by Chris Bunch
"Actually, for old times' sake, I might halve it once they put this consortium together."
Mahoney was aghast.
"You mean you're actually considering letting people into the Eryx Region? Don't you remember how far away we are—"
The Eternal Emperor held up a hand, stopping him. He grinned at Mahoney and mock-tugged at his forelock.
"Where's the congratulations for your brilliant boss? I just bought you more time. Mahoney."
Mahoney was silent.
The Emperor caught it. leaned forward across his desk. Steepled his fingers. "Something wrong. Colonel?".
Mahoney hesitated.
"What's going on. dammit!"
"Our operative. Sten. I can't raise him."
The Emperor sagged back. "Which means?"
"Hell if I know, sir. All I know is Mercury Corps Appreciation: All bets are off."
And the Emperor reached for his own bottle. "Clot! I just may have outsmarted myself."
Chapter Thirty-Eight
"HE… HE'S… DEAD?"
"I'm afraid so. dear."
And Parral bent forward to comfort his weeping sister. Sofia leaned into him for warmth and then jolted away. She wiped away her tears.
"But how?"
Parral gave her his best warm, brotherly smile. "Oh. he fought bravely, as did the other men. But I'm afraid it was just too much for them. A trap. They died to a man."
Sofia held her brother's gaze for a moment, wondering if it was true, wondering if her brother had—no. that was too much even for Parral.
With a great heaving sob she collapsed into his arms.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
"EGAN'S DEAD." THE Lycee girl said in a monotone.
Sten just nodded. There wasn't time or energy to mourn.
"He's dead," the woman continued. "He was just walking out of the shelter for rations and they flamed him."
Viola shut up. and sat looking at and through Sten with the thousand-meter stare. Before Sten could make appropriate comforting noises, Alex had led her away, taken the computer terminal from her pack, and set the woman to figuring out some kind of strength report.
Not that it was needed. The figures were already thoroughly graven into Sten's mind:
TROOPS COMMITTED: 670 (Sten had landed with 146 of his original mercenaries, plus 524 Companions.)
TROOPS REMAINING: 321.
Clottin' great leader you make. Colonel, his mind mocked. Only 50 percent casualties'? Fine leadership there. And now what are you going to do?
He heard a scraping sound behind him and turned to see Mathias crawling up. He crouched beside Sten, staring at him intently, his face pale, his eyes full of anger and hate. Hate… not at Sten… but…
"My father," he said. "Did he give the orders to abandon us?"
Sten hesitated and then said quite truthfully, "I don't know."
"His own son," Mathias hissed. "My Companions…"
Sten put a hand on the young man's shoulder. "It was probably just Parral," he said. "Parral playing his own game."
Mathias dragged a sleeve across his grimy face. "I should have suspected…" His voice trailed off. Sten steeled himself. He had to start thinking, not talking, not feeling sorry for himself.
"Mathias," he snapped, and the young man jolted to semireality. "Get back to your men. Await my orders."
Mathias nodded numbly and slithered back to his position.
Sten cautiously lifted his head above the boulder and eyed the perimeter. After they'd realized Parral's transports had abandoned them, the force had found a defensive perimeter in the four-block-wide chunk of demolished machineshops. They had dug in and waited for something to happen.
They were completely surrounded by the surviving Jann— a force that Egan, in the last estimate before his death, had surmised to be about five thousand.
Only about twenty to one odds. Easy—if you're a hero in the livies. So you have a little more than three hundred troops left, most of them wounded, Colonel. By the way, you forgot the Bhor.
Indeed. The thirty or so Bhor, since they could no longer fly, had fought on the perimeter as berserkers. Sten was only sorry that, evidently, Otho must've died in the original withdrawal. No one had reported seeing him or his body. Add thirty hulks. So, Colonel? What, then, are your options?
There are only four possibilities in battle:
1.-Win.
2.-Withdraw.
3.-Surrender.
4.-Die in place.
It didn't take a battle computer to run the options. Winning was out, and there was no way to withdraw. Surrender wasn't even an option—five of Sten's mercenaries had tried that tactic. Now they were out in the middle of no-man's land between Sten's perimeter and the Jann lines. Crucified on steel I-beams. It had taken them almost a day to die—and most of them had been helped by grace rounds from the mercenaries.
No. Surrender to the Jann was not possible.
So here it is, young Sten. After all your cleverness and planning. Here you are, facing your only option—to fight a holding action that'll go down in history beside Camerone, Dien Bien Phu, Tarawa, Hue, or Krais VII. Wormfood, in other words.
And then anger flared. Well, and his mind found the phrase from Lanzotta, the man who'd punted him through basic Guards training: "I've fought for the Empire on a hundred different worlds and I'll fight on a hundred more before some skeek burns me down, but I'll be the most expensive piece of meat he ever butchered."
He spun back toward the command circle. "Alex!"
The voice command—and Kilgour found himself at attention.
"Sir!"
"Six hours to nightfall. I want you and five men—volunteers from Ffillips' unit—standing by."
"Sir!
We have location on the Jann command post?"
"Aye."
"Tonight, then. We go out."
And a smile spread slowly across Alex's face. He knew. Indeed he knew. And it would be far better to die in the attack than huddled in this perimeter waiting for it.
Chapter Forty
IT HAD TAKEN almost two days to dig Khorea and what little remained of his command structure out of the bunker. They'd found him, huddled under a vee-section of the collapsed ceiling, deep in trance state.
The Jann medics had quickly brought him out of it, and Khorea had refused further aid. He'd insisted on taking charge of the final destruction of the mercenaries.
Khorea was probably still in minor shock, delayed battle stress. He had ordered the slow death of the mercenaries who'd deserted and insisted that all Jann be ordered to take no prisoners. He was determined to wipe out the far-worlders who'd shamed the Jann—to the slow death of the last man and woman.
Khorea now sat behind the hastily rerigged computers and screens in the command post. He hated them and longed for the days when a leader led from the front.
Then he half smiled. Realized that all of his electronics, all of his analysis, produced only one answer—the mercenaries would not, could not, surrender.
He shut down his command sensor and stood.
"General!" An aide.
"Tomorrow. We will attack. And I will lead the final assault."
The aide—eyes wide in hero worship—saluted.
"Tonight, then, assemble my staff. We shall show these worms what Jann are, from the highest to the lowest. But tonight—tonight we shall assemble for prayers. Here. One hour after nightfall."
Chapter Forty-One
"… BUT BEFORE WE could stalk the streggan," the ancient Bhor creaked, "there was preparation. We fasted and considered the nature of our ancient enemy. And then, once we had determined our mind upon him, we feasted. Then and only then would we set out across the wave-struck ice to find him, hidden deep in his lair…"
Ancient, Otho thought, wasn't the word for the old Bhor. One sign of approaching death for a Bhor was for the pelt on his chest to begin turning gray. Shortly thereafter, the Bhor would assemble his family and friends for the final guesti
ng and then disappear out onto the ice to die the death, lonely but for the gods.
This Bhor, however, was almost totally white-haired from curled gnarly feet to beetled brow. He was, as far as anyone knew, the last surviving streggan hunter.
And so they listened in council.
Just as the council had patiently listened to Otho, still being bandaged from the wounds incurred as he'd pirouetted his lighter up and out-atmosphere when he heard of Parrel's abandonment.
Just as they had listened to the youngest Bhor discuss why the entire Bhor people must immediately support the marooned warriors.
Just as they had listened to the captain of a merchant fleet discuss calmly—for a Bhor (only two interruptions and one hospitalization)—why the mercenaries should be abandoned and attempts made to reach reapproachment with the Jann. The merchant also happened to be Otho's chief trading rival.
But the council listened, as they would listen to any Bhor. The Bhor were a truly democratic society—any of them could speak at any council. The decision, which could take weeks to reach and involve several minor brawls, would have been discussed, argued, fought over, and then settled.
Once decided, the Bhor moved as of one mind. But the time it took! For the first time—and Otho realized his inspiration was a corruption gotten from those beard-curs t' humanoids— Otho wondered whether his was an excessively longwinded and indecisive society.
And the ancient droned on, making no point at all, but telling the old stories. Normally Otho would have been the first to sit at the ancient's right, keeping him full of stregg, fascinated by talk of the old days. But his friends—friends, by my mother's beard, friends who are humanoid—were dying.
Otho ground his fangs. The debate might continue for another four or five cycles. Since Robert's Rules hadn't penetrated to the Bhor, there was only one customary way to force a vote. And generally it meant the death of the Bhor who did it. By my father's chilly bottom, Otho groaned, you owe me, Sten. If I live through this, you owe me.
The ancient creaked on. He was now describing exactly how you tasted a streggan's fewmets to determine whether the creature was seasonable or not.
Otho rose from his bench and stalked into the center of the council ring, his meter-long dagger leaving its belt harness.
Without warning, Otho pulled the long, trailing beard straight out from his chest and, with a dagger-flash in the firelight, cut it away. He tossed the handful of fur down, into the center of the ring, then, as custom dictated, knelt, head bowed.
To the Bhor, the length and thickness of one's beard signified personal power, much as the length of other appendages has signified similarly to other cultures and beings. To chop off one's beard, in-council, meant that the issue was life-defining.
And, since none of the Bhor appreciated threatening situations, normally the beard-cutter lost his measure and, shortly afterward, his head.
Grumbled comment built to a roar covering the ancient's reminiscences.
Otho waited.
And now—the issue on whether or not to support the human soldiers would be voted on. Otho would most likely lose and then a volunteer would separate Otho from his head. Most likely the volunteer will be his Jamchydd-cursed competitor.
But, contrary to custom, someone spoke.
It was the old streggan hunter.
"Old men"—and his voice was rumbled whisper—"sometimes lose themselves in the glories of their youth. Most of which, I recollect by the beard of my mother, are lies."
Bones creaked as the old Bhor rose. And then, in a blur, his own dagger flashed and the long icefali of the ancient's beard fell onto the flagstone's atop Otho's own beard.
The council was silent as the old Bhor knelt—nearly falling—beside Otho, head bowed.
Chapter Forty-Two
THE SNAP OF the man's neck was not all that audible. Sten knew, watching as Alex let go the first Jann's helmet and snap-punched a knuckled paw against the second man's face. Still, it sounded loud.
He lay to the side of the Jann observation post, flanked by the five volunteers—Ffillips' men, including their commander — waiting for Alex to finish his minor massacre.
The tubby man from Edinburgh made sure both Jann were dead, then rolled out of the OP.
They crawled on.
The Jann, very sure of themselves, had structured their defense line as a series of strongholds, with possibly fifty meters between posts. Sten wished that he had Mantis troopies instead of mercenaries and somewhere to go—it would have been simple to exfiltrate an entire battalion through those lines.
But he didn't and he didn't, and low-crawled on, below the unsophisticated EW sensors, pressure traps, and command-det mines that linked the strongholds.
Two interlocked Jann lines had been established, but the raiders had no trouble penetrating both of them.
Then, behind the lines, Sten and Alex eyed each other.
Sten wondered what Alex was thinking—and wondered why he hadn't found any words before they left the perimeter.
The second would always remain unanswered and it was as well for Sten's battle confidence that the first wasn't either.
Because, Alex was crooning, in his mind's voice, his death song:
"Ah sew'd his sheet, making my mane;
Ah watch'd the corpse, myself alane;
Ah watch'd his body, night and day;
No living creature came that way.
"Ah tuk his body on my back
And whiles Ah gaed, and whiles Ah sat;,
Ah digg'd a grave and laid him in,
And happ'd him with the sod sae green…"
The raiders came to their feet and moved toward the command bunker. The low murmur of Khorea's vigil filtered through the entrance as they moved toward the structure.
Of the two sentries proudly braced at attention before the entrance, the first died with Sten's knife in his heart. The second caught a seeping circle-kick as Sten whirled, kicked, recovered, and drove a knuckle-smash into the sentry's temple.
And then Sten was standing above the bunker's steps, watching Alex's ghoul grin as he pulled a delay-grenade from his harness.
And then the Bhor arrived.
Their ships hurtled in low from the east, landing lights full-on. They burst over the ruined spaceport barely ten meters above the ground. Fire sprayed from their every port.
An efficient atmosphere trader also makes a fairly decent gunship, Sten realized, when all the off-loading ports are open and there are a dozen Bhors using laser blasts, multibarrel projectile cannon, and explosives.
Sten had time to wonder where their intelligence came from as the ships banked, curving just above the Jann lines, hosing death as they went, before the world exploded and Jann officers came tumbling up the bunker steps and Alex had the grenade among them and was spraying fire from his weapon and then the shock of the firewaves caught Sten and he was pitched forward, into the softness of corpses and tumbling down the steps and then…
He was inside the bunker.
Sten rolled off a sticky body, to his feet, then went down again as he caught sight of the black-bearded Khorea, weapon at waist-level, and a burst chattered across the bunker at him and the lights went out.
Above him, Sten could hear the howls and screams of battle. Forget it. Forget it, as he moved softly forward in the blackness.
In the hundred-meter-square bunker there was no one but Khorea and himself.
Sten's foot touched something. He knelt and picked up the computer mouse. Tossed it ahead of him, and then nearly died as fire sparked out of the blackness not at the mouse's thunk where it hit something, but in a level arc behind the sound.
Sorry, General, Sten realized. I thought you were dumber than you are.
Lie here on the concrete and think about things. Ignore the war going on topside. You are here and blind in the dark trying to kill a blind man who has designs on your body.
Breathing from the diaphragm, eyes scanning emptiness, Sten crawled forwar
d, knees and hands coming up, sweeping down, feeling for obstructions. Ah, a microphone with a cord attached… Interesting… A long cord.
Sten moved to a wall support and looped the cord around the support. A strand of the cord ran through the trigger guard of his hand weapon, and there was enough extension for him to slither five meters away.
The weapon was now lashed to the vertical beam. Sten pulled the cord experimentally. The weapon flashed, and the round ricocheted wildly off the ceiling, floor, and walls.
And Khorea triggered a burst at the flash.
Sten yanked the cord as hard as he could, and the weapon went back to full-automatic, and the darkness became a strobe-flare of flashings as the hand weapon spurted its magazine into the bunker and Khorea came up from behind a terminal, aiming carefully at the flashes and was aiming for the shot that would end the duel in blackness having only time to catch the blur of Sten in the air toward him and the flicker of the knife in Sten's hand and the knife drove into the side of his head and Sten smashed into the dead general and then painfully into a careening table.
And then there was no sound except from outside as the Bhor began their victory chant and grenades and small-arms fire resounded and Sten could hear the howl of his mercenaries and the Companions as they broke out from their death perimeter and came in for the final slaughter of the Jann.
And then Sten hooked up a chair with his leg and sat in the blackness, plotting his revenge against Parral.
Chapter Forty-Three
THE MEETING WAS on neutral ground—a planetoid in the Lupus Cluster's no-man's land. It was a Holy of Holies. It was the first place the founder of the religion, Talamein, landed when he fled to the cluster.
It looked a bit like a park, with broad meadows, gentle streams, and woods thick with small game, and one small chapel, the only building on the planetoid.
Two sets of troops faced each other from opposite sides of the chapel, with ready weapons and nervous trigger fingers. The soldiers were the personal guards of the two rival Prophets. After generations of fighting and atrocities on both sides, they were waiting for the signal to leap at each other's throats.
