Battlecry: Sten: Omnibus One (Sten Omnibus) (9 page)

He thought about Bet. She was still – despite his friendship with Oron – the only reason he stuck with the gang. Sten loved her. Although he had never had the nerve to tell her. She was— She was … He shook himself out of his momentary reverie and went back to watching.

The Delinqs had reached the shop. Small cutting torches flared and the bars fell away. The scrawny Delinq – Rabet – reversed his torch and smashed the window. The Delinqs crowded in, scooping the display contents into their packs.

Sten looked back up the corridor. His eyes widened. Creeping down the corridor was a Sociopatrolman, stun rod ready.

Sten licked his lips, then reversed position. The Sociopatrolman slid into view directly under Sten. Sten levered himself out of the duct, crashing down on the big man, feet slamming into his neck. The Sociopatrolman thudded to the deck, stun rod spinning away.

Big as he was, the Sociopatrolman moved quickly, rolling to his feet, unclipping a riot grenade. Sten landed, spinning over one shoulder, feet coming back under him. Lunging forward, one foot reaching high up, then clear of the ground, the other foot joining, legs curled, snapping his legs out to full lock, as the Sociopatrolman’s fingers fumbled with the grenade ring.

Sten’s feet slammed into the Sociopatrolman’s head. His neck broke with a dull snap. As the man dropped, Sten twisted in midair, bringing his legs back under him, landing, poised and turning, knife-edge hands ready.

There was nothing more to do.

The Delinqs looked at the dead Sociopatrolman, then hastily scooped the rest of the window display into their bags and dashed back toward the vent.

As Rabet clambered into the duct, he gave Sten a thumbs up and a flashing grin.

Sten shifted uncomfortably in his bunk. He couldn’t sleep. He kept thinking about the Sociopatrolman he had killed and the scattered long-dead bodies of the Delinq gang. He had to get off Vulcan. He had to take Bet with him. But how? Plans swirled in his head. All carefully considered before. All doomed to failure. There
had
to be a way.

Something rustled. He turned and Bet slid through the curtains and into his room.

‘What are you—?’

A soft hand went over his lips, silencing him.

‘I’ve been waiting every night. For you. I couldn’t wait any longer.’ Very slowly, she removed her hand, then took Sten’s and guided it to the fastener of her coverall. A moment later, she lifted the coverall off her shoulders and let it fall. Underneath, she was naked.

Bet moved up against Sten and began to unfasten his garment. He took her hand away.

‘Wait.’ He reached behind him, and pulled something from under his pillow. A small bundle. He shook it out. It was a long, flowing glasscloth robe. It danced and gleamed with a kaleidoscope of colors. ‘For you. A gift.’

‘How long have you had it?’

‘A long time.’

‘Oh … I’ll try it on. Later.’ Then she was in his arms and they sank back into the bunk. Locked together. But still in silence.

Bet followed Sten down the narrow ductway. It narrowed twice and they had to squeeze through. She had no idea where they were going. Sten had said it was a surprise. They turned a corner and the duct ended in a blank metal wall.

‘This isn’t a surprise,’ she said. ‘It’s a dead end.’

‘You’ll see.’ His pocket torch flickered into life and he began
cutting. In a few moments he had cut a ‘door,’ with only a small piece of metal holding it in place. ‘Close your eyes.’

Bet obeyed and heard the hissing sound of the torch cutting again and then a loud thump as the ‘door’ fell away.

‘You can open them now.’

And Bet saw ‘outside’ for the first time in her life. A gentle lawn sloping toward a tiny lake. Tall green things that Bet thought were probably trees and at the edge of the lake a small – was it wooden? – house, built in the style of the ancients. Chimney, curl of smoke, and all. Sten tugged at her and she followed him out in a daze.

She looked up and saw a bright blue artificial sky. She shrank back, uneasy. It was so open. Sten put an arm around her and she relaxed.

‘For a second I thought I was going to fall … off … or out.’

Sten laughed. ‘You get used to it.’

‘Where are we?’

‘This is the private rec area of Assistant Personnel Director Gaitson. He left today for a two-cycle recruiting program offworld.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I played with the computer. I’m getting pretty good at it, if I say so myself.’

Bet was puzzled. It was nice, but – she looked around – ‘What are we raiding?’

‘We aren’t. We’re on a vacation.’

‘A vacation? That’s—’

‘For the next two cycles we are going to do absolutely nothing except enjoy all the things that Gaitson has laid on. We’ll eat the best, drink the best, and play. No raids. No patrolmen. No worrying. No nothing.’

Sten led Bet to the lake. He stepped out of his coveralls and slowly waded out. ‘And right now, I’m taking a bath.’ He waded out a few meters. Bet watched, waiting for something to happen. Sten turned around and grinned. ‘Well?’

‘How is it?’

‘Wet.’

Bet smiled. And the smile became a chuckle. And then laughter. Shouting out, loud, full-bellied laughter. The way she used to when she was a child. Before the Creche. It was very un-Delinqlike.

She reached for the fastener of her coveralls.

*

‘Sten?’

‘Ummmm?’

‘You awake?’

‘Ummmmm … yeah.’

‘I was just thinking.’

‘Yeah?’

‘I don’t want to ever leave this place.’

Long silence.

‘We have to. Soon.’

‘I know that. But it just seems so … so …’

He hushed her and pulled her close. Brushed away a tear. ‘I’m getting off,’ he said.

‘Off? What do you mean?’

‘Off Vulcan.’

‘But that’s impossible.’

‘So is living like a Delinq.’

‘But how?’

‘I don’t know yet. But I’ll find a way.’

Bet took his hand. Held it. ‘Want me with you?’

Sten nodded. ‘Always.’ Then he took her in his arms and they held each other all night.

Mahoney arced off the slideway, over the barrier and into the machine shop’s entrance. Balled in midair, hit on his feet, and was running.

He dashed down the assembly row, dodged a transporter, and rolled up onto the waste belt. The belt carried him from the shop, and a few feet over a second, southbound slideway. Mahoney slid to the side, went over the edge, hanging by his hands.

He let go, and rebounded onto the slideway. Took several deep breaths, and dusted off his coveralls. Shucking that tail, he thought, was getting harder and harder. Thoresen and his security section were entirely too interested in the movements of Quartermaster/Sergeant Ian Mahoney, Imperial Guards, Field Ration Quality Control subsection.

So far his tags were nothing more than Vulcan’s routine paranoid surveillance on any offworlder. He hoped. But if they nailed him now, he’d be, at the very least, blown. So far Mahoney had managed to borrow a Mig’s card long enough to produce an acceptable forgery, scrounge a set of Mig coveralls and head south.

He was miles below The Eye. Far off limits for any non-Company employee.

Down there, if he was uncovered by Security or any Sociopatrolman, the Company would probably find it simpler just to cycle him through the nearest food plant than go through the formalities of deportation.

Mahoney had put himself into the field quite deliberately. He’d been somewhat less than successful in recruiting local agents. Stuck in The Eye, all he had access to were obvious provocateurs and Migs so terrified they weren’t worth the bother. At any rate, going
operational was possibly less hazardous than red-lighting his mission and heading back for Prime World.

The Emperor, he felt, would be less than impressed with Mahoney’s progress to date:

1. Thoresen was, indeed, in a conspiracy up to the top of his shaved head, and letting no one, including his own board of directors, in on the operation. Big deal. That the Emperor knew a year ago, back on Prime World.

2. Thoresen was working a gray and black propaganda campaign against the Empire, specifically directed at the Migs. But since he was using Counselors as the line-out, and had so many cutouts between himself and the campaign, he was still untouchable. Mahoney figured that operation had been going on, and all he’d been able to get was specifics and intensity.

Mahoney snorted to himself. Any buck private in Mantis Section’s rear rank would have come up with that much or gone back to being a slime-pounder.

3. Offworld security systems were being beefed up and there were persistent rumors of some of the Company’s production facilities being diverted to arms production. Unprovable, so far. And even if Mahoney could prove the allegations correct, the Company could always blandly claim to be planning expansion in Pioneer Sector.

‘Zip-slant nothin’ is what I got,’ Mahoney muttered. And then froze. Far ahead, down the slideway, he could see a cordon of Sociopatrolmen checking cards with a portable computer. Mahoney’s forgery wasn’t that good. He quickly stepped off the slideway, onto a cross-passage. The slide-passage creaked along, into a large dome. On the other side, there was a second ID-check block.

Mahoney rabbited up a side-passage. Basics. Walk slow. Breathe slow. Look happy. A little zipped. You’ve just come off shift and are headed for your apartment. He went up a narrower corridor, then slanted off on still a third. Turned at the entrance then giant-stepped around the next curve.

Stopped. Waited. Listening.

Of course. Footsteps behind him.

Mahoney was being steered. But he didn’t have a lot of options. Moving as slowly as he could, he let the ferrets push him deeper into the abandoned sectors of Vulcan.

The first man made the mistake of trying to blind-side Mahoney from a dead-end passageway. Mahoney went in under the blackjack, and put an elbow through the thug’s epiglottis. Mahoney side-kicked the riot gun
out of the second tough’s hands, one-handed the gun out of the air and hauled in on the powerpack cord. The Sociopatrolman top-spun. Mahoney backpunched knuckles into the base of the man’s skull.

Two. He turned, realizing that they were just the blocking element. Three more were coming around the corner. One had a gun up. Aiming.

A stun rod, spear-lashed to a rod, lashed out of the upper vent, burying itself in the gunman’s eye. He screamed and went down.

Mahoney drove forward, knowing he wasn’t close enough to the others, when a young man dropped out of the vent, right hand blurring back and forth.

Mahoney blinked as the second man’s head bounced free, blood fountaining up to paint the overhead. The young man crouched, continuing his spin, and brought the knife completely through a circle, lunging up from the ground.

Mahoney noticed the young man kept his free hand on top of his wrist as a guide. Knows what—

And the third man whimpered at the knife deep in his chest. He toppled. The young man bent, pulled the knife out, and wiped it on the corpse’s uniform. Young. Good. A bravo.

Mahoney stood very still and let the young man walk up on him. Another young man – no, a girl – dropped from the vent. She retrieved her spear.

About nineteen, fairly short, say sixty kilos. Second evaluation: nineteen going on forty. He looked like any street kid on any gutter world, except he didn’t cringe. Mahoney figured he hadn’t done a lot of crawling. A Delinq. Mahoney almost smiled.

Sten eyed Mahoney, then the two corpses behind him. Not bad for an old man. Looked to be in his mid-forties, and big. Sten couldn’t place him, in spite of Mahoney’s Mig coveralls. Not surprising, since Sten had only known three classes, and only face-to-faced two of them.

‘There’ll be more of ’em along directly, my friend,’ Mahoney said. ‘Let’s keep the introductions short.’

‘There’s no hurry. For us. Never seen five patrolmen after one man. What’d you do?’

‘It’s a bit complicated—’

‘Sten. Look.’

Sten didn’t take his eyes off Mahoney. Bet stood up from the corpses and held three cards out to Sten. ‘Those weren’t patrolmen. They’ve got Exec cards!’

‘Thoresen’s security,’ Mahoney said. ‘They must’ve tracked me from The Eye.’

‘You’re not … you’re offworld!’

‘I am that.’

Sten made a decision.

‘Strip.’

Mahoney bristled, then caught himself and swore. The kid had it. He tore off the coveralls, then pulled off his boots. Hefted one experimentally, then slammed it against the wall. The heel shattered, and bits of the tiny transmitter scattered across the deck.

Sten nodded. ‘That’s how they followed you. You can put the coveralls back on.’

He stirruped his hands, and launched Bet back into the vent. She reached down, gave him a hand, and he slithered up.

Turned, inside the vent, as Mahoney flat-leaped up, caught the edges of the vent with both hands and levered himself into the airduct.

‘A bit tight for someone my age.’

‘It isn’t your age,’ Bet said.

‘We’ll not be making light of our elders and their pot-guts.’

‘Follow us,’ Sten said shortly. ‘And no talking.’

Mahoney blinked again as Sten put his knife away … seemingly into his arm. Then he ran after Bet and Sten, down the twisting duct.

‘No, Fadal. for some reason I … remember what an empire is,’ Oron said.

Mahoney started to ask. Sten shook his head.

‘Intelligence?’

‘Eyes.’

‘Ah. And you will then want my people … and myself to be
your
eyes?’

‘No,’ Mahoney said. ‘I’m too close to being blown.’

Oron looked inquiringly at Fadal. She was blank. ‘Thoresen wouldn’t have top Security men on me unless he was pretty sure who I was.’

‘Thoresen … head of the Company. Your enemy,’ Fadal whispered.

‘You want?’

‘I must have confirmation of Thoresen’s plan. I’ve blue-boxed into the Exec and the central computers, and there was nothing on Bravo Project except inquiry-warning triggers.’

‘This … Thoresen. He must have it personally.’

‘Probability ninety per cent plus.’

Sten broke in. ‘What happens if it’s there? And you’re right?’

‘We’ll send in the Guard. The Emperor will set up some kind of caretaker government. Things will change. For the Migs. For everyone.’

‘Not good enough,’ Bet said.

‘We’ll be dead by the time your clottin’ Empire arrives. Or don’t you know? Us Delinqs don’t live to get old,’ Sten said.

‘Sten is right. A runner from another gang passed the word … when?’

‘Two shifts ago,’ Fadal said.

‘He saw patrolmen in the warehouses. They were drilling with … riot guns,’ Oron said, and smiled at his successful memory. ‘They will be conducting an extermination drive soon. And we are now too many to evade them.’

‘How many in your gang?’

‘Fifteen now,’ Fadal answered.

Mahoney calculated quickly. The tiny Imperial detachment had its own airlock. The inquiry wouldn’t be too loud if he got what he wanted … ‘Passage offworld. For
all
of you. To any Imperial world.’

Sten discovered he’d stopped breathing. He took a deep breath and looked disbelievingly at Mahoney.

‘I can do it. You people raid Thoresen’s quarters. Bring me anything that says Bravo Project. Which you can deliver on the ship. The Empire keeps its bargains.’

‘I do not think there’s any need to … debate this. Is there?’

Mahoney stood up.

There wasn’t.

The patrolman stalked to the end of his beat and stopped. He yawned. Then turned and started back down the corridor.

Sten oozed from the vent in the wall … breathe … breathe … pace … pace … forward. Moving up on the guard. Keeping in time. Eyes on the patrolman’s back. Closing. In step. Inside the three-meter awareness zone. Eyes off target. Mind blank.

Sten’s left hand curled around the patrolman’s neck. Cramped the big man’s head hard back as he drove his knife deep into kidney. Breath whuffled. The man gargled. Sten sidestepped as the corpse voided, then dragged the patrolman back to the vent and stuffed him in. He ran down the corridor, to the beginning of the Exec section. Found the paneling and pried.

When the Delinqs had pored over the complete plans for The Eye that Mahoney had blind-dropped for them in the Visitors’ Center airways, they’d found the key.

Evidently the Execs were more delicate than Techs or Migs. Most of the passageways, particularly those around the higher-echelon areas, were subdivided with an inner, noise-insulating wall.

The paneling came clear, and Sten beckoned.

The other fourteen Delinqs poured out of the vents and streamed toward him. One by one they slithered into the wallspace. Oron was in the middle, blank-faced. Fadal guided him into the inner wall. Sten cursed silently, and hoped Oron’s memory would return quickly
because if they failed, most of them would die in The Eye. Even if a few managed to get south again, into Mig country, there’d be an endless stream of extermination drives.

Again, Sten realized there was no choice. Bet grudgingly agreed. And then vacillated between eagerness to see new worlds and worry about whether they’d fit in. Sten figured that was a lucky sign.

The wallspace narrowed. Sten sucked his chest in. Must be a collision door. His chest stuck for a minute. Sten nearly panicked, then remembered to empty his lungs. He slid through easily.

They huddled outside the great double doors to Thoresen’s quarters. Sten curiously touched the material. Rough. Grainy. Like fatigued steel. But rougher. Sten wondered why Thoresen didn’t have the surface – it appeared organic – worked smooth.

Bet set the pickup to another frequency, and touched it to the door. Eyes closed … her fingers ran across the pressure switches. Inaudible pressure increased/decreased in Sten’s ears. There was a click. The main lock was open.

Bet extracted a plastic rod from her pouch. Touched the heat button, and positioned it carefully in the middle of the door’s panel. On the end of the rod, heated to human body temperature, was a duplicate of Thoresen’s index fingerprint. Sten wondered how Mahoney had obtained it.

The door chunked – the Delinqs grabbed the weapons – and swung open.

Sten and the others cat-walked inside.

Time stopped. They were in space. They were in an exotic, friendly jungle.

They were in the very top of The Eye. Thoresen’s quarters. The cover to the dome top was open, and space glittered down at them. Sten was the only one who’d seen off-Vulcan. He had enough presence to softly close the doors and look around.

There was no one else in the dome.

A garden. With furniture here and there, flowing gently into flowering wildness, as if someone had removed the walls, ceiling, and floor of a very large house, leaving in place all of the implements of living.

The Delinqs moved, recovering.

Sten spotted a motion detector swiveling toward them. He ran forward and leaped, knife plunging through the pickup. Sten spotted other cameras and pointed. The Delinqs nodded. Moved forward, fading into the unfamiliar shrubbery.

Sten, Oron, and Bet kept together, looking for what would be an office. At one side of the dome was an elaborate
salle d’armes
. Blades and guns of many worlds and cultures hung from the dome panels. And, on the other side, an imposing, free-floating slab that had to be a desk. Behind it, the most elaborate computer panel Sten had ever seen. Nearby stood a stylized sculpture of an enormously fat woman. Maybe.

Sten looked at Oron questioningly. His eyes gleamed bright. He waved them at the sculpture.

Sten and Bet slid up to it. It had to be. A narrow UV trip beam crossed in front of it. Sten took a UV projector from his belt, flipped it on, adjusted the intensity, and hung it in front of the pickup across the chamber.

It took several minutes to find the tiny crack in the sculpture. Sten fingered all projections on the sculpture. It wasn’t that simple. Probably a sequence release that would take forever to figure out.

Oron turned, and Sten took the small maser projector from the ruck Oron wore. Opened it up, aimed the maser sights at the crack, and flipped it on. A little pressure on the trigger and the sculpture powdered. Underneath was a touch-combination door. Sten very carefully took a freeze carrier from his own pack and unclipped a tiny tripod.

He opened the freeze carrier and a white vapor spilled into the room from the near Kelvin-Zero cylinder inside. Sten pulled on an insulated glove and attached the cylinder to the tripod, aiming the release spout at the right side of the safe door. He armed the release and backed away.

Spray jetted from the cylinder and crystallized against the hull-strength steel door to the safe. Then Bet took a hammer from her pouch and tapped. The metal shattered like glass. The three grinned at each other.

They were in.

Papers, more papers, bundles of Imperial credits – Sten started to stuff bills in his pouch but Oron waved at him. No.

Then came a thick red folder.
BRAVO PROJECT.
They had it!

None of them noticed the young Delinq who’d wandered into the
salle
. Fascinated by an archaic long arm, he took it from the wall. The bracket clicked softly upward.

Sten handed the Bravo folder to Oron. The blank look suddenly returned to Oron’s eyes. He looked, puzzled, at the folder and stood up. The folder spilled, papers scattering across the floor. Sten muttered and started gathering papers. No kind of order – scattered all over the floor. Sten worked as fast as he could.

The first blast caught three Delinqs in the chest, and side scatter from the riot gun blistered the foliage. The Sociopatrolman in the door pulled the trigger all the way back and swiveled.

The second blast caught a Delinq as he dived through some brush, burning away half his chest. Coughing screams broke the silence. Sociopatrolmen streamed through the door – guns out.

Bet pulled a grenade from her belt, thumbed the fuse, and pitched it, going flat, as death seared above her head.

Sten rolled toward the
salle
, ducking behind the first shelter he saw.

Three joined tanks, with a long hose and twin handles. Some kind of weapon.

The placard above the museum piece read:
EARTH PRE-EMPIRE, RESTORED. FLAME WEAPON.
It was Sten’s luck that Thoresen, like many collectors, kept his weaponry ready for use. Sten grabbed the hose’s two handles, and pulled them both. He saw the puff from the cone head at the nozzle, a small flare of fire, and then greasy, black flame spurted from the nozzle.

It spouted fifty meters across the chamber – a far greater range than its aeons-dead builders planned – and napalm drenched the Sociopatrolmen. They howled, for it was a very unpleasant series of deaths, whether a patrolman was lucky enough to have the oxygen sucked from his lungs by the searing flames, or, worse, as the sticky, petroleum-based napalm burnt through to the bone. But one man stopped screaming long enough to spray a burst from his gun just as a still-bewildered Oron walked forward. His head spattered through the chamber.

Robotlike, Sten stalked forward, hosing the nozzle back and forth. Finger locked on the trigger, eyes wide in panic. And then the flame sputtered and dribbled back to the nozzle.

Sten dropped it and just stood there.

Bet grabbed his arm. ‘Come on!’

Sten came back to the world. The patrol team that had been blocking the entrance was gone. All dead.

Sten and Bet ran for the door, and only one other Delinq came out of his hiding place after them.

They went out the door and pelted down the corridor. There wasn’t time enough to make it back to their rat paneling. All they could hope to do was put distance between them and Thoresen’s quarters.

A running blur – the three of them down corridors, ducking as
patrolmen came after them. Panicked Execs backing away and doors slamming and locking.

A floor grating. Sten and Bet heaving up. The grating coming clear.

Sten looked down. The passage went down, endlessly. No fans or acceleration ducting. He didn’t know what it was for, but it didn’t matter. A team of patrolmen was jogging down the corridor after them.

Narrow climbing cleats ran down the side, and Sten could make out some kind of tunnel about ten meters below the main passageway. He waved Bet into the hole. She clambered in awkwardly and Sten realized she’d been hit somehow.

Sten followed.

The other Delinq was still shaking his head when the riot gun blast caught him and blew him apart.

Bet slipped, one foot left the cleat and her leg fluttered into the passageway. Gunk. Grease. Something. She clawed at the cleat, lost her handhold. Screamed.

Too late, Sten reached for her as he stared down half a world. Bet, screaming endlessly, fell away from him.

Sten watched her body drop away. Until he couldn’t see it. Then, somehow moving quickly, he slid sideways and began working his way down the passageway.

Mahoney paced his office. After he heard the alarms, he had monitored the patrol net and heard the riot squads being sent in.

The door opened suddenly and Sten walked into the room. Empty-handed. ‘They caught us. They caught us. Bet’s dead.’

Mahoney caught himself. ‘Bet. That girl?’

‘Yes. She’s dead. Dead. And the file. What you wanted. Oron had it.’

‘Where’s Oron?’

‘Oron’s dead. Like Bet.’

Mahoney squelched his natural reaction to curse. ‘All right. It’s blown. But the bargain still stands. I’ve got the cruiser standing by.’

‘No. I don’t want to go.’

‘Then what do you want?’

‘A gun. Bet’s dead, you see.’

‘You’re going back out there?’

‘Bet’s dead.’

‘Yes. I keep two over there. In that desk.’

Sten turned around and walked to the desk. He never heard
Mahoney’s step or saw the meat-ax hand snapping down. Sten crashed forward, across the desk.

Mahoney eased Sten around and gentled him into the chair. Then allowed himself a personal reaction. ‘Clot!’ He brought himself back, and took a copy of the
Articles
from a drawer. He laid Sten’s right hand on it.

‘I’m not knowing what religion you have. If any. But this’ll do. Do you – whatever your name is –
Sten
it is. First name unknown. Swear to defend the Eternal Emperor and the Empire with your life – I know you do, boy. Do you solemnly swear to obey lawful orders given you, and to honor and follow the traditions of the Imperial Guard as the Empire requires? You do that, too. I welcome you, Sten, to the service of the Empire. You’ve not made a mistake, enlisting in the Guard. And it’s a personal honor to me that you’ve chosen me own mother regiment, the Guard’s First Assault.’

He put the book down, and stopped. Ruffled Sten’s hair.

‘You’re a poor sorry bastard, and it’s a shame things have worked the way they did. The least I can do is get you off this hellworld and let you be alive awhile longer.’

He tabbed the communicator switch.

‘Lieutenant. In my office. A new recuit for the Guard. Seems to have fainted when he realized the awful majesty of it all.’

Mahoney took a bottle of synthalk from his desk and, without bothering with a glass, poured a long drink down his throat.

‘With the wind at your back, lad.’