by Chris Bunch
A temporary damage-control station, where an officer—Sten recognized the black-anodized suit arms that were used to denote command rank—was calmly ordering damage teams into action. Sten wondered if that was the drawling, unruffleable control officer he had been on the com with earlier.
And then he found the hatchway into the CIC, undogged the two hatches, and returned to command of the Swampscott.
Coms chattered at him, and specialists tried to keep the chaos in some sort of order:
"Forward Goblin launchers do not respond to inquiry. No verbal reports from stations."
"Secondary engine room reports damage now under control."
"All controls to forward laser station fail to respond."
There wasn't much left of the Swampscott to command. But still, filling a screen—and not a magnified view this time—was the bulk of the Forez. Lady Atago's flagship.
The battleship was vomiting fire, firing everything—anything—to stop the Swampscott.
There was an extremely unauthorized broadcast: “Ah hae y’ noo, lass."
The chortle came from the weapons station on the deck above. Then Kilgour launched two Vydals, one slaved to the missile under his control, and sent them surely homing into the Forez.
Fire fed on oxygen, and flame and explosion mushroomed down the corridors of the Forez. The explosion tore a wall chart from a bulkhead and sent it pinwheeling into Admiral Deska. His eviscerated corpse spun back into Lady Atago, smashing her helmet into a control panel.
She would not return to awareness until long after the battle ended. But command switched smoothly to the Forez's own CO. The battle continued.
The next strike was on the Swampscott.
It was deadly, crashing through the armor plating into the ship's main engine room before the weapons officer commanding it touched the det switch.
A hell of sudden fire filled the engine room and then disappeared.
Tapia had been swearing at the engine temperature gauges, praying that they were lying and knowing they were not, when the rocket exploded. A tiny bit of shrapnel cut through a superpressure hydraulicline. Hydraulic fluid razored out at more than 10,000 feet per second.
The fluid cut Tapia in half as neatly as a surgical saw.
The Swampscott went dead in space, still holding its original speed and course.
The two ships, the Forez and the Swampscott, slid toward each other. None of the Tahn warships could chance firing—the odds of a missile hitting the wrong target were too great.
The battleship loomed up toward the Swampscott.
And the cruiser's chaingunners found a target.
The chainguns that lined the two hideous midships bulges were useful only against ground troops or close-range in-atmosphere targets. But now, in deep space, the gunners had a target.
They held their firing keys down; their shells yammered toward the Forez and tore the battleship's sides open as if they were tinfoil.
Sten stood on his command deck wordlessly. There was nothing left for him to order.
Another explosion rocked the Swampscott, and Sten fought to stay on his feet.
A hatch slammed open, and Kilgour dropped down into the CIC. “Tha's nae left f'r me to do ae there,” he explained. “Shall we b’ boardin't th’ clot?” He still sounded unconcerned.
A larger blast shattered around them, and Sten was down, losing consciousness for bare seconds. He recovered groggily and got back to his feet. Where was his CIC officer?
Oh. There. Lying with a splinter of steel through his faceplate.
Sten numbly saw that there were still two screens alive in the CIC. One showed the fast-vanishing drives of the convoy, the other, the gutted hulk of the Forez, still vomiting fire at him.
Where was Alex? He might know what to do.
Sten stumbled over a suit. Kilgour lay sprawled at his feet. Sten bent and touched monitors. All showed zero.
Sten wove toward a still-functioning com panel. His gloved fingers found a switch, and he began broadcasting.
"Y ... Y ... Y..."
The universal signal for surrender.
And would they never stop? And would they never receive?
The Forez ceased fire.
Sten slumped down on the deck and waited for the Tahn boarding party. Maybe they wouldn't board.
Maybe they would just stand off and obliterate his ship.
And Sten did not care what they did.
He was very tired of the killing.
* * * *
THE END
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THE STEN COOKBOOK
Actually, this ought to be called “The Eternal Emperor's Cookbook,” because that's who started the whole business. A gourmet from way, way—way!—back, the Eternal Emperor cooked up at least one dish for nearly every episode of Sten. When he stopped cooking, of course, is when the drakh hit the clottin’ fan. Countless readers have written in about the recipes in “The Sten Series” that my wife. One in particular caught our attention. It came from a Coast Guard Lieutenant, who said that while at sea he always took his turn cooking dinner, even though he was the commander o the ship. He particularly loved cooking the dishes in the Sten novels. He said, |"The news guys must have thought the old man mad, to see him hovering over the galley, big spoon in one hand, a science fiction book in the other.” This inspired my wife, Kathryn, (the late Chris Bunch's sister) to sit down and put them the recipes together for easy reference.
So, read, cook, eat and enjoy!
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Recipe Index
STEN The Eternal Emperor's Chili
THE WOLF WORLDS—The Emperor's Salmon
THE COURT OF A THOUSAND SUNS—The Emperor's Angelo Stew.
FLEET OF THE DAMNED—The Emperor's Barbecue Sauce
REVENGE OF THE DAMNED—The Emperor's Nuked Hen
RETURNED OF THE EMPEROR—Raschid's Eggs of Pattipong
VORTEX—The Emperor's Bombay Birani
EMPIRE'S END—Sten's Ultimate Steak Sandwich, Marr and Senn's Dinner Party, Alex Kilgour's Beef Jerky
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STEN
The Eternal Emperor's Chili
The Emperor, Mahoney decided, had finally gone mad. He was hovering over a huge bubbling pot half filled with an evil-looking mixture, muttering to himself.
"A little of this. A little of that. A little garlic and a little fat. Now, the cumin. Just a touch. Maybe a bit more. No, lots more.” The Emperor finally noticed Mahoney and smiled. “You're just in time,” he said. “Gimme that box."
Mahoney handed him an elaborately carved wooden box. The Emperor opened it and poured out a handful of long reddish objects. They looked like desiccated alien excrement to Mahoney.
"Look at these,” he boasted to Mahoney, “Ten years in the biolabs to produce."
"What are they?"
"Peppers, you clot. Peppers."
"Oh, uh, great. Great."
"Don't you know what that means?"
Mahoney had to admit he didn't.
"Chili, man. Chili. You ain't got peppers, you got no chili."
"That's important, huh?"
The emperor didn't say another word. Just dumped in the peppers, punched a few buttons on his cooking console, then dipped up a huge spoonful of the mess and offered it to Mahoney. He watched intently as Mahoney tasted. Not ba—then it hit him. His face went on fire, his ears steamed and he choked for breath. The Emperor pounded him on the back, big grin on his face, and then offered him a glass of beer. Mahoney slugged it down. Wheezed.
"Guess I got it just right,” the Emperor said.
"You mean you did that on purpose?"
"Sure. It's supposed to scorch the hair off your butt. Otherwise it wouldn't be chili."
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THE WOLF WORLDS
The Emperor's Salmon
The Emperor was busy dressing the fish. He'd picked a handful of berries from a bush on the outski
rts of the clearing and a small clump of leaves from each of two bushes nearby.
"Juniper berries—they grow wild here; two local spices, basil and thyme, that I planted twenty years ago,” he explained. He rubbed berry juices on both sides of the split salmon, then crushed the leaves and did the same.
* * * *
"More fish, Colonel?"
Mahoney burn-cured a slight case of the hiccups with a shot from their second jar then shook his head.
After the birchwood fire'd burned down to coals, the Emperor had put the salmon on the sapling grill. He'd left it for a few minutes, then quickly splashed corn liquor on the skin-side and skillfully flipped the slabs of fish over. The fire flared and charred the skin, and then the Emperor had extracted the fish. Mahoney couldn't remember when he'd eaten anything better.
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THE COURT OF A THOUSAND SUNS
The Emperor's Angelo Stew
"What the clot is Angelo stew?"
"You don't need to know. Wouldn't eat it if you did. Cures cancer ... oh, we cured that before, didn't we ... Anyway ... Angelo stew's the ticket. Only thing I know will unfreeze our buttocks."
Sten watched as the Emperor worked. From what Sten could gather, the first act of what was to be Angelo stew consisted of thinly sliced chorizo—Mexican hard sausage, the Emperor explained. The sausage and a heaping handful of garlic were sautéed in Thai-pepper-marinated olive oil. Deliciously hot-spiced smells from the pan cut right through the Stregg fumes in Sten's nostrils.
The Emperor stopped his work and took a sip of Stregg. Smiled to himself, and tipped a small splash in with the chorizo. Then he went back to the task at hand, quartering four or five onions and seeding quarter slices of tomatoes.
He turned and pulled a half-kilo slab of bleeding red beef from a storage cooler and began chunking it up.
The Emperor shut off the flame under the sausage and garlic, started another pan going with more spiced oil, and tossed in a little sage, a little savory and thyme, and then palm-rolled some rosemary twigs and dropped those in on top. He stirred the mixture, considered a moment, then heaped in the tomato quarters and glazed them. He shut off the fire and turned back to Sten. He gave the young captain a long, thoughtful look and then began rolling the small chunks of beef into flour first, and then into a bowl of hot-pepper seeds.
He paused to turn the flame up under the sausage and garlic, then added the pepper-rolled beef as soon as the pan was hot enough. He stirred the beef around, waiting until it got a nice brown crust.
The Emperor finished the beef. He pulled out a large iron pan and dumped the whole mess into it. He also added the panful of onions and tomatoes. Then he threw in a palmful of superhot red peppers, a glug or three of rough red wine, many glugs of beef stock, a big clump of cilantro, clanked down the lid, and set the flame to high. As soon as it came to a boil, he would turn it down to simmer for a while.
* * * *
The stew was done now. The Emperor rose and ladled out two brimming bowlsful. Sten's mouth burst with saliva. He could smell a whole forest of cilantro. His eyes watered as the Emperor set the bowl in front of him. He waited as the man cut two enormous slices of fresh-baked sourdough bread and plunked them down along with a tub of newly churned white butter.
The Emperor spooned up a large portion of stew.
"Eat up, son. This stuff is great brain food. First your ears go on fire, then the gray stuff. Last one done's a grand admiral."
Sten swallowed. The Angelo stew savored his tongue, and gobbled down his throat to his stomach. A small nuclear flame bloomed, and his eyes teared and his nose wept and his ears turned bright red. The Stregg in his bloodstream fled before a horde of red-pepper molecules.
"Whaddya think?” the Eternal Emperor said.
"What if you don't have cancer?” Sten gasped.
"Keep eating, boy. If you don't have it now, you will soon."
The Emperor's Barbecue Sauce
The Emperor sniffed his simmering sauce: Mmmmm ... Perfect. It was a concoction whose beginnings were so foul-looking and smelling that Marr and Senn, his Imperial caterers, refused to attend. They took a holiday in some distant place every time he threw a barbecue.
The original creation was born in a ten-gallon pot. He always made it many days in advance. He said it was to give it time to breathe. Marr and Senn substituted “breed,” but the Emperor ignored that. The ten gallons of base sauce was used sort of like sourdough starter—All he had to do was to keep adding as many ingredients as there were beings to eat it.
He dipped a crust of hard bread into the sauce and nibbled. It was getting better.
The secret to the sauce was the scrap meat. It had taken the Emperor years to convince his butchers what he meant by scrap. He did not want slices off the finest fillet. He needed garbage beef, so close to spoiling that the fat was turning yellow and rancid. The fact that he rubbed it well with garlic, rosemary, and salt and pepper did not lessen the smell. “If you're feeling squeamish,” he always told Mahoney, “sniff the garlic on your hands."
The sauce meat was placed in ugly piles on racks that had been stanchioned over smoky fires—at this stage the recipe wanted little heat, but a great deal of smoke from hardwood chips. The Emperor liked hickory when he could get it. He constantly flipped the piles of meat so that the smoke flavor would penetrate. In this case, the chemistry of the near-spoiled scraps aided him: They were drying and porous and sucking at the air.
Then he—and his echoing waldoes—dumped the meat into the pot, filled it with water, and set it simmering with cloves of garlic and the following spices: three or more bay leaves, a cupped palm and a half of oregano, and a cupped palm of savory to counteract the bitterness of the oregano.
Then the sauce had to simmer a minimum of two hours, sometimes three, depending upon the amount of fat in the meat—the more fat, the longer the simmer.
While he was waiting for the meat to simmer to completion, he could drink many shots of Stregg and prepare the next part of the sauce at his leisure.
There were many possibilities, but the Emperor liked using ten or more large onions, garlic cloves—always use too much garlic—chili peppers, green peppers, more oregano and savory, and Worcestershire sauce.
He sautéed all that in clarified butter. Then he dumped the mixture into another pot and set it to bubbling with a dozen quartered tomatoes, a cup of tomato paste, four green peppers, and a two-fingered pinch of dry mustard.
A health glug or three of very dry red wine went into the pot. Then he added the finishing touch. He stirred in the smoky starter sauce that he had prepared in advance, raised the heat, and simmered ten minutes. The sauce was done.
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THE REVENGE OF THE DAMNED
The Emperor's Nuked Hen
The Emperor was preparing a dinner that he had promised Mahoney was perfectly suited to a war motif. He called it “nuked hen".
Using his fingers and the hollow of his palm as measuring spoons, he dumped the following ingredients into a bowl: a pinch of fresh cayenne, two fingers of ground salt, ground pepper, a palm of dried sage, and finely diced horseradish. He moved the bowl over to his big black range. Already sitting beside it was a bottle of vodka, fresh-squeezed lime juice, a half cup of capers, and a tub of butter.
The Emperor took a fat Cornish game hen out of a cold box and placed it on the metal table. He found a slim-bladed boning knife, tested the edge, and then nodded in satisfaction. He turned the hen over, back side up, and started his first cut alongside the spine.
He picked up his knife. “You might want to watch this, Ian,” he said. “Boning a hen is easy when you know how, but you can chop the clot out of it and yourself if you don't."
Very carefully, the Emperor cut on either side of the spine. He pushed a finger through the slit and pulled the bone up through the carcass. Next, he laid the hen flat, placed a hand on either side of the spine, and crunched down with his weight.
The Emperor moved over to his range and fired up a burner. “First, I'm going to burn the clot out of this hen,” the Emperor said, turning to his range. “The whole trick is getting your pan hot enough.” The Emperor turned the flame up as high as it would go and then slammed on a heavy cast-iron pan. In a few moments, the pan began to smoke, and fans in the duct above the range whirred on. A few moments more, and the pan stopped smoking.
"Check the air just above the fan,” the Emperor said. “It's getting wavery, right?"
"Right."
"As the pan gets hotter, the air will wave faster and faster until the whole interior is a steady haze.” The haze came right on schedule.
"So it's ready now?” Mahoney asked.
"Almost, but not quite. This is the place most people foul up. In a minute or two the haze will clear and the bottom of the pan should look like white ash."
As soon as the ashen look appeared, the Emperor motioned for Mahoney to duck back. Then he dipped out a big chunk of butter, dumped it into the pan, and moved out of the way. Mahoney could see why as flames flashed above the pan. As soon as they died down, the Emperor moved swiftly forward and poured the spices out of the bowl and into the pan. He gave the mixture a few stirs in one direction, then the other. Next he tossed in the Cornish game hen. A column of smoke steamed upward in a roar.
"I give it about five minutes each side,” the Emperor said. “Then I spread capers all over it and toss the hen into the oven for twenty minutes or so to finish it off."
The Emperor dumped the thoroughly blackened hen into a baking dish. On went the capers, and into the oven it went—at 350 degrees. He cranked the flames down on the range, shoved the pan of drippings back on the fire, and stirred in two Imperial glugs of vodka and a quarter glug of lime juice. He would use the mixture to glaze the hen when it came out of the oven.
"I sort of get the idea,” Mahoney said, “that you're in the process of heating up a pan for the Tahn."