Sten

by Chris Bunch

  Mahoney snorted to himself. Any buck private in Mantis Section's rear rank would have come up with that much or gone back to being a slime-pounder.

  3. Off world security systems were being beefed up and there were persistent rumors of some of the Company's production facilities being diverted to arms production. Unprovable, so far. And even if Mahoney could prove the allegations correct, the Company could always blandly claim to be planning expansion in Pioneer Sector.

  "Zip-slant nothin’ is what I got,” Mahoney muttered. And thenfroze. Far ahead, down the slideway, he could see a cordon of Sociopatrolmen checking cards with a portable computer. Mahoney's forgery wasn't that good. He quickly stepped off the slideway, onto a cross-passage. The slide-passage creaked along, into a large dome. On the other side, there was a second ID-check block.

  Mahoney rabbited up a side-passage. Basics. Walk slow. Breathe slow. Look happy. A little zipped. You've just come off shift and are headed for your apartment. He went up a narrower corridor, then slanted off on still a third. Turned at the entrance then giant-stepped around the next curve.

  Stopped. Waited. Listening.

  Of course. Footsteps behind him.

  Mahoney was being steered. But he didn't have a lot of options. Moving as slowly as he could, he let the ferrets push him deeper into the abandoned sectors of Vulcan.

  The first man made the mistake of trying to blindside Mahoney from a dead-end passageway. Mahoney went in under the blackjack, and put an elbow through the thug's epiglottis. Mahoney side-kicked the riot gun out of the second tough's hands, one-handed the gun out of the air and hauled in on the powerpack cord. The Sociopatrolman top-spun. Mahoney backpunched knuckles into the base of the man's skull.

  Two. He turned, realizing that they were just the blocking element. Three more were coming around the corner. One had a gun up. Aiming.

  A stun rod, spear-lashed to a rod, lashed out of the upper vent, burying itself in the gunman's eye. He screamed and went down.

  Mahoney drove forward, knowing he wasn't close enough to the others, when a young man dropped out of the vent, right hand blurring back and forth.Mahoney blinked as the second man's head bounced free, blood fountaining up to paint the overhead. The young man crouched, continuing his spin, and brought the knife completely through a circle, lunging up from the ground.

  Mahoney noticed the young man kept his free hand on top of his wrist as a guide. Knows what—

  And the third man whimpered at the knife deep in his chest. He toppled. The young man bent, pulled the knife out, and wiped it on the corpse's uniform. Young. Good. A bravo.

  Mahoney stood very still and let the young man walk up on him. Another young man—no, a girl—dropped from the vent. She retrieved her spear.

  About nineteen, fairly short, say sixty kilos. Second evaluation: nineteen going on forty. He looked like any street kid on any gutter world, except he didn't cringe, Mahoney figured he hadn't done a lot of crawling. A Delinq. Mahoney almost smiled.

  Sten eyed Mahoney, then the two corpses behind him. Not bad for an old man. Looked to be in his mid-forties, and big. Sten couldn't place him, in spite of Mahoney's Mig coveralls. Not surprising, since Sten had only known three classes, and only face-to-faced two of them.

  "There'll be more of ‘em along directly, my friend,” Mahoney said. “Let's keep the introductions short."

  "There's no hurry. For us. Never seen five patrolmen after one man. What'd you do?"

  "It's a bit complicated—"

  "Sten. Look."

  Sten didn't take his eyes off Mahoney. Bet stood up from the corpses and held three cards out to Sten. “Those weren't patrolmen. They've got Exec cards!"

  "Thoresen's security,” Mahoney said. “They must've tracked me from The Eye."

  "You're not ... you're offworld!"

  "I am that."

  Sten made a decision. “Strip."

  Mahpney bristled, then caught himself and swore. The kid had it. He tore off the coveralls, then pulled off his boots. Hefted one experimentally, then slammed it against the wall. The heel shattered, and bits of the tiny transmitter scattered across the deck.

  Sten nodded. “That's how they followed you. You can put the coveralls back on."

  He stirruped his hands, and launched Bet back into the vent. She reached down, gave him a hand, and he slithered up.

  Turned, inside the vent, as Mahoney flat-leaped up, caught the edges of the vent with both hands and levered himself into the airduct.

  "A bit tight for someone my age."

  "It isn't your age,” Bet said, indicating his waistline.

  "We'll not be making light of our elders and their pot-guts."

  "Follow us,” Sten said shortly. “And no talking."

  Mahoney blinked again as Sten put his knife away ... seemingly into his arm. Then he ran after Bet and Sten, down the twisting duct.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  "No, Fadal. For some reason I ... remember what an empire is,” Oron said.Mahoney started to ask. Sten shook his head.

  "Intelligence?"

  "Eyes."

  "Ah. And you will then want my people ... and myself to be your eyes?"

  "No,” Mahoney said, “I'm too close to being blown.” Oron looked inquiringly at Fadal. She was blank.

  "Thoresen wouldn't have top Security men on me unless he was pretty sure who I was."

  "Thoresen ... head of the Company. Your enemy,” Fadal whispered.

  "You want?"

  "I must have confirmation of Thoresen's plan. I've blue-boxed into the Exec and the central computers, and there vas nothing on Bravo Project except inquiry-warning triggers."

  "This ... Thoresen. He must have it personally."

  "Probability ninety percent plus."

  Sten broke in. “What happens if it's there? And you're right?"

  "We'll send in the Guard. The Emperor will set up some kind of caretaker government. Things will change. For the Migs. For everyone."

  "Not good enough,” Bet said.

  "We'll be dead by the time your clottin’ Empire arrives. Or don't you know? Us Delinqs don't live to get old,” Sten said.

  "Sten is right. A runner from another gang passed the word ... when?"

  "Two shifts ago,” Fadal said.

  "He saw patrolmen at the warehouses. They were drilling with ... riot guns,” Oron said, and smiled at his successful memory. “They will be conducting an extermination drive soon. And we are now too many to evade them."

  "How many in your gang?"

  "Fifteen now,” Fadal answered.

  Mahoney calculated quickly. The tiny Imperial detachment had its own airlock. The inquiry wouldn't be too loud if he got what he wanted ... “Passage offworld. For all of you. To any Imperial world."

  Sten discovered he'd stopped breathing. He took a deep breath and looked disbelievingly at Mahoney.

  "I can do it. You people raid Thoresen's quarters. Bring me anything that says Bravo Project. Which you can deliver on the ship. The Empire keeps its bargains."

  "I do not think there's any need to ... debate this. Is there?” Mahoney stood up. There wasn't.

  * * * *

  The patrolman stalked to the end of his beat and stopped. He yawned. Then turned and started back down the corridor.

  Sten oozed from the vent in the wall ... breathe ... breathe ... pace ... pace ... forward. Moving up on the guard. Keeping in time. Eyes on the patrolman's back. Closing. In step. Inside the three-meter awareness zone. Eyes off target. Mind blank.

  Sten's left hand curled around the patrolman's neck. Cramped the big man's head hard back as he drove his knife deep into kidney. Breath whuffled. The man gargled. Sten sidestepped asthe corpse voided, then dragged the patrolman back to the vent and stuffed him in. He ran down the corridor, to the beginning of the Exec section. Found the paneling and pried.

  When the Delinqs had pored over the complete plans for The Eye that Mahoney had blind-dropped for t
hem in the Visitors’ Center airways, they'd found the key.

  Evidently the Execs were more delicate than Techs or Migs. Most of the passageways, particularly those around the higher-echelon areas, were subdivided with an inner, noise-insulating wall.

  The paneling came clear, and Sten beckoned. The other fourteen Delinqs poured out of the vents and streamed toward him. One by one they slithered into the wallspace. Oron was in the middle, blank-faced. Fadal guided him into the inner wall. Sten cursed silently, and hoped Oron's memory would return quickly because if they failed, most of them would die in The Eye. Even if a few managed to get south again, into Mig country, there'd be an endless stream of extermination drives.

  Again, Sten realized there was no choice. Bet grudgingly agreed. And then vacillated between eagerness to see new worlds and worry about whether they'd fit in. Sten figured that was a lucky sign.

  The wallspace narrowed. Sten sucked his chest in. Must be a collision door. His chest stuck for a minute. Sten nearly panicked, then remembered to empty his lungs. He slid through easily.

  They huddled outside the great double doors to Thoresen's quarters. Sten curiously touched the material. Rough. Grainy. Like fatigued steel. But rougher. Sten wondered why Thoresen didn't have the surface—it appeared organic—worked smooth.

  Bet set the pickup to another frequency, and touched it to the door. Eyes closed ... her fingers ran across the pressure switches. Inaudible pressure increased/decreased in Sten's ears. There was a click. The main lock was open.Bet extracted a plastic rod from her pouch. Touched the heat button, and positioned it carefully in the middle of the door's panel. On the end of the rod, heated to human body temperature, was a duplicate of Thoresen's index fingerprint. Sten wondered how Mahoney had obtained it.

  The door chunked—the Delinqs grabbed for weapons—and swung open.

  Sten and the others cat-walked inside.

  Time stopped. They were in space. They were in an exotic, friendly jungle.

  They were in the very top of The Eye. Thoresen's quarters. The cover to the dome top was open, and space glittered down at them. Sten was the only one who'd seen off-Vulcan. He had enough presence to softly close the doors and look around.

  There was no one else in the dome.

  A garden. With furniture here and there, flowing gently into flowering wildness, as if someone had removed the walls, ceiling, and floor of a very large house, leaving in place all of the implements of living.

  The Delinqs moved, recovering.

  Sten spotted a motion detector swiveling toward them. He ran forward and leaped, knife plunging through the pickup. Sten spotted other cameras and pointed. The Delinqs nodded. Moved forward, fading into the unfamiliar shrubbery.

  Sten, Oron, and Bet kept together, looking for what would be an office. At one side of the dome was an elaborate salle d'armes. Blades and guns of many worlds and cultures hung from the dome panels. And, on the other side, an imposing, free-floating slab that had to be a desk. Behind it, the most elaborate computer panel Sten had ever seen. Nearby stood a stylized sculpture of an enormously fat woman. Maybe.

  Sten looked at Oron questioningly. His eyes gleamed bright.He waved them at the sculpture.

  Sten and Bet slid up to it. It had to be. A narrow UV trip beam crossed in front of it. Sten took a UV projector from his belt, flipped it on, adjusted the intensity, and hung it in front of the pickup across the chamber.

  It took several minutes to find the tiny crack in the sculpture. Sten fingered all projections on the sculpture. It wasn't that simple. Probably a sequence release that would take forever to figure out.

  Oron turned, and Sten took the small maser projector from the ruck Oron wore. Opened it up, aimed the maser sights at the crack, and flipped it on. A little pressure on the trigger and the sculpture powdered. Underneath was a touch-combinationed door. Sten very carefully took a freeze carrier from his own pack and undipped a tiny tripod.

  He opened the freeze carrier and a white vapor spilled into the room from the near Kelvin-Zero cylinder inside. Sten pulled on an insulated glove and attached the cylinder to the tripod, aiming the release spout at the right side of the safe door. He armed the release and backed away.

  Spray jetted from the cylinder and crystallized against the hull-strength steel door to the safe. Then Bet took a hammer from her pouch and tapped. The metal shattered like glass. The three grinned at each other.

  They were in.

  Papers, more papers, bundles of Imperial credits—Sten started to stuff bills in his pouch but Oron waved at him. No.

  Then came a thick red folder. BRAVO PROJECT. They had it!

  None of them noticed the young Delinq who'd wandered into the salle. Fascinated by an archaic long arm, he took it from the wall. The bracket clicked softly upward.Sten handed the Bravo folder to Oron. The blank look suddenly returned to Oron's eyes. He looked, puzzled, at the folder and stood up. The folder spilled, papers scattering across the floor. Sten muttered and started gathering papers. No kind of order—scattered all over the floor. Sten worked as fast as he could.

  The first blast caught three Delinqs in the chest, and side scatter from the riot gun blistered the foliage. The Sociopatrolman in the door pulled the trigger all the way back and swiveled.

  The second blast caught a Delinq as he dived through some brush, burning away half his chest. Coughing screams broke the silence. Sociopatrolmen streamed through the door—guns out.

  Bet pulled a grenade from her belt, thumbed the fuse, and pitched it, going flat, as death seared above her head.

  Sten rolled toward the salle, ducking behind the first shelter he saw.

  Three joined tanks, with a long hose and twin handles. Some kind of weapon.

  The placard above the museum piece read: EARTH PRE-EMPIRE. RESTORED. FLAME WEAPON. It Was Sten's luck that Thoresen, like many collectors, kept his weaponry ready for use. Sten grabbed the hose's two handles, and pulled them both. He saw the puff from the cone head at the nozzle, a small flare of fire, and then greasy, black flame spurted from the nozzle.

  It spouted fifty meters across the chamber—a far greater range than its aeons-dead builders planned—and napalm drenched the Sociopatrolmen. They howled, for it was a very unpleasant series of deaths, whether a patrolman was lucky enough to have the oxygen sucked from his lungs by the searing flames, or, worse, as the sticky, petroleum-based napalm burnt through to the bone. But one man stopped screaming long enough to spray a burst from his gun just as a still-bewilderedOron walked forward. His head spattered through the chamber.

  Robotlike, Sten stalked forward, hosing the nozzle back and forth. Finger locked on the trigger, eyes wide in panic. And then the flame sputtered and dribbled back to the nozzle.

  Sten dropped it and just stood there. Bet grabbed his arm. “Come on!"

  Sten came back to the world. The patrol team that had been blocking the entrance was gone. All dead.

  Sten and Bet ran for the door, and only one other Delinq came out of his hiding place after them.

  They went out the door and pelted down the corridor. There wasn't time enough to make it back to their rat paneling. All they could hope to do was put distance between them and Thoresen's quarters.

  A running blur—the three of them down corridors, ducking as patrolmen came after them. Panicked Execs back and doors slamming and locking.

  A floor grating. Sten and Bet heaving up. The grating coming clear.

  Sten looked down. The passage went down, endlessly. No fans or acceleration ducting. He didn't know what it was for, but it didn't matter. A team of patrolmen was jogging down the corridor after them.

  Narrow climbing cleats ran down the side, and Sten could make out some kind of tunnel about ten meters below the main passageway. He waved Bet into the hole. She clambered in awkwardly and Sten realized she'd been hit somehow. Sten followed.

  The other Delinq was still shaking his head when the riot gunblast caught him and blew him apart.

  Bet slipped, one
foot left the cleat and her leg fluttered into the passageway. Gunk. Grease. Something. She clawed at the cleat, lost her handhold. Screamed.

  Too late, Sten reached for her as he stared down half a world. Bet, screaming endlessly, fell away from him.

  Sten watched her body drop away. Until he couldn't see it. Then, somehow moving quickly, he slid sideways and began working his way down the passageway.

  * * * *

  Mahoney paced his office. After he heard the alarms, he had monitored the patrol net and heard the riot squads being sent in.

  The door opened suddenly and Sten walked into the room. Empty-handed. “They caught us. They caught us. Bet's dead."

  Mahoney caught himself. “Bet. That girl?"

  "Yes. She's dead. Dead. And the file. What you wanted. Oron had it."

  "Where's Oron?"

  "Oron's dead. Like Bet."

  Mahoney squelched his natural reaction to curse. “All right. It's blown. But the bargain still stands. I've got the cruiser standing by."

  "No. I don't want to go."

  "Then what do you want?"

  "A gun. Bet's dead, you see."

  "You're going back out there?"

  "Bet's dead."

  "Yes. I keep two over there. In that desk."

  Sten turned around and walked to the desk. He never heard Mahoney's step or saw the meat-ax hand snapping down. Sten crashed forward, across the desk.

  Mahoney eased Sten around and gentled him into the chair. Then allowed himself a personal reaction. “Clot!” He brought himself back, and took a copy of the Articles from a drawer. He laid Sten's right hand on it.

  "I'm not knowing what religion you have. If any. But this'll do. Do you—whatever your name is—Sten it is. First name unknown. Swear to defend the Eternal Emperor and the Empire with your life—I know you do, boy. Do you solemnly swear to obey lawful orders given you, and to honor and follow the traditions of the Imperial Guard as the Empire requires? You do that, too. I welcome you, Sten, to the service of the Empire. You've not made a mistake, enlisting in the Guard. And it's a personal honor to me that you've chosen me own mother regiment, the Guard's First Assault."