Sten

by Chris Bunch

  The Baron looked at Lester thoughtfully but unworried. Thoresen was, after all, the man with the cards. But he knew better than to give the crafty old infighter the least opening. And Thoresen knew better than to try threats. Lester was too scarred to know the meaning of fear.

  "I appreciate your input. And your concern about the necessary expenditures. However, this project is too important to our future to risk a leak."

  "Do I sense distrust?” Lester asked.

  "Not of you, gentlemen. Don't be absurd. But if our competition learned of Bravo Project's goal, not even my close ties with the Emperor would keep them from stealing it—and ruining us."

  "Even if it did leak,” another board member tried, “there would still be an option. We could possibly affect their supplies of AM2."

  "Using your close, personal ties with the Emperor, of course,” Lester put in smoothly.

  The Baron smiled thinly.

  "Even I would not presume that much on friendship. AM2 is the energy on which the Empire and the Emperor thrive. No one else."

  Silence. Even from Lester. The ghost of the Eternal Emperor closed the conversation. The Baron glanced around, then deliberately dropped his voice to a dry, boring level.

  "With no further comments, I'll mark the increased funding as approved. Now, to a simpler matter. We're fortunate in that our maintenance expenditures on Vulcan's port facilities have dropped by a full fifteen percent. This includes not only internal mooring facilities, but the pre-sealed container facility. But I'm still not satisfied. It would be far better if..."

  * * * *

  Amos’ eyes flickered open as the livee ended and the lights came up. As near as he could gather, the Exec and his joygirl, after they'd moved to The Eye, had gone off to some pioneer planet and been attacked by something or other.

  He yawned. Amos didn't think much of livees, but a quiet nap came in handy every now and then.

  Ahd nudged him. “That's what I wanna be when I grow up. An Exec."

  Amos stirred and woke up all the way. “Why is that, boy?"

  "'Cause they get adventures and money and medals and ... and ... and all my friends wanna be Execs, too."

  "You just get rid of that notion right now,” Freed snapped.

  "Our kind don't mix with Execs."

  The boy hung his head. Amos patted him. “It ain't that you're not good enough, son. Hell, any Sten is worth six of those cl—"

  "Amos!"

  "Sorry. People.” Then Amos caught himself. “The hell. Callin’ Execs clots ain't talkin’ dirty. That's what they is. Anyway, Ahd, those Execs ain't heroes. They're the worst. They'd kill a person to meet a quota. And then cheat his family outa the death benefits. You becomin’ an Exec wouldn't make me and your ma—or you—proud."

  Then it was his little girl's turn.

  "I wanna be a joygirl,” she announced.

  Amos buried his grin as he watched Freed jump about a meter and a half. He decided he'd let her handle that one.

  * * * *

  Pressure finally split the pipe, and the escaping gas forced it directly against the hole it had punched through into The Row.

  The first to die was an old Mig, who was leaning against the curving outer wall of the dome a few centimeters from the sudden hole in the skin. By the time he'd seen the fluorine burn away flesh and ribcage, leaving the pulsing redness of his lungs, he was already dead.

  In The Row's control capsule, a group of bored Techs watched a carded-out Mig try to wheedle a joygirl into a reduced-rate party. One Tech offered odds. With no takers. Joygirls don't give bargains.

  The pressure finally dropped below the danger threshold and alarms flared. No one flinched. Breakdowns and alarms were an every-shift occurrence on Vulcan.

  The Chief Tech strolled casually over to the main computer. He tapped a few keys, silencing the bong-bong-bong and flashing lights of the alarms.

  "Now, let's see what the glitch is."

  His answer scrolled up swiftly on a monitor screen.

  "Hmm. This is a little dicey. Take a look."

  His assistant peered over the Tech's shoulder.

  "Some kind of chemical leak into the dome. I'll narrow it some.” The Tech tapped more computer keys, cutting a bit deeper into the information banks.

  AIRLOSS INDICATED; PRESENCE OF CONTAMINANT; POTENTIAL LIFE JEOPARDY; REDLINE ALARM.

  The Chief Tech finally reacted with something other than boredom.

  "Clottin’ Maintenance and their damned pipe leaks. They think we've got nothing better to do than clean up after them. I've got a mind to input a report that'll singe every hair off their hairless—"

  "Uh ... sir?"

  "Don't interfere with my tantrums. Whaddaya want?"

  "Don't you think this should be repaired? In a hurry?"

  "Yeah. Figure out where—half these damned sensors are broke or else somebody's poured beer in them. If I had a credit for every time..."

  His voice trailed off as he traced the leak. Finally he narrowed the computer search down, pipe by pipe.

  "Clot. We'll have to suit up to get to it. Runs over to that lab dome—oh!"

  The diagram he was scrolling froze, and red letters began flashing over it: ANY INCIDENT CONNECTED TO BRAVO PROJECT TO BE ROUTED INSTANTLY TO THORESEN.

  His assistant puzzled. “But why does it—” He stopped, realizing the Chief Tech was ignoring him.

  "Clotting Execs. Make you check with them anytime you gotta take a...” He tapped for the registry, found Thoresen's code, hit the input button, and settled back to wait.

  * * * *

  The Baron shook the hands of each of his fellow board members as they filed out. Asking about the health of their families. Mentioning dinner. Or commenting on the aptness of someone's suggestions. Until Lester.

  "I appreciate your presence, Lester, more than you can imagine. Your wisdom is definitely a guiding influence on the course of—"

  "Pretty good duck-and-away on my question, Thoresen. Couldn't do it better myself."

  "But I was not avoiding anything, my good man. I was only—"

  "Of course you were only. Save the stroking for these fools. You and I understand our positions more clearly."

  "Stroking?"

  "Forget it.” Lester started past, then turned. “Of course you know this isn't personal, Thoresen. Like you, I have only the best interests of our Company at heart."

  The Baron nodded. “I wouldn't expect anything else of you."

  Thoresen watched the old man as he hobbled out. And decided that old thieves get foolish. What could be more personal than power?

  He turned toward the source of a discreet buzz and pointed. Six shelves of what appeared to be antique books dropped away, allowing access to a computer panel.

  He took three unhurried steps and touched the RESPONSE button. The Chief Tech floated into view. “We have a problem, sir, here in Rec Twenty-six."

  The Baron nodded. “Report."

  The Chief Tech punched keys, the screen split and the details of the leak into The Row scrolled down one side. The Baron took it in instantly. The computer projected that the deadly gas would fill the rec dome in fifteen minutes.

  "Why don't you fix it, Technician?"

  "Because the clotting computer keeps spitting ‘Bravo Project, Bravo Project’ at me,” the Chief Tech snarled. “All I need is a go from you and I'll have this thing fixed in no time flat and no skin off anybody's—I'll have it fixed."

  The Baron thought a moment.

  "There's no approach to that leak by now except through the Bravo Project lab? Can't you just put a vacuum maintenance Tech out?"

  "Not a chance. The pipe's so badly warped we'll have to chop it off at the source. Yessir. We'll have to get into the lab."

  "Then I can't help you.” The Chief Tech froze.

  "But—that leak won't stop at Rec Twenty-six. Clotting fluorine'll combine, and then eat anything except a glass wall."

  "Then dump Twenty-six."

 
"But we've got almost fourteen hundred people—"

  "You have your orders."

  The Chief Tech stared at Thoresen. Suddenly nodded and keyed off.

  * * * *

  The Baron sighed. He made a mental note to have Personnel up recruiting for the new unskilled-labor quotient. Then rolled the event around, to make sure he wasn't missing anything.

  There was a security problem. The Chief Tech and, of course, his assistants. He could transfer the men, or, more simply—Thoresen wiped the problem out of bis mind. His dinner menu was flashing on the screen.

  * * * *

  The Chief Tech whistled tunelessly and slowly tapped a fingernail on the screen. His assistant hovered nearby.

  "Uh, don't we have to..."

  The Chief Tech looked at him, then decided not to say anything. He turned away from the terminal, and swiftly unlocked the bright red EMERGENCY PROCEDURES INPUT control panel.

  Sten pyloned off an outraged Tech and hurtled down the corridor toward The Row's entrance, fumbling for his card. The young Sociopatrolman blocked his entrance.

  "I saw that, boy."

  "Saw what?"

  "What you did to that Tech. Don't you know about your betters?"

  "Gee, sir, he was slipping. Somebody must have spilled something on the slideway. I guess it's a long way to see what exactly happened. Especially for an older man. Sir.” He looked innocent.

  The younger patrolman brought an arm back, but his partner caught his wrist. “Don't bother. That's Sten's boy."

  "We still oughta ... oh, go ahead, Mig. Go on in."

  "Thank you, sir."

  Sten stepped up to the gate and held his card to the pickup. “Keep going like you are, boy, and, you know what'll happen?” Sten waited.

  "You'll run away. To the Delinqs. And then we'll go huntin’ you. You know what happens when we rat those Delinqs out? We brainburn ‘em."

  The patrolman grinned.

  "They're real cute, then. Sometimes they let us have the girls for a few shifts ... before they put them out on the slideways."

  * * * *

  Hydraulics screamed suddenly, and the dome seal-off doors crashed across the entrance. Sten fell back out of the way, going down.

  He looked at the two patrolmen. Started to say something ... then followed their eyes to the flashing red lights over the entrance:

  ENTRANCE SEALED ... EMERGENCY ... EMERGENCY...

  He slowly picked himself up. “My parents,” Sten said numbly. “They're inside!"

  And then he was battering at the solid steel doors until the older patrolman pulled him away.

  Explosive bolts fired around six of the dome panels. The tiny snaps were lost in the typhoon roar of air blasting out into space.

  Almost in slow motion, the escaping hurricane caught the shanty cubicles of The Row, and the people in them, and spat them through the holes into blackness.

  And then the sudden wind died.

  What remained of buildings, furniture, and the stuff of life drifted in the cold gleam of the faraway sun. Along with the dry, shattered husks of 1,385 human beings.

  * * * *

  Inside the empty dome that had been The Row, the Chief Tech stared out the port of the control capsule. His assistant got up from his board, walked over and put his hand on the Tech's arm.

  "Come on. They were only Migs."

  The Chief Tech took a deep breath. “Yeah. You're right. That's all they were."

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  CHAPTER TWO

  Imagine Vulcan.

  A junkyard, hanging in blackness and glare. Its center a collection of barrels, mushrooms, tubes, and blocks stacked haphazardly by an idiot child.

  Imagine the artificial world of Vulcan, the megabillion-credit heart of the Company. The ultimate null-environment machine shop and factory world.

  The Company's oreships streamed endlessly toward Vulcan with raw materials. Refining, manufacture, sub- and in many cases final-assembly of products was completed, and the Company's freighters delivered to half the galaxy. To an empire founded on a mercantile enterprise, the monstrous vertical trust was completely acceptable.

  Six hundred years before, Thoresen's grandfather had been encouraged by the Eternal Emperor to build Vulcan. His encouragement included a special C-class tankerload of Antimatter, the energy source that had opened the galaxy to man.

  Work began with the construction of the eighty-by-sixteen-kilometer tapered cylinder that was to house the administrative and support systems for the new world.

  Drive mechanisms moved that core through twenty light-years, to position it in a dead but mineral-rich system.

  Complete factories, so many enormous barrels, had been prefabricated in still other systems and then plugged into the core world. With them went the myriad life-support systems, from living quarters to hydroponics to recreational facilities.

  The computer projections made the then unnamed artificial world seem impressive: a looming ultra-efficient colossus for the most efficient exploitation of workers and materials. What the computer never allowed for was man.

  Over the years, it frequently was simpler to shut down a factory unit after product-completion rather than to rebuild it. Other, newer factories, barracks, and support domes were jammed into place as needed. In a world where gravity was controlled by McLean generators, up and down were matters of convenience only. In two hundred years, Vulcan resembled a metal sculpture that might have been titled Junk in Search of a Welder.

  Eventually, atop the catch-as-catch-can collection of metal The Eye was mounted—Company headquarters linked to the original cylinder core. The sixteen-kilometer-wide mushroom was, in Sten's time, only two hundred years old, added after the Company centralized.

  Below The Eye was the cargo loading area, generally reserved for the Company's own ships. Independent traders docked offworld and were forced to accept the additional costs of cargo and passenger transfer by Company space-lighter.

  Under the dock was the visitors’ dome. A normal, wide-open port, except that every credit spent by a trader or one of his crew went directly into the Company's accounts.

  The visitors’ dome was as far South as offworlders were permitted. The Company very definitely didn't want anyone else dealing with—or even meeting—their workers.

  Vague rumors floated around the galaxy about Vulcan. But there had never been an Imperial Rights Commission for Vulcan. Because the Company produced.

  The enormous juggernaut delivered exactly what the Empire needed for centuries. And the Company's internal security had kept its sector very quiet.

  The Eternal Emperor was grateful. So grateful that he had named Thoresen's grandfather to the nobility. And the Company ground on.

  Any juggernaut will continue to roll strictly on inertia, whether it is the Persian Empire or General Motors of the ancients, or the sprawling Conglomerate of more recent history. For a while. If anyone noticed in Sten's time that the Company hadn't pioneered any manufacturing techniques in a hundred years, or that innovation or invention was discouraged by the Company's personnel department, it hadn't been brought to the Baron's attention.

  Even if anyone had been brave enough or foolish enough to do so, it wasn't necessary. Baron Thoresen was haunted by the fact that what his grandfather created was slowly crumbling beneath him. He blamed it on his father, a cowering toady who had allowed bureaucrats to supplant the engineers. But even if the third Thoresen had been a man of imagination, it still would probably have been impossible to bring under control the many-headed monster the elder Thoresens had created.

  The Baron had grown up with the raw courage and fascination for blood-combat—physical or social—of his grandfather, but none of the old man's innate honesty. When his father suddenly disappeared offworld—never to be seen again—there was no question that the young man would head the Company's board of directors.

  Now, he was determined to revitalize what his grandfather had begun. But not by turning the Com
pany upside down and shaking it out. Thoresen wanted much more than that. He was obsessed with the idea of a kendo masterstroke.

  Bravo Project.

  And now it was only a few years from fruition.

  Under the Baron was his board, and the lesser Executives. Living and working entirely in The Eye, they were held to the Company not only by iron-clad contracts and high pay but that sweetest of all perks—almost unlimited power.

  Under the Execs were the Technicians—highly skilled, well-treated specialists. Their contracts ran for five to ten years. When his contract expired, a Tech could return home a rich man, to set up his own business—with the Company, of course, holding exclusive distribution rights to any new products he might have developed—or to retire.

  For the Exec or Tech, Vulcan was very close to an industrial heaven.

  For the Migs, it was hell.

  It's significant that the winner of the Company's Name-Our-Planet contest, a bright Migrant-Unskilled worker, had used the prize money to buy out his contract and passage out as far from Vulcan as possible.

  Fellahin, oakie, wetback—there will always he wandering laborers to perform scutwork. But just as the Egyptian fellah would marvel at the mechanical ingenuity of the Joads, so the twentieth-century assembly-line grunt would be awed by the likes of Amos Sten.

  For Amos, one world could never be enough. Doing whatever it took for a full belly, a liter of gutbuster, and a ticket offworld, he was the man to fix your omni, get your obsolete harvester to working, or hump your new bot up six flights of stairs.

  And then move on.

  His wife, Freed, was a backwater farm-world kid with the same lust to see what the next planetfall brought. Eventually, they guessed, they'd find a world to settle on. One where there weren't too many people, and a man and a woman wouldn't have to sweat for someone else's business. Until they found it, though, any place was better than what they'd already seen.