by Chris Bunch
The Eternal Emperor, who'd barely touched his own plate, was watching him with great interest.
"Well?” he said.
"Heaven,” Mahoney said. He took another sip of beer. “Excuse me. Heaven, sir."
The Emperor took a small bite from his own plate, frowning. “Maybe a bit too much cumin this time."
Mahoney gave a deep belch. He looked at the Emperor inquiringly, and the man passed his nearly full plate over to Mahoney, who shoveled in a mouthful of satisfying proportions.
"No. Not too much cumin,” the Emperor said. He leaned his chair back to catch the last warm light of the sun. The Eternal Emperor appeared to be a man much younger than Mahoney. Midthirties, perhaps.
Heavily muscled—like an ancient decathlon champion. He let the sun soak in, waiting to hear Mahoney's real purpose. Finally, Mahoney took one more swig of beer, wiped his lips, straightened his tunic, and sat up in near attention in his seat.
"Your Majesty,” he said, “I respectfully request permission to deploy the First Guards in the Fringe Worlds."
"Really,” the Eternal Emperor said. “The Fringe Worlds? I suppose you're worrying about the Tahn."
Mahoney just looked at his boss. By now, he occasionally knew when he was being toyed with.
"Yes, sir. The Tahn."
The Eternal Emperor could not help sweeping the picnic grounds with his eyes. The few guests who had bothered to show had left early, and the waiter bots were already cleaning up. In half an hour the area would be pristine—all broad lawns and rare azaleas.
The Eternal Emperor pointed to one of the flowering bushes.
"You know how many years I worked on those, Mahoney?"
"No, sir."
"Too many. The things love dry climates. Aussie deserts, that kind of drakh."
"Aussie, Your Majesty?"
"Never mind. Point is, I hate clotting flowers. Can't eat the SOBs. What's the damned use of them? I say."
"Exactly, sir. What's the use of them?"
The Eternal Emperor plucked a flower from a nearby bush and began stripping it, petal by petal.
"What do you think they're up to? The Tahn, I mean."
"With all due respect, Your Majesty, I think they're getting ready to kick our rosy red behinds."
"No drakh. What the clot you think I've been doing?"
The Emperor pulled the handle of a keg and sudsed more beer into his glass. He started to drink, then set the glass down. He thought for a while, making endless concentric rings that cut in on each other again and again.
"The trouble, Mahoney,” he finally said, “is that I got a clot more to move than the Tahn. Just to hold what I have, I have to double my fleet. For a counterattack, I need another third. For a full assault, twice more.
"A thousand years ago or so, I swore I'd never come to this. Silliness. Too big. Too much to protect.
"My, God, do you know how long it takes to bid out a simple ship contract nowadays?"
Mahoney, wisely, didn't answer.
"I tried to make up for it,” the Emperor continued, “by creating the best intelligence corps in history.
"And what the hell do I get? I get drakh."
"Yes, sir,” Mahoney said.
"Oh, do I hear a scent of admonishment in that, General? Criticism for your promotion?"
"And transfer, sir."
"And transfer,” the Emperor said. “Under normal circumstances I would have said that I need a little disapproval in my life. Disapproval, properly put, keeps an Eternal Emperor on his toes."That's the theory, anyway. Can't really say. Don't have any other bosses of my type to rely on."Mahoney had found the proper moment. “Who can you rely on, sir?"There was silence. The Emperor watched the plates being swabbed, the forks being scrubbed, and the tables being put away. Besides the workers, the Emperor and Mahoney were the only two left. Mahoney finally tired of waiting on the Emperor's next move.
"About my request, sir. First Guards, Fringe Worlds?"
"I need to know more,” the Emperor said. “I need to know enough to buy a great deal of time."
"Then it's the First Guards, sir?"
The Emperor pushed his glass aside.
"No. Request refused, General."
Mahoney almost bit his tongue through, trying to keep back his logical response. Silence, again, was the wiser course.
"Find out for me, Mahoney, before you tell me I've missed a bet,” the Eternal Emperor said.
Mahoney did not ask how.
The Emperor rose, leaving his nearly full glass.
"I guess the barbecue's over,” he said.
"I suppose so, sir."
"Funny. All those no-shows. I imagine most of my alleged allies are thinking deeply about what kind of a deal to make with the Tahn. In case I lose."The Eternal Emperor was wrong about that. The time for thinking was long past.
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CHAPTER FIVE
PHASE ONE OF Imperial Flight Training was on the vacation world of Salishan. Sten and his fellow pilots-to-be motlied together at a reception center, broken down into thirty-being companies, and were told to stand by for shipment to the base itself.
The trainees ranged from fresh-out-of-basic men and women, to graduates of one or another of the civilian-run preparatory schools that fed into the navy, to a scattering of already serving officers and enlisted people. Mostly they were military virgins, Sten noted by the absence of decorations, the untailored newly issued semidress uniforms, and the overly stiff bearing that the conditioning process had ground into them.
But Sten could have been blind and known that his classmates were fresh meat.
As they waited for the gravsled, there was excited speculation—because they were on a rec-world, this should be easy duty. They should be able to get passes into paradise on a regular basis. Even the base itself would be palatial.
Sten kept a straight face and looked away.
He caught an amused flash from another trainee on the other side of the throng. That man, too, knew better.
Sten eyed the man. He looked like every commando officer's image of the perfect soldier: tall, rangy, battle-scarred. His uniform was the splotched brown of a Guards unit, and he wore three rows of decorations and a Planetary Assault Badge. He was a hard man who had seen his war. But he sure as hell was not the idea most people had of a pilot. Sten wondered what strings the man had pulled to get into training.
A gravsled grounded, and a dignified-looking chief got out, holding a clipboard.
"All right,” the chief said. “If you people will form a line, we'll check you off and take you out to join the rest of the class."
Five minutes later, after the sled had lifted and cleared the beautiful city, the chief's next command was phrased differently. “You candidates knock off the chatter! This isn't a sewing circle!"
A basic rule of the military: Your superior's politeness is directly proportional to the proximity and number of potentially shocked civilians.
Sten, who had been through, he sometimes thought, almost all of the Empire's military schools from basic, Mantis, environmental, medical, weapons, et cetera ad ennui, also wasn't surprised that the landscape below them had become pine barrens.
In Eden, the military will build its base next to the sewage dump.
He was slightly surprised that the base, at least from the air, didn't look that bad. Most of it looked to be a standard naval base, with hangars, repair facilities, and various landing fields and hardstands.
To one side of the base was an array of three-story red brick buildings surrounded by gardens: base headquarters.
His second surprise came as the gravsled grounded in front of those buildings.
Sten, at that moment, remembered another basic law of military schooling and swore at himself. All military courses start by grinding the student into the muck and then reforming that being into the desired mold.
The instructors would illustrate this by instantly zapping some poor standout slob on arr
ival.
And Sten was a potential standout.
Hastily, he unbuttoned his tunic and unpinned his ribbon bar. The decorations were all real, even though a good percentage of them had been awarded for some highly classified Mantis operations, and the citation itself was a tissue. But there were too many of them for any young commander to deserve.
The ribbon bar was jammed into a pocket just as the canopy of the gravsled banged open and a rage-faced master's mate started howling orders.
"Out, out, out! What are you slime doing just sitting there! I want to see nothing but asses and elbows!"
New blood grabbed duffel bags and dived over the sides of the sled, and the mate kept screaming.
"You! Yes, you! You, too, come to think! Hit that ground! Do push-ups! Do many, many push-ups!"
Oh, Lord, Sten thought as he scrambled out. I'm back in basic training. Even the clottin’ words are the same. This master's mate could be, except for sex, the duplicate of ... what was her name? Yes. Carruthers.
"I want three ranks yesterday, people! Tall donks on my left, midgets over there."
Not for the first time, Sten was grateful that he was slight, but not so small as to qualify for the feather merchant squad.
Eventually the master's mate got tired of screaming and physical training. Sten thought he was doing all right—in the chaos, he had only had to turn out some fifty knee bends. There were too many other and more obvious victims for the mate to pick on.
"Class ... ten-hup! Right hace! For'd harch."
Sten was grateful that at least all of them had been subjected to the barracks-bashing conditioning. He decided that he would not like to see what happened if one of the trainees went out of step.
They were marched into the central quadrangle, brought to a halt in front of a reviewing stand, and turned to face it.
On cue, a tall, thin man came out of one building and paced briskly to the stand. He looked typecast for what he was: a one-star admiral and the school commandant. No doubt a longtime pilot who'd flown every ship the Empire fielded in every circumstance known. Unfortunately, his voice didn't match the part. It would have been more suited to an operatic tenor.
Sten waited until the commandant introduced himself—Admiral Navarre—and then put most of his mind on other topics.
This was The Speech, given to every student at every military course by every commandant, and said the same things:
Welcome. This will be an intense period of training. You may not like how we do things, but we have learned what works. Those of you who learn to adjust to the system will have no troubles, the others...
We have strict discipline here, but if any of you feels treated unfairly, my office is always open.
Ratcheta, ratcheta, ratcheta.
Phase One of flight training was Selection. The object of this phase was to determine absolutely that every candidate was in fact qualified to fly. It was already famous throughout the Imperial military as a washout special. Admiral Navarre informed them that, due to the unfortunate political situation, Phase One would be accelerated. Clotting wonderful, Sten thought.
Each student was told to remove his or her rank tabs. From that moment on, they would be referred to only as “candidate."
Ho, ho. Sten had a fairly good idea of some of the other titles: clot, drakh, bastard, and many, many other terms expressly forbidden under Imperial regulations.
That was about all that was worthy of note.
The main part of Sten's mind was reminding him that he was now a candidate. Not a hot-rod commander, not the ex-head of the Emperor's Gurkkha bodyguards, not a Mantis covert specialist.
In fact, not even an officer.
Think recruit, young Sten. Maybe you can make it that way.
Sten was sort of neutral about becoming a pilot. He was here only because of personal and private suggestions from the Emperor himself. The Emperor had told him that the next stage in Sten's career should be a transfer to the navy—accomplished—and flight school.
Wash out of flight school, however, and Sten would probably be ordered into the logistics section of the navy.
He wondered for the hundredth time how hard it would be, if he did fail, to get back to the army and Mantis Section.
Somewhere during Sten's ponderings Navarre had finished, walked off, and the mate had the trainees doubling around the buildings, their duffels left stacked in front of the reviewing stand.
Now we meet the killers, Sten thought, or whatever flight school calls their drill sergeants, and they shall illustrate to us how worthless we are and how they're going to destroy us for even breathing hard.
That was, more or less, how the scenario went—with some considerable surprises.
The class was stopped in the middle of a huge square that was ankle-deep sand. The mate dropped them once more into push-up position, then disappeared. Minutes passed. A couple of the candidates collapsed into the sand. They would pay.
For Sten, the front-leaning rest position was no more than an annoyance. A man ambled toward them, not at all the kind of sadist that Sten was expecting. Drill instructors always looked to be better soldiers than any of their student swine could dream of becoming. This man was heavily overweight and wore a rank-tabless, somewhat soiled flight coverall. One of the pockets was torn. The man walked up and down the line of prone candidates. He tsked once when another student went flat, wheezing.
"Good day, beings.” The man's voice was a husky drawl. “My name is Ferrari. You will call me Mr. Ferrari or sir, or you shall surely perish.
"I am your chief instructor pilot.
"During this period, I shall do my best to convince you that becoming a pilot is the least desirable, most miserable manner a being could spend its existence.
"Like our honorable commandant, my door, too, is always open.
"But only for one purpose.
"For you to resign.
"During the long reaches of the days and nights that will follow, I sincerely want each and every one of you to consider just how easy it would be for this torment to stop.
"One visit to my office, or even a word to any of the other IPs, and you can be on your way to what I am sure would be a far superior assignment.
"By the way. We instructors here in Phase One personally feel that Sheol itself would be more favorable.
"Those of you from different cultures who don't know what Sheol is can ask a fellow student. But I am quite sure our program will also explain.
"Those of you who are still on your hands may stand. Those of you who collapsed should begin crawling.
I would like you, while still on your stomachs, to crawl on line to the edge of this exercise yard.
"Crawl twice around it, please.
"This is not an exercise in sadism, by the way. I seem to have dropped a quarter-credit piece sometime today, and would be infinitely grateful if one of you would recover it."
Sten, seeing the weak-armed slither past him, hoped that none of them would get cute, take a coin from his or her own pocket, and give it to Ferrari in hopes that the long crawl would be ended. Ferrari would certainly examine the coin, declare with sorrow that there must be some mistake since the date proved the coin not his, and pull that candidate's toenails.
Ferrari stepped to one side.
Now comes the hands-on thug.
This man also wore a blank flight suit, but one that was tailored and razor-creased. A long scar seamed his face, and the man limped slightly. His voice had the attractive rasp of a wood file on metal.
"My name is Mason.
"I can't use words like Mr. Ferrari does, so I'll keep it short.
"I've looked at all of your files.
"Drakh. All of you.
"There is not one of you qualified to fly a combat car.
"If we screw up, and let any one of you onto a flight deck, you will end up killing someone."
He tapped the scar.
"That's how I got this. They let somebody—somebody just like on
e of you clowns—into my tacflight.
"Midair collision.
"Eighteen dead.
"My job now is easy. All I have to do is keep one of you from killing anyone but himself.
"Maybe you've heard something like this from another instructor, and think I'm just talking.
"Wrong, clots.
"I personally hate each and every one of you."
He looked up and down the formation. Sten chilled a little. He had, indeed, heard variations on that speech from DIs. But Sten had the feeling that Mason really meant it."I've got one peculiarity,” Mason added. “I'm going to make sure that every one of you washes out, like I said.
"But every selection course, there's one person that, for some reason, I hate more than most of you trash.
"And I pick him out early.
"And he never makes it."
Again, Mason looked up and down the class.
Sten knew, moments before the snake's head stopped, whom he would be looking at.
Clot, clot, clot, Sten thought, while remaining as petrified as any chicken caught by the glare of the snake.
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CHAPTER SIX
BY THE TIME Ferrari and Mason had finished the torment they called “muscle toning,” it was late afternoon. The master's mate—and Sten would never learn his name—took over the formation, doubled the trainees back to the barracks they were assigned to, and dismissed them.
The exhausted candidates timidly entered the brick building through double glass doors, knowing that inside would be another werewolf masquerading as an IP.
They also expected that the barracks, no matter how good-looking on the outside, would be polished plas floors, echoing squad bays, and clanging elderly lockers, just like in basic training.
They were very wrong.
Drawn up inside the foyer, which resembled the lobby of an exclusive small hotel, were about fifty middle-aged beings. They looked and were dressed like the retainers Sten had known at the Imperial palace.
One of them stepped forward.
"I would imagine you young people might like a chance to relax in the recreation room before we show you to your quarters. We hope you find the facilities adequate."
