But now I, Talamein, do declare the error of his ways.

‘I, Talamein, order my people to lay down their arms and return to seek happiness and their homes. Because only in peace and security can the true beliefs of Talamein come to fruition.

‘Only in freedom and security will the Flame of Talamein blossom through the universe.

‘I now declare anathema the man or woman who picks up arms in my name.

‘I declare anathema the man or woman who attempts to convert an unbeliever by any means other than persuasion and example.

‘I now declare anathema the being who uses the words of Talamein to imprison, enslave, or deprive any other being of those rights that all of us realize in our hearts are due us.’

The Companions were, by now, on their knees, heads on the pavement.

‘And now I leave you, to return to the Sanctity of the Flame. I adjure you to follow my instructions.

‘If you so do, when your earthly envelope decays, I will welcome you to the Fellowship of the Flame.

‘I also admonish you not to despise this man Mathias, from whom I speak. Though in error, he sought the truth. In his memory I require you to raise monuments and memorials.

‘And now I shall return to the Flame.

‘Having used this envelope and therefore sanctified it, I shall also take its occupier with me to the Sanctity of the Flame.

‘And we, Talamein and the mortal Mathias, declare this envelope no longer suited to the uses and purposes of the flesh.

‘Any such could only be desecration.

‘My final blessings, and may peace pass among you.’

The hailer clicked off, and Mathias, gaze fixed on the horizon, took four steps forward, off the balcony. His body silently curved downward through one-hundred meters of space to the courtyard flagstones below.

The courtyard was empty, save for bodies, the stunned mercenaries, and the arms hastily abandoned when the Companions stumbled past the broken gates, toward the city below.

Bet was slumped against Hugin, carefully digging a piece of shrapnel from Munin’s paw, when Ffillips squatted before her.

‘Mantis Section, eh?’

Bet covered her reaction, then looked up. ‘Pardon?’

‘I am a logical woman,’ the battered soldier said carefully. ‘When a mercenary officer returns to rescue me, my men and women, against all odds, bringing with him some of the – forgive me – oddest beings I have ever had the pleasure to encounter and then wins the war by making its tyrant recant publicly, I hear echoes of things.’

‘Such as?’

‘Such as tales I heard before I, ahem, separated from the Imperial Guards. Are you not Mantis Section, and was this not an Imperial Mission?’

‘Clottin’-A, buster,’ someone croaked from behind Bet. ‘Now, if someone’ll stop playing with their triumphs and get me a medic, I’ll be quite satisfied. I got four holes in my chest and investments to protect.’

Absolute astonishment, and then Ffillips and Bet were running for the Temple to get Doc as Ida miraculously wobbled up into a sitting position. One of the tigers walked over to her and, purring, began to lick the blood from her neck.

‘You must understand the hesitation of this council,’ the graybeard croaked as he tottered to his feet. ‘I mean no contempt, Colonel … I believe you said that was the way to refer to you?

‘But you must know the perplexity that the past few years have brought to us, those of us who have recanted the ways of the world to study Talamein in peace.’

‘I do,’ Sten agreed.

Sten stood in front of twenty of the most carefully selected theologicians of Talamein – men selected for their age, expertise, honesty, and longwindedness. They were in the former throne room of the Temple. It looked much as it had when Mathias was occupying it, except the two-handed sword over the vidmap was gone. The twin eternal flames blazed alone.

Two other beings were in the room.

‘These matters,’ the elder continued, ‘must be studied. Must be considered. Certainly none of us is arguing the truth of the appearance of Talamein himself …’

There was a muttered ‘S’be’t’ from the elders.

‘What puzzles us is the necessity to consider these actions. The necessity to evaluate them, as to their truth and as to how they pertain to the Truth of the Flame.

‘These matters may require some time to consider, and, in that time, what will happen with the ways of the world?

‘We assembled here are elders. Men of silence and thought. But we must realize that beyond this Temple and these walls, there are beings and worlds to reckon with. To govern. And, I think I speak for my colleagues, we do not consider ourselves capable of performing this task. I assume, then, that perhaps you …’ The graybeard let his words trail off delicately.

‘No,’ Sten said. ‘I am but a simple soldier. A man of the earth. I shall continue on my own path, seeking my own destiny.

‘But you are correct,’ he said, wondering where the drakh he found this smoothness and deciding he’d been too long with churchmen, hypocrites, and noblemen, ‘in that you and the people of Talamein shall need protection and assistance.

‘This shall be my gift to you.’ And he turned to the two other beings in the chamber.

‘This first person shall keep your government honest and your people free from the threat of invasion.’

Ffillips smiled.

‘And this other being shall handle the necessities of trade, merchandising, and, most important, dealing with those beings from beyond the Lupus Cluster who merely wish sustenance and a chance to pass through.’

Otho grunted.

Sten lifted the medallion that Theodomir had given him months before, when he was made a Soldier of Talamein.

‘I am a soldier, as I said. But perhaps, when I was made a Carrier of the Flame, I was given a gift to see into the future a bit.

‘I see two things: Strangers shall come into the Lupus Cluster. Travelers. Men who seek strange matter, beyond these worlds. I see that your duty is to give them succor and to show them, by example, the peace that Talamein can bring.

‘And I see one other thing: Mathias, it was true, followed the ways of ice and cold and flesh. But somehow I sense that in his final moments, he achieved what few men have gifted to them.

‘In his words from the balcony, he truly became what he had intended – Talamein reincarnate.’

And Sten bowed his head, waited five seconds, then strode for the exit. He needed Alex’s jokes, Bet for more interesting reasons, and about five liters of pure alk.

This salvation thing was a thirsty and wearisome business.