The Wolf Worlds

by Chris Bunch

  Sten knew that no human could fire it without being destroyed by the recoil. Whether Kurshayne could do it was still a moot point.

  Oh, Mahoney, Sten thought again.

  Then, business. One pace forward.

  "UNIT…"

  "COMP'NEE… COMP'NEE…"

  The shouts rang across the wind of the landing field.

  "Unit commanders. Take charge of your troops. Move them into the ships.

  "We're going to war!"

  And then nothing but the howl of the wind and the drumbeat of bootheels.

  And then nothing but Sten looking at Alex and both of them knowing why they'd chosen the profession they did.

  And so, without banners, without bugles, they went off to war…

  Book Three

  Taking The Blade

  Chapter Sixteen

  THE JANN CITADEL hugged the plateau crest of the high, snow-and ice-covered mountain. Three sides of the mountain dropped vertically. Only the fourth featured a machine-carved road that S-snaked up toward the crest. A road with manned and electronic guardposts every few dozen meters.

  The Citadel was more than just the theological center of the warrior faith/caste—it was also the training ground for all Jann cadets. And it was Sten's first target.

  The Citadel had been located on a not especially welcoming world, near the tip of a northern continent. It promised, by its very appearance, monastic dedication, asceticism, and lethality—quite an apt summary of the Jann beliefs, in fact.

  Sten and his 201 mercenaries had been able to insert easily, using the talents and the ground-lighters of the Bhor.

  Now they lay crouched at the foot of one vertical precipice, the sheerest that Sten could pick from the vidpics aerial recon had taken. The sheerest and the least likely to be guarded, especially now.

  Far above him, atop the crest, the Citadel itself sprawled on the plateau. It closely resembled a black cephalopod, with its humped center section and, finger-sprawling out from the central bulk, the four tube barracks that held the Jann cadet cells.

  Lights were on in the barracks, red against the snow. And in Sten's mind, he could see the top of the "hump"—the massive building containing the temple itself, gymnasium, arena, and administrative offices, see its weather membranes "breathing" in and out as they adjusted and readjusted the environment within. Even from the base of the cliff, Sten could see one of the membranes, glowing yellow-red from the lights inside and gently moving in and out like a living thing.

  He pushed out of his mind the fear response that the entire Citadel was a living, brooding entity—an entity one of the mercenaries had immediately dubbed "the Octopus."

  Snow crunched behind Sten as Alex moved beside him. A second crunch as the ever-present Kurshayne snow-crawled up on his heels.

  Sten tapped Alex on his shoulder and passed him the night glasses, then turned to check the rest of the mercenaries on the rock-strewn hillside behind him.

  The 200 men and women wore white thermal coveralls and were snuggled deep into snowbanks. Sten's practiced eye could pick out a movement here and there, but only because he knew where to look. Not only were the troops white-cammied, but so were their weapons and faces.

  Which is why Sten started slightly when Alex lowered the night glasses and looked at him, peering through large, white eyes. White-camo contact lenses were very hard to get used to.

  Sten smiled about the obvious joke about holding your fire until you can see… Alex raised a questioning eyebrow over a pure white eyeball. Sten covered, smile gone. He didn't think even Alex would appreciate the joke under the circumstances.

  Which were: the Citadel. A deadly octopus in profile. On top of a sheer mountain. With black spots of soft shale where even snow couldn't stick. And where it did, the rock was old and rotten. Blanketed with ice and snow. Sten wasn't worried about the crumbling rock. That he could handle. But the ice sheets were waiting, ten-meter-long razorblades.

  Sten shuddered.

  Alex took one more look at the kilometer-high cliff. Leaned close to his side.

  "Ah dinna lovit tha heights," the heavy-worlder confessed in a whisper. "Aye lads bounce whenit tha fall. Th' Kilgours squash."

  Sten chuckled and Alex whispered into his throat mike for Vosberh and Ffillips to come forward.

  Expertly the two swam-crawled through the snow until they were on either side of him. Sten gave his last instructions. He was pleased when the two professionals didn't even raise an eyebrow as they saw the climb that faced them. Ffillips, however, put in a word for bonus money, and Sten shushed her.

  "I want to hit them where it hurts," he reminded. "The chapel. A legitimate target. Torch it. Melt it.

  "Ffillips? Your group has responsibility for the chapel. Vosberh—the barracks. They should be empty now. Blow them to hell for a diversion.

  "If you see an officer—a teacher—in your way, kill him."

  He paused for emphasis.

  "But if you can help it, don't kill any cadets."

  Vosberh hissed something about baby roaches growing up to be…

  "They're kids," Sten reminded. "And when the war's over, I'd rather face some ticked-off diplomats than angry parents, or brothers and sisters with short-range murder in their thoughts."

  Vosberh and Ffillips—very much the professionals—remembered wars they had won and coups they had then lost, and agreed with Sten's reasoning.

  The cadets—unless some got in their way—were not valid military targets.

  There was a thump at Sten's boot. He looked back and saw Kurshayne. The man had Sten's pack of climbing gear. Sten sighed. Accepted.

  "All right, you can come with me," he said.

  Still, as he crawled forward to begin his climb, he felt a little bit better.

  Chapter Seventeen

  IT WAS A temple of guttering torches. Deep shadows and oiled gold. A thousand young Jann voices were lifted in a slow military chant generations old. And the thousand-cadet procession moved in measured, slow-motion paces through the temple. The cadets were dressed in ebony-black uniforms, with white piping.

  At the head of the procession was the color guard, carrying two heavy golden statues. One was of Talamein. The other was Ingild, the man the Janns called the True Prophet. Mathias and his father, Theodomir, would have called him many other things. True, or Prophet, even, would not be among them.

  The procession was in celebration of the Jann Sammera: the Time of Killing. In Lupus Cluster history, it was a revenge raid by a small band of Jann. They hit one of the small moons off Sanctus that keep the potentially great tides in check, and slaughtered everyone. And then, trapped, they waited for the inevitable reprisal from Sanctus. When it came, there were no Jann survivors. A bloody historical note of which the Jann were immensely proud.

  The procession moved through the temple, past enormous statues of Jann warriors and the flags of the many planets the Jann had converted or destroyed. The temple was the Jann holy of holies.

  The cadets moved out of the temple, and huge metal doors slid closed as the last row of men passed. Then the cadets slow-marched down a hallway so enormous that in the summer months humidity brought condensed "rain," into an equally huge dining room.

  In the dining room, the color guard marched straight forward down the main aisle, toward the huge stage and podium where the black-uniformed guest of honor and the school's military faculty waited.

  The others shredded off and wove black and white ribbons through the long aisles created by the dining tables set for a thousand young men who were soon to join the Jann.

  As the color guard approached the stage, General Khorhea—the guest of honor—and the hundred or so faculty members rose. From the wall behind them came a hiss as a twenty-meter-wide flag dropped from the ceiling. It was black with a golden torch.

  Gen. Khorhea raised a hand. "S'be't."

  And the color guard bowed, wheeled, and then began the slow march back to the chapel. Where they would return the statues t
o their positions and then quietly filter back for the celebration.

  General Suitan Khorea despised personal ostentation. Except for silver-threaded shoulderboards and a thin silver cord on his left arm, he wore no clues that he was the head of the Jannisars. In his prayers he reminded himself often of the line from one of the chants of Talamein—"O man, find not pride of place or being/But gather that pride onto the Glory that is Talamein/For only there is that pride other than idle mockery."

  Mostly Khorea was proof that, even in a rigid theocratic dictatorship, a peasant can rise to the top. All it takes is certain talents. In Khorea's case, those talents were an absolute conviction of the Truth of Talamein; physical coordination; a lack of concern for his own safety; total ruthlessness.

  Khorea had first distinguished himself as subaltern when a Jann patrol ship had stopped a small ship. Possibly it was a lost trader, more likely a smuggler.

  Khorea's commander would have been content merely to kill all the men on the ship as an object lesson. But before he could issue orders, Khorea's boarding detachment had slaughtered the crew and then, to guard against accusations of profiteering, had blown up the ship.

  Fanaticism such as that earned its reward—a rapid transfer by Khorea's unsettled CO to an outpost located very close to the "borders" of Ingild's side of the cluster, a transfer probably made in the hope that Khorea would make himself into a legend in somebody else's territory. Hopefully a posthumous legend.

  But luck seems to select the crazy, and, in spite of the best efforts of the Janns' enemies, Khorea survived, even though he inhabited a body that looked as if a careless seamstress had practiced hemstitching on it for a few months.

  In his rise, Khorea had gathered behind him a group of young Jann officers, either as fanatical or as ambitious as he was.

  Eventually Khorea ended as ADC to the late General of the Jann, who one evening had confessed to Khorea that he was struggling against a certain… desire… for one of his own orderlies. Before he finished speaking, the man was dead, Khorea's dress saber buried in his chest.

  Khorea faced the court-martial with equanimity. The officers on the court were trapped. Either they executed Khorea, which would make him a convenient martyr for his following, or they blessed him and…

  —And there were no likely replacements to head the Jannisars.

  The answer was inevitable.

  Khorea returned to the court-martial room not only to find his dress saber's hilt pointing at him (point would have meant conviction), but lying beside it the shoulderbars of a Jann general.

  Now the Jann priest's voice droned on. He was nearing the end of the traditional reading of the Book of the Dead, the list of the casualties of Sammera. The cadets were drawn up at attention. Except for the priest's voice, the hall was silent. Finally the priest finished and closed the ancient, black-leather-bound book.

  General Khorea stepped forward, a golden chalice in his hand. He raised it high in a toast. As one, the thousand cadets wheeled to their tables and raised identical chalices high.

  "To the lesson of Sammera," he roared.

  "To the Killing," the cadets roared back.

  The liquid in the chalices burst into flames, like so many small torches. And, in unison, Khorea and the cadets poured the flaming alcohol down their throats.

  Sten craned his neck back, looking up the sheer cliff of ice that towered above him. It was a near-impossible climb and therefore, Sten reasoned, the route where the Jann were most vulnerable.

  He looked at Alex and shrugged, as if to say: "It ain't gonna get any easier."

  Alex held out one hand. Sten stepped into it, and the heavy-worlder lifted him straight up. Sten scrabbled for his first handhold, found a crack in the ice, jammed a fist into it and the spiked crampon points into the ice, and began his climb.

  The most important thing, he reminded himself, was rhythm. Slow or fast, the climb had to be constant steady motion upward. After all these centuries, science had done little to improve the art of climbing. It was still mostly hands and feet and balance. Especially on ice. His eyes scanned for the next hold, so he would always know where he was going before he committed himself. If Sten trapped himself on the cliff, with no way down, in the morning, when the Jann troops found him, he would be a very embarrassed corpse.

  Then he reached the first nasty part of the climb, a yawning expanse of glass-smooth ice. He looked quickly about, searching for handholds, already making his decision and digging out the piton gun.

  Sten aimed the gun at the ice and pulled the trigger. Compressed air hissed as the gun fired the piton deep into the cliff face. Quickly he snapped the carabiner onto the piton, laced the incredibly lightweight climbing rope through it, and spooled the rope from his climbing harness down to Alex.

  Climbing thread would have been far easier to manipulate, but it was not suitable for a main rope 203 men would have to use. Alex clipped his jumars onto the rope and slid up after Sten.

  Sten set the next piton, and then another, weaving his way up the cliff. By the time he reached the end of the sheet ice, he was tiring. But he kept climbing, thankful for the massive amount of calories he'd choked down before landing.

  Sten found a long, slender crack in the ice and jammed his way into and up it. He took advantage of the brief respite to suck in huge gulps of air to steady his trembling muscles. Still, he was constantly watchful, making sure that he kept his weight balanced over his feet. Behind him, he sensed Alex and Kurshayne.

  And then it happened. Just as he was reaching up for the next handhold… straining… straining… one spiked boot broke through rotten ice and Sten was scrabbling for a hold and then he was falling… falling… falling. He tried to relax, waiting for the shock when the rope brought him up short of the first piton.

  There was a jolt. And then a ping as the piton pulled out, and then he was falling again and… and… Crack. The next piton held, and Sten was slammed up against the face of the cliff.

  He hung there, dangling, swaying, for a long time, momentarily numb. Then he recovered, ignoring the pain of bruised muscles and doing a quick inventory of his body parts. Nothing broken. He peered downward and saw Alex's anxious face looking up at him. Which immediately broke into a smile, when Sten flashed him a weak grin and gave him a thumbs-up sign.

  Sten spun around on the rope and looked up at the cliff's mass looming over him. He took two shuddering breaths and started climbing again.

  Sten chinned himself on the cliff's summit. He kept tension in his fingers and shoulder muscles so that he could finally relax most of his body and turn the problem over to his eyes and brain.

  The main body of the Octopus humped up at him black and glowing in the snow. The Citadel was merely a building constructed for a purpose. But it was a live thing. It was an animal that had to do animal things. It had to eat fuel, it had to breathe, and its enormous body had to retain heat and expel cold.

  The last function was the constantly moving weather membranes. Sten's way in.

  Sten checked the plateau in front of him, hummocky ground rolling slightly uphill toward the Citadel. Even though it was impossible for any intruder to attack the Jann from this side of the mountain, they obviously put little faith in the impossible. The hundred meters or so of rolling ground between the cliff edge and the first building was thoroughly covered by sensor-activated guns.

  The multibarreled lasers constantly swept the area, looking for movement. Sten slithered over the clifftop and snow-crawled forward, thankful, for a change, that he had hired Egan and his Lycee kids.

  Sten halted just outside the first sensor's pickup point. He fingered open his pack and slid out a powerdriver and a little metal box with dangling wires and heat clips. Sten dug into the snow and found the plate that guarded the sensor control system from the elements. He hesitated at the screws that held the plate in place and reminded himself of potential boobytraps. He placed the driver's bit into the first screw and flicked the button for reverse. The first sc
rew whirred out smoothly and Sten was alive.

  He quickly removed the plate, fused in the heat clips, and then glanced at the nearest sensor guns that were "sniffing" at the night.

  It was an illusion, of course. The guns didn't do anything but shoot. However, buried across the landscape were very efficient sensors that ignored the stray rodent but ordered the guns to cremate anything approximating man-size.

  Sten turned the dial on the box until it told the sensor he'd just become a small furry creature, not worthy of a killing burst from the guns.

  He stood up. And the guns kept searching. Ignoring him for larger game. The Lycee kids were right.

  "Come on up, Alex," he said in a perfectly normal voice. He braced himself for the hiss of the guns. Nothing. And he knew again that he was safe.

  Alex effortlessly lifted himself over the cliff. "V be takit tea oop here frit sae long?" Then he glanced at the scanning guns. They didn't react even to Alex's body mass. "Aye" was his only comment.

  Alex turned to throat-mike the orders down to the rest of the mercenaries.

  Kurshayne was the first up with all of Sten's equipment, then Egan and his Lycee crew, who moved out and began permanently defusing the sensor guns. Next came Vosberh and his boyos. As Sten walked toward the curving hump of the Citadel, he consciously shut off any worry about his troops. He had to assume they were professionals. And that everything Sten had in mind would work.

  Chapter Eighteen

  KHOREA BOWED TO the Citadel Commandant and stepped to the forefront of the podium. He had prepared a speech for this graduating event. But then he felt the movement deep in his mind—a feeling that he knew was the spirit of Talamein.

  It could have been described more prosaically as a result of alcohol drunk by a near-teetotaler, adrenaline-response, and egotism. It was, however, doubtful that any Jann psychologist would have had the temerity to do so.

  Khorea forgot his prepared speech and began: "We are being tested today. Tested as we, the Jann, have never been tested before."