by Chris Bunch
Otho's howls of rage were moderately awesome, Sten realized, listening to the Bhor rage on about what had been done to his trading lighters.
"Armor! Projectile cannon! Shields! Chem protection! By my mother's beard, have you any idea how long it will take us to reconvert our lighters to useful configuration?"
"Don't worry about it, Otho," Sten said. "Probably we'll all die on Urich and then there won't be any problems."
"Och," Otho agreed, brightening and slugging Sten on the back. "By my grandsire's womb, I never thought about that. Shall we share some stregg on the thought. Colonel?"
"Mathias?"
"Six hundred trained men, present, ready."
"Vosberh?"
"We're ready."
"Fflllips?"
"All teams trained, aware of targets, ready for commitment."
"Egan?"
"Intelligence, ECM, sensors all on standby."
"Sergeant Kilgour?"
"No puh-roblems," Alex purred.
"Order group number one," Sten said. "All troops are restricted to base camp area, effective immediately. You may inform your troops that Parrel's units are patrolling our perimeter with instructions to shoot on sight any soldiers attempting to take French leave.
"We board ship in two days. I expect all men to be fully converted to all-protein diet, water-packed, and all equipment to be double-checked and shock-packed. We will board ship when Mathias and I return from Sanctus.
"That is all, gentlemen."
Chapter Thirty-Two
STEN STOOD AT full attention before the tiny altar in the Prophet's study. Next to him was Mathias. Theodomir was chanting a steady stream of prayers and waving the incense wand to all points of the compass.
Finally he approached Sten himself and stopped in front of him. "Who brings the candidate?" he intoned.
"I do," Mathias answered.
"Have the proper purification rites been performed?"
"They have."
"And has this man proven himself worthy of Talamein and all we hold holy?"
"This I swear," Mathias said.
"Kneel," the Prophet commanded.
Sten did.
Theodomir touched the wand lightly to each of Sten's shoulders, then stepped back. "Rise, O Faithful One. Rise as a Soldier of Talamein."
Sten barely had time to climb to his feet before Theodomir had palmed the switch that slid the little altar out of sight. The Prophet slopped a chalice full of wine and guzzled it down. Sten thought he caught a quickly masked flash of distaste from Mathias.
"Drink, Colonel, drink," the Prophet said. "An honor like this does not come every day."
Sten nodded his thanks and poured himself a cup of wine and sipped at it.
Theodomir beamed and rubbed two hands together. "Tell me, Colonel. What runs through a soldier's nand on the eve of battle?"
Sten smiled. "As little as possible."
The Prophet nodded in what he thought was understanding. "Yes, I imagine all thoughts would be of an earthly nature. Thoughts of the flesh. Personally, as your spiritual leader, I could not agree more.
"And Colonel, a little advice. Man to man. I know that there are any number of young women, or… ahem… men… on Sanctus who would be willing to share your last hours."
Again Sten thought he caught a faint look of displeasure from Mathias. "Thank you for your advice, Excellency." Then, after a moment: "Now, if you will excuse me, sir, I have many things to do."
The Prophet laughed and waved his dismissal. "Go to it, Colonel. Go to it."
Sten bowed, saluted, wheeled, and exited. Theodomir's smile vanished as the doors hissed closed, and he looked thoughtful. "You know," he mused to his son, "that could be a very dangerous man."
"I assure you," Mathias protested, "he is fully committed to our cause."
"Still," the Prophet said. "During the heat of battle, if you should have the opportunity…"
Mathias was appalled. "What are you saying, Father?"
The Prophet's eyes bored into him, reminding the young man of his place. Mathias stood nervously, but with a determined expression on his face. Finally the Prophet chortled and refilled his wine cup. "Just a thought. I'll take your word on Colonel Sten's dedication."
Then he waved his son away, and Mathias left. The Prophet began chuckling, drank down his wine and poured more.
"You have a great deal to learn, my son. A great deal indeed."
Chapter Thirty-Three
URICH WAS AS well designed and laid out as any Imperial Guards Division depot. It was the only development on an otherwise deserted world. From two hundred kilometers overhead, it looked like an enormous U. At the open end of the U was shallow ocean, useful for engine testing, a fixed approach pattern, and also, of course, a "soft" place for crash landings.
At the curve of the U lay the shipyard itself and, at its center, the enormous bulk of the engine-hull mating plant. Alongside that plant were the machine shops, shielded and bunkered chem-fuel dumps, steel mills, and so forth.
Along one side of the U were docked the major elements of the Jann fleet—a few former Imperial cruisers, some rebuilt light destroyers, and a host of small in-atmosphere and patrol ships. Plus, of course, the necessary support craft—tankers, shopships, ECM ships, and so forth.
On the other side of the U were endless kilometers of bar racks for the Jann troops when they were off-ship. As the raiding force approached Urich, there were approximately nine thousand Jann on Urich, an equivalent number of yard workers and yard security, and General Suitan Khorea, the commanding general.
Chapter Thirty-Four
OTHO WATCHED THE screen time-tick seconds until dropaway with half his attention. The other half was listening to the droned story from behind him, coming from the humanoid that Otho sometimes found himself wishing to be a Bhor:
"Ahe," Alex went on. "S' th' Brit gin'ral hae order't ae squad up tha' hill f 'r Red Rory's head. An' aye, a pickit squad wan' roarin' upit tha' hill.
"An tha's screekit an' scrawkit' an' than, bumpit, bumpit, bumpit, doon tha' hill comit th' heads ae th' squad.
"An' th' Brit gin'ral lookit up tha' hill, an' on th' crest still standit thae giant.
"An' he skreekit, 'Ah'm Red Rory ae th' Glen! Send up y'r best comp'ny!'
"An" th' Brit gin'ral turnit a wee shade more purple, an' he say, 'Adj'tant!'
"An' th' adj'tant sae, 'San!'
"An* th' Brit gin'ral sae, 'Adj'tant, send up y'r best comp'ny! Ah wan' that man's head!'
"The adj'tant sae 'Sah!'
"An' he sendit oop th' hill th' reg'mint's best comp'ny!"
And the timeclick went to zero and Otho touched the button. Alex cut his story off as the Bhor captain got busy.
"By Sarla, Laraz, and…and all the other gods," Otho muttered, then swiveled his shaggy head to eye Sten.
"You know what's going to happen, Colonel. Those chub-butts who brought us here will probably skite for safety the minute we enter Urich's atmosphere."
"I doubt it."
"Why not?"
"Because I haven't paid them and because Parral will have them thin-sliced if they do."
"But what happens if they do do?" Otho heard what he'd just said and grunted. "You see, Colonel, you try to make me a soldier and then I lose everything. Pretty soon I'll be grunting primordial Bhor."
"Which is ae differen' frae th' way y' talkit noo," Alex asked interestedly. Otho just sneered.
Otho, three Bhor crewmen, Alex, Sten, Mathias, Egan with two com specialists, and the ever-present Kurshayne overfilled the control room of the Atherston. Packed safely away in shock-mounted compartments were the first wave, two companies of Mathias' troops and Vosberh's men.
Hanging in space around them were the fifty Bhor lighters, filled with Ffillips' commandos and the remainder of Mathias' force.
Otho stared at Sten, as if waiting for him to say something noble. Sten had a mouth too dry for hero speeches; he just waved, and Otho ratcheted the drive to f
ull power and targeted the ship toward Urich's surface.
The Jann picket ships were quickly destroyed by low-speed interdiction missiles that the Bhor lighters had launched two hours before. They had no chance to warn the planet below.
The first clue the main base had was when five one-kiloton nukes flared, just out of the atmosphere. No fallout, no shock, no blastwave, but a near-continuous electromagnetic pulse that, momentarily, put all the Jann sensors on burble.
By the time the secondary circuits had cut in, the Atherston and the Bhor assault lighters were in-atmosphere, coming in on a straight, no-braking-pattern approach.
As the attack alarm blatted, Jann gunners ran for their posts. One Jann, faster or better trained or more alert, reached his S/A launch station and, on manual, punched five missiles up into the sky.
Above him, a Bhor tac/air ship banked, turned through ninety degrees, and, at full power, blasted toward the field. Its pilot had only time enough to unmask his multicannon before the first Jann missile went off, spinning the lighter sideways.
The gee-force went over 40. Too much even for the massive Bhor. The pilot and copilot blacked out. A millisecond later, the second and third Jann missiles impacted directly on the lighter.
A ball of flame flowered in the morning sky as other ships dove in to the attack.
"Your mother had no beard and your father had no buttocks," a Bhor tac pilot grunted as he brought his control stick back into his gut, and the lighter flattened out, barely a meter above the landing field. The pilot locked a knee around his stick and both hands flashed across the duck-foot cannon mounted in the lighter's nose.
Fifty mm shells exploded from the duck-foot's six barrels, then the weapon recoiled, dropping the first set of barrels down into load position and bringing the second set up.
The antipersonnel shells from the cannon, warheads lovingly filled with meta-phosphorus and canister, ricocheted off the thick landing ground's concrete and exploded, shrapneling through the Jann running for their combat stations.
The pilot lifted at the end of his run, keeping the stick all the way back, and the inverted lighter came back for another pass, the pilot's laughter roaring louder than the slam of the cannon firing.
"We should be receiving fire by now," Otho said cheerily and dumped the ship atmosphere. Sten swallowed hard as his ears tried to balloon—they were still some six thousand meters off the deck.
There was a dull crash from somewhere in the stern, and indicator lights turned red. The internal monitor terminal scrolled figures that everyone ignored.
A radar belched and flames began curling out.
Sten keyed the ship's PA mike. "All troops. We are taking hits. Minus thirty seconds."
In the troop compartments the soldiers tucked themselves more tightly into their shock capsules, tried to keep their minds blank and their eyes off the man next to them, who probably looked as scared as they were.
* * *
Below them, on the field, most Jann AA stations were manned and coming into action, in spite of the intense suppressive fire from the strafing Bhor ships.
Missiles swung on their launchers, sniffing, and then smoked off into the air. Multibarreled projectile weapons nosed for a target.
There was only one good one:
The chunky, rusty mass of the Atherston, now only four thousand meters above the field, drive still billowing heatwaves into the air, crashing toward them.
"Station three… we have a compartment hit. All units inside counted casualties," a Bhor officer said.
"Whose?" Vosberh asked. Before he heard the reply, a missile penetrated the control bubble and exploded. A meter-long splinter of steel split his spine just above the waist.
Sten pushed the body out of the way and checked Otho. The Bhor's beard was bloody and one eye seemed to be having trouble. But his growl was loud and the grin was wide as he reversed drive on the two Yukawa drive units that had been added for braking force.
"Two hundred meters—"
And Sten dove for his shock capsule.
As it drove downward, the Atherston looked as if it were held aloft on a multicolored fountain of fire, and every weapon on the field swung and held on the unmissable target. Quickly the Athenian's compartments and passageways were sieved; Bhor and men died bloody.
Otho's second in command dropped, blood gouting from a throat wound as he slumped over the controls. Kurshayne was out of his capsule, staggering against the gee-force and at the panel. He ripped the dead Bhor away from the controls, then flattened himself on the deck just as one Yukawa braking unit, still under drive, was shot away from the ship and skyrocketed upward.
Most of the Jann guns and missiles diverted onto the drive tube as it arced up into the sky.
And then there was nothing in Sten's eyes but the massiveness of that huge hangar as the ship closed and the doors rose up toward him and became the center of his world and his universe and:
The Atherston smashed through the hangar's monstrous doors as it they were wet paper. The ship hung, impaled in the concrete, and then, as if in slow motion, the doors to the engine-hull mating plant broke away and tumbled the ship down into a ground-shuddering impact on the field itself.
"Come on! Come on!" Sten was screaming as he heard the det charges blowing the crumpled nose cone away and then the dry grinding of broken-toothed gears as they tried to lower the landing ramps.
Alex had Otho over one shoulder and was pushing a limping Kurshayne ahead of him as they dropped out of the control room, into the swirling mass of Mathias' and Vosberh's soldiers as the latter ran out onto the landing field.
But no panic, no panic at all. Sten watched proudly as the weapons came off the men's shoulders and the perimeter specialists hit it. set up their crew-served weapons and began spattering return fire into the Jann units.
A vee-bank of Bhor lighters swept across the field at the height of a man's chest, cannon and rockets pumping and fire drizzling out of their sterns.
Smoke began roiling up from the Jann positions.
"Let's go! Let's go! Move! Move!" And why the clot can't I do anything more inspiring than shout as Sten and his team doubled around the corner of the hangar, toward their own assigned demo targets.
And why the hell am I shouting when it's so quiet? Clot, man, you're deaf. No, you aren't, as Sten realized that the only fire was coming from his own troops as they moved out, blindly following the assault plan.
Alex was shouting for cease-fire, and Otho grumbled his way toward Sten, bloodily grinning.
"We have one hour. Colonel, and then by my mother's beard this whole world of the black ones will go down and down to hell."
Less poetically Sten decided that Otho was telling him he'd set the timer on the ship's charges—conventional explosives, but enough to equal a 2KT nuke.
Khorea briskly returned the salute as he entered Urich's main command post. The command staff in the bunker were calm, he noted with approval, and all observation screens were on.
"Situation?"
"We have approximately one thousand invaders on the ground," an officer reported. "No sign of major support or assault ships entering atmosphere. All ships are tac/air support. No sign of potential nuke deployment."
"The invaders—the mercenaries?"
"It would appear so. General."
"And that"—he gestured at the screen, where the crumpled hulk of the Atherson lay, still buried in the mating plant's shattered doors—"was their mission?"
"Yes," another Jann said. "Evidently their intelligence incorrectly estimated the thickness of those doors. No plant damage is reported. In fact, General, after the raiders are removed, we can have the plant operational in three, perhaps four cycles."
"Excellent."
Khorea mused to himself as he sat down at the main control board. The cursed of Theodomir have tried another raid. This time they failed, but they will try to commit as much damage as possible. With no pickup ships reported, they must expect to be able to
take and hold Urich. Which means they expect us to surrender.
Impossible, his mind told him. The mercenaries cannot know so little about the Jann. So they are suicide troops? Equally impossible. Well, possibly not for those—he eyed a screen— red-uniformed ones we have heard reports about, who call themselves Mathias' Companions. But the others are mercenaries. Mercenaries simply do not die for their clients.
Therefore—analysis complete. Further input needed, Khorea's mind told him as he issued a string of orders intended to close the Jann circle about the raiders and destroy them utterly.
"Out. You people must get out of here," Ffillips chided. She stood, weapon ready, over a cluster of workmen kneeling in one shop. Behind her two of her teams reeled det wire across the shop.
"We do not kill civilians," Ffillips said. "Now you run. Get very far away from here."
The workmen came to their feet and shambled toward the exit. Ffillips sighed in satisfaction and turned back to watch her teams at work.
But one Jann workman stooped hastily near a dead commando and had a projectile weapon up, raised, aimed at Ffillips as the white-haired woman leaped sideways, turning and firing. The spatter of rounds cut the man in half.
Ffillips got back to her feet and shook her head sadly. "But still, you must admire dedication," she told herself.
"Kill them! Kill the Jann!" Mathias raved as a wave of his Companions poured into a barracks door. The barracks, however, was a dispensary. Lying in the beds were the normally injured and sick of any industrial center.
None of them was armed.
It did not matter to Mathias or to his Companions.
The patients died as they squirmed for shelter under their beds.
From overhead, as the Bhor strafing ships dipped and swooped, firing at anything resembling a black uniform, the port of Urich was in chaos. Here smoke or flame flared; there a building mushroomed outward. Troops scuttled from shelter to shelter.
The raid was progressing very well.
