The Wolf Worlds

by Chris Bunch

  Except for a modest breechcloth, the young man was naked. Sten watched quietly as Mathias inserted his hands into two metal rings, attached to three-meter-long chains. The chains themselves seemed to hang from nothing, but were grav-bonded into position.

  Mathias' body was all one gleaming, rippling muscle. And even Sten was impressed as the Prophet's son lifted himself effortlessly on the rings, supporting himself on upper-body strength alone. The young man's stomach muscles knotted as he lifted his legs straight up above his head and did a handstand on the rings. Mathias did an unbelievable number of arm presses, then swung his body in a long, slow, 360-degree loop. Again and again, and then he let go, doubling himself into a somersault. He landed perfectly on his feet as if he were on a low-grav planet.

  Sten whistled to himself softly, and then opened and walked through the glass door.

  Mathias spotted him instantly and shouted a greeting. "Colonel. Your presence is our blessing."

  Mathias grabbed a towel from the floor and began to wipe away the sweat as Sten moved forward to meet him.

  Sten shook his hand, eyed the rings then the young man as he pulled on a plain, rough-clothed robe. "Pretty impressive," he said.

  "Oh"—Mathias smiled—"my friends and I believe in the fitness of our bodies."

  "Your friends?" Sten remembered the smell of campfires.

  "The Companions," Mathias said, taking Sten by the arm and leading him toward the back door. "You know about them?"

  Of course Sten did. They were the six hundred young men— all very wealthy and all very religious—who were Mathias' couterie. They delighted in all forms of sport, physical deprivation, challenge, and prayer. They were totally devoted to Mathias and the ancient ways of the religion of Talamein.

  "Yes, I know about them."

  He was on Sanctus at the mysterious request of Mathias, a polite plea for a visit. An important one, Mathias had assured him. Sten didn't have the time, but he thought it was politic to go.

  "I have been following your exploits," Mathias said as they exited the door and started down the path into the fern forest.

  Sten didn't reply. He was waiting.

  "I must say, Colonel, I'm impressed." And with just enough hesitation to qualify for an afterthought: "As is my father."

  Sten just nodded his thanks.

  "I have been thinking," Mathias continued. "You and your men are bearing the brunt of this fight yourselves. For which we are grateful. But it isn't proper."

  If Sten had really been a mercenary, he would have agreed. Instead he made a polite protest. Mathias raised a hand to stop him. "If we are to be truly victorious," Mathias said, "Sanctus must dare to spill its own blood. Not just that of—if you will forgive me—beings who might be viewed as mere hirelings."

  A self-deprecating smile to Sten.

  "Not that we are not convinced that all of you are committed to the cause of Talamein. And that of the True Prophet—my father."

  Sten accepted his apology. Very wary now.

  "And so, I have a proposal for you, Colonel. No, an offer."

  They turned the corner of the path, which spilled into a broad glade.

  Mathias pointed dramatically. Drawn up in line after blood-red line were the Companions. Six hundred young men in their spotless ceremonial uniforms. Without an apparent signal, they all raised a hand in salute.

  "MATHIAS," they shouted in unison.

  And Sten gave a slight jolt as Mathias shouted back: "FRIENDS."

  The young men cheered deafeningly. Mathias, all smiles, turned to Sten.

  "Colonel Sten, I offer you my life and the lives of my companions."

  Sten wasn't quite sure what to say.

  "What the clot could I do?" Sten asked Alex.

  The big man was pacing back and forth in the control room on the Bhor ship.

  "But the'r't nae professional, lad."

  Sten slumped into a chair. "Look, Mahoney has moved the whole operation up one entire year."

  "We'll recruit some more men," Alex responded.

  "No time," Sten said. "Right now we need bodies. Anyplace we can get them."

  "Cannon fodder," Alex said.

  Sten shook his head. "They're not professionals, but the Companions have trained—after a fashion. And they will take orders. All we have to do is form them into our mold."

  "An Ah dinnae ken wh'll be trainit' them," Alex continued suspiciously. "Ffillips? Trainit th' lads ae commandos? Th' nae be't time f'r thae."

  "Possibly Vosberh," Sten said, keeping his face straight.

  "Nae, nae. Tha' be't e'en more silly."

  Sten grinned at him. "Then we have the answer."

  Alex was aghast. "Me," he said, thumping a meaty thumb into his chest. "Y'nae be't suggestin' ae Kilgour wae y'?"

  "I thought it was your idea."

  Sten handed Alex a fiche. "Now, I was thinking, Red Rory of the Advertisements, you should begin their training with…"

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  ALEX KEYED HIS throat-mike. "Ye'll be awake noo an' be lookit across yon field."

  Fifty of Mathias' Companions were dug in across the military crest of a wooded hill. Most of them looked puzzled, having no idea what the purpose of the exercise was.

  It wae, Alex thought to himself, a wee bit ae argument against heroism. He tucked behind a bush as, far across the brush-covered field, another fifty of the Companions came into sight, weapons ready. They were spread out in standard Guard-type probe formation.

  He yawned and scratched, waiting for the soldiers to come closer. They did. A Companion next to Alex lifted his rifle, and Alex back-handed him on his shrapnel helmet. The Companion thudded down, unconscious, and Alex reminded himself yet again that the wee light-grav folk had to be treated with ae gentleness.

  Wait… wait… wait… and then Alex hit the airhorn's button. The blast rang down the hill, and the entrenched Companions opened fire.

  With blanks.

  Down on the flats, some of the Companions dove for cover, others began howling and charged.

  The firing doubled in volume. Alex let it continue for six seconds, then bounded up and down into the open. With his mike open.

  "Cease fire, y'bloodthirsty reeks! Cease FIRE!"

  The popping died away. On the flats, the probing Companions, following instructions, froze in place—in the exact positions they were stopped in when Alex gave the ceasefire signal.

  Alex waved the other fifty out of their hidey-holes and down onto the fields. They trailed out and assembled in two-platoon formation. Each man carried a plas target. The plan was to replace the real men with the targets. After that, Alex chuckled to himself, the real fun would begin.

  Alex walked around the attacking formation. A Companion who'd sensibly found cover was replaced with one type of target—if the cover he'd found would withstand projectile fire, the target was only part of a man's head. But if, on the other hand, he'd ducked behind a bush (which worked fine in the livies), a full head-and-shoulders replaced him.

  The slow-to-react or stupid, who'd merely flattened on the ground or, still worse, stayed erect when the airhorn went off, had man-size silhouettes in their place.

  Finally, the howlers-and-chargers had oversize targets— targets that were half again the size of a normal man.

  By now the entire company of Companions was standing at the hill's base. Alex motioned them back up into the defensive line and had them take firing positions.

  Companion squad leaders now passed out live ammunition.

  "Lock an' load ae mag'zine," Alex bellowed. "On command, begin… firing!"

  The hillside rocked to the thunder of weapons. This time Alex waited until all trainees had fired their weapons dry (the projectile weapons used by the Companions and mercs had fifty-round banana magazines, nowhere near the capacity of the unobtainable Imperial willyguns with their 1400-round AM2 tube mags).

  Then he brought the Companions out of their holes, checked to make sure all weapons were unloade
d, and went back down the hill. If God gae us tha gift ta see ourselves as others see us, came a misquote from Alex's overly poetic backbrain. He led the hundred men from target to target.

  "Noo, y'ken wha' happens whae ae mon dinna find shelter encounterin' ae enemy," he explained. "Yama lad, y'dinna find naught to hide behind. Ah' y'see whae would've recked wi' ye?"

  The trainee looked at the riddled silhouette, gulped, and nodded.

  Alex saved the charging fanatics for last and then gently tapped one of "them" on his shredded plas.

  "Ae dinna be knockit heroes," he said. "But a wee hero who's dead afore he closes wi' the enemy be naught but ae fool, Ah think."

  The Companions, who'd now had a chance to see exactly what an enemy unit could do to them—and had done it to themselves—were very thoughtful on the run back to the training camp.

  A fortieth-century explosive mine looked like nothing much in particular except possibly a chunk of meteorite. It would float innocuously until a ship of the proper size came within range. It then ceased to be innocuous.

  The problem with mines, as always, was remembering where they'd been planted and being able to recover them after the war ended. For Sten's mercenaries, however, who had no intention of hanging around the Wolf Cluster for one nanosecond after payday, it didn't matter.

  A combined platoon of Vosberh's and Ffillips' men had scattered half a hundred of such chunks of rubble, in orbital patterns that Egan's computer boys had suggested, near one of the Jann main patrol satellites. Then they'd withdrawn on the Bhor ship, as silently and unobtrusively as they'd arrived.

  The first mine didn't detonate for almost a week. It was fortunate for Sten's purposes that the first one happened to ignite when a full fuel ship was making its approach to the satellite. The small nuke not only took out the fuel ship but its two escorts and the pilot vessel from the satellite.

  Mines, properly laid, are extremely cost-effective weapons.

  It was nae thae the Companions sang everywhere they went, Alex decided. It was thae they had such bloody awful taste in their music: doleful hymns; chants describing how wonderful it would be to meet death killing Jann.

  Ah, well, he realized. Wi' m'own race's history. Ah dinnae hae a lot to complain aboot.

  "Seventy seconds," one of Ffillips' lieutenants said. Egan and his bustling computer people paid no attention.

  The twelve of them, with two teams of Ffillips' specialists for security, had taken over one of the Jann observation satellites. The three Jann manning the post had been disposed of, and Egan and his men had gone to work.

  Wires, relays, laser-transmitters, and fiberoptic cables littered the satellite's electronics room, and now the Lycee people waited while Egan caressed keys on a meter-wide board he'd lugged onto the satellite. He tapped a final key then pulled his board out of circuit. "Very fine," he said. "Let's blow it."

  Ffillips' lieutenant saluted and his men began planting demo charges.

  The Lycee gang had used the terminal on the satellite to patch straight into the Jann battle computer. They'd lifted all logs of the mercenary actions from the computer records.

  That, Egan thought to himself, will make it a bit hard for the bad guys to get any kind of tac analysis. A good day's work, he realized, as he headed for the Bhor ship hanging just beyond the lock.

  He didn't bother to tell anyone that he'd also removed any mention of the Lycee people or Egan himself from the records, and added a FORGET IT command just in case any entry was made. A soldier, after all, has to protect his back—and there was no guarantee that the good guys would necessarily win.

  And so the raids continued. A suddenly vanished Jann patrol ship here or a Jann outpost that broadcast pleas for reinforcement before signals shut down. Merchant ships that failed to arrive at their planetfalls. A few "removals" of Jann administrators.

  A man is much larger than a mosquito—and Sten's entire force was less than one-millionth the strength of the Jann. But a mosquito can drive a man to distraction and, given enough time, bleed him dry.

  Sten was slowly bleeding the Jann.

  "You're sure?" Sten asked dubiously.

  "Aye," Alex said. "Th' Companions are as trained ae Ah can makit 'em. We're ready to go to battle, lad."

  Excellent, Sten thought to himself. Now all I have to do is figure out where and when.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  STEN EYED SOFIA with extreme interest, what she was holding with extreme skepticism, and where they were about to go with extreme terror.

  One of the more fascinating things about Sofia—besides how a woman that young could come up with such unusual ways of passing the time when the candles were blown out— was that her body, from the eyebrows down, was completely depilitated.

  And so she stood, naked and smiling on a black volcanic sand beach, waiting for Sten. Beside her were two three-meter-long pieces of hand-laid clear plas. The boards went from their knife-tip to a curved, half-meter midsection to a suddenly chopped stern. Hanging under each board's tailsection were twin, scimitar rudders.

  Sten, whose "culture" had taught him that the best place for water was in a glass with a healthy dollop of synthalk, had trouble understanding the Nebtans' fascination with see-through watercraft.

  "You are hesitating, O my brave Colonel."

  "Clottin" right," Sten murmured as he turned from the exotic spectacle of Sofia to stare down that beach into the ocean.

  Though Nebta normally had mild tides, there were certain places where sharply shelving sea bottoms and undersea reefs made waves build and double on themselves. Such was this beach—one of Parrel's seemingly numberless hideaways. Back in the tropic foliage was a small cottage. The beach swept the base of the tiny bay, possibly four kilometers wide at its mouth. And the waves walked in—building to ten- and twelve-meter heights before they crashed into the shore.

  One such wave broke, perhaps three hundred meters from the beach, and spume flew high and the air boomed and the ground trembled somewhat and Sten winced.

  Sofia had kidnapped him for a three-day break. Sten was quite kidnappable, despite Mahoney's announcement that the timetable was now very, very short—he still hadn't figured out exactly what depredation he and the mercs planned next.

  "This is a sport?" Step questioned. "It looks more like ritual suicide."

  Sofia didn't answer; instead she dropped one of the long planks on the sand, picked up the other, and dashed into the surf crawling on the shore.

  Why, Mahoney, do I have to kill myself practicing these quaint local customs? Sten wondered. He picked up the second board, ran into the water, flat-dove on top of the board, and paddled after Sofia through the surf.

  Sten, in spite of Sofia's giggled harassment and example, was not naked. He wore a pair of briefs, having semi-successfully argued that he would not need a third rudder even if he was dumb enough to try this.

  But still, he thought as he awkwardly paddled out behind Sofia's board, the view was worth it. And suddenly the backwash caught him and suddenly the board was on top of him and suddenly he was wading back to the beach to pick up his board.

  Looking out to sea, he then noticed how Sofia caught her board in both hands and rolled upside down when a wave came over her.

  Learning is such fun, he thought as he began the long paddle out again.

  And somehow the gods were kind and somehow the waves were quiet and somehow Sten ended up sitting on his board, outside the breaker line next to Sofia.

  "Oh, Princess," Sten began, sputtering out water that tasted very salty, "this is a wonderful sport which you have shown me. Now I assume we sit out here until UV rays burn us, paddle back in, and do what all sensible animals in their mating season do. Correct?"

  As a wave swept in behind them Sofia laughed and started paddling vigorously. The wave caught her board and picked it up. The wave grew to seven meters in height, curling, cresting, and—Sten never having been around the ocean much—sounding an ominous boom as it drove toward shore.<
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  You could get killed doing this, Sten thought in astonishment as he saw Sofia get to her knees, then her feet, riding the wave as her board skimmed down its face. He watched Sofia as she back-and-forthed on the board, always keeping it just ahead of the breaking wave as it self-destructed.

  Impossible, Sten's mind told him flatly. You are expected to mount a piece of flotation gear, riding an ocean current as it moves toward shore at perhaps 80kph, stand up, maintain your balance, and also be able to do what…

  Sofia had her toes curled snugly over the board's front edge, still as her board curved up and down on the still-unbroken wave front.

  And then the wave broke and somehow Sofia was out of the wave, and behind it and waving Sten on.

  Why in the Emperor's name, Sten whimpered to himself, did I have to fall in love with a macha woman?

  And then he dropped back on the board, hearing his words echo in his mind. Love? Sofia? You are here on the Emperor's Mission. Sex is one thing. Love? Sten, do you know what love is?

  Indeed I do, his mind answered. I remember you mourning for Bet when you thought she was dead. I remember Vinnitsa. And then Bet's being alive. But also remember the love fading with Bet and you suddenly finding yourself as friends.

  Nice thinking, another part of his mind mocked. Good way to keep you from having to do what Sofia did. There is no way that this can be done without a meta-balance computer, Sten's mind continued as he dug for the next wave.

  And it built and Sten crawled cautiously to his feet and suddenly he was standing and just as suddenly the wind was roaring like the wave below him and Sten wondered why all the excitement since this wave is not moving me all that fast and suddenly he moved his board to the top of the wave and it crested and…

  The wave curled and smashed, carrying nondescript bits of debris with it, several logs, Sten, and his board.

  The board was on top of Sten, then Sten was on top of the board, then the board was lost and Sten was quietly chewing sand and small beach creatures, then he was picking himself up in the spume and quiet of the beach and Sofia was laughing at him.