Revenge of the Damned

by Chris Bunch

  Sten was glooming over evening rations in their cell and was very glad to hear the shuffle at the door that interrupted him. He was not so glad when he turned and saw who it was.

  Lay Reader Cristata crouched in the doorway.

  Cristata, since that initial formation, had not become any less of a pain in the fundament. At every formation he insisted he was a civilian and did not belong in the prison, and at every formation he had to be plopped into place. He refused any work detail; any task assigned by a uniformed person was assisting the war effort. Naturally, he refused to salute any Tahn guard as required. So far he had not ended up in isolation, but sooner or later ... Not that Cristata was disliked. The squat being was the first to volunteer to mess-cook. He set up the ludicrous assemblage of medical gear available as a dispensary. He had no objection to latrine cleaning whatsoever. Any sick prisoner would have Cristata hovering over him or her night and day.

  Sten wondered what he wanted. Probably he had just discovered their rations were issued in uniformpacks and felt that was military. But why was he not ruining Colonel Virunga's meal?

  "Yes?"

  "May I enter?"Sten waved him in. Cristata closed the door behind him.

  "I understand you are the individual in charge"—Cristata shuddered a bit—"of the escape attempts."

  Sten mumbled neutrally. Could Cristata be a Tahn agent? Not a chance.

  "My beings have decided that I should be the one to reserve an area."

  "You want to escape?"

  "Why not? How else can I remove myself from this abhorrence of uniforms and regulations? There are four of us who plan to depart this place of testing for freedom."

  "How?"

  "We are constructing a tunnel."

  "A tunnel?” Sten looked at Cristata's slender, delicate fingers.

  Cristata caught his glance. He extended the armor gauntlet of his wrist, and muscles bulged—very hefty muscles, Sten noted. The fingers retracted, and thick claws slid out.

  "In my necessities in dealing with the material world,” Cristata said, “I function as a mining engineer."

  Sten grinned. “The Tahn don't know that, of course,"

  "I thought, since they forced me to obey their ludicrous orders, there was little sin in not disclosing my mammon-profession and the excavating implements the Great One gave my race."

  "Where are you planning to go out?"

  "We have removed a section of paving from the ground level of the east wing. We plan to dig directly out from there."

  Sten mentally pictured Koldyeze. “That is going to be a very long tunnel. That's just about the farthest point from the cliff edge."

  "That is also our observation. We estimate, and have prayed for guidance to be correct, the location gives us a place unlikely to be examined too closely."

  "How long until you go?"

  "Soon, I think. The digging has been easy, and since we are tunneling under the foundation of the cathedral most of the way, not much shoring has been necessary. At the moment I estimate we are nearing the inner wall."

  Sten was jolted. The progress was incredible. “Clotting great!"

  "I wish you would not use obscenities in my presence."

  "Right. Sorry. What support do you need?"

  "None."

  "None? Assuming that you get out, what comes next? You aren't exactly—no offense—a look-alike for any Tahn I've seen."

  "We shall proceed directly into open country. There we propose to dig a shelter and slowly make the fanners of the area aware of our presence."

  "What makes you think they won't dump you for the reward?"

  "You must have faith,” Cristata said. “Now ... may I return to my dedications? We have four new sick ones in the bay."

  "Sure. Let us know if you'll need a diversion or anything."

  "I doubt it."

  "Oh. Yeah. May your, uh, Great One be with you."

  "He is."

  And Cristata ambled out.

  * * * *

  Platoon Sergeant Ibn Bakr was perfect, Kilgour thought, especially considering the still-underfed state of the prisoners. He marveled at the infantryman's bulk and repressed the urge to check the man's teeth as if he were buying a Percheron or to look at his pads to make sure he could support the full weight of a howdah. Ibn Bakr could, Alex thought, have fit into any combat livie as the ultimate hero/crunchie, or maybe the hero's first sergeant.

  "Mr. Kilgour,” the bulk said.

  Clottin’ hell. H’ can e'en talk.

  "I want to volunteer for the committee."

  The word “escape,” of course, was never spoken by anyone unnecessarily under threat of bashing.

  "An’ we accept, lad,” Alex said heartily. He had fond dreams of maybe finding three more like the sergeant, and they would just rip the old pinnacle off the cathedral and use it as a battering ram through the gates. All the gates. “We'll be needin't a braw tank like you. Digging ... carrying ... holding up the world."

  "Umm ... Mr. Kilgour, that wasn't what I wanted to do."

  Alex's dreams wisped away. “Aye?"

  "I assume,” Ibn Bakr went on, “that we'll be altering uniforms to look like civvies, screwsuits and that, right?"

  "You want to be a clottin’ seamstress!"

  "Is there something wrong with that?” The ham that hung at the end of Ibn Bakr's arm knotted into a fist.

  Kilgour, deciding the sergeant might be a handful even for a heavy-worlder like himself, regrouped. “Nae a’ all, nae a’ all."

  "I can do needlepoint, knitting, crewel, petit point, cross-stitch, featherwork, lace, Carrickmacross, quillwork, broidery anglaise—"

  "Tha'll do, Sergeant. Ah'm appalled—tha's nae th’ word—o'erwhelmed ae thae talents. Be standin't bye, an’ we'll hae materials f'r ye in a wee bit."

  The sergeant saluted and left.

  Kilgour stared after him and sighed mightily.

  * * * *

  The evening formation stunned the Imperial prisoners. They had assembled at the siren blast, counted, and stood warily, staring at a five-meter-high stack of plas crates nearby and wondering what new Tahn screwing the crates presaged.

  Camp Commandant Derzhin had taken the count from Colonel Virunga and said he had an announcement. It was short and shocking.

  "Prisoners, the Tahn find your work to be acceptable."

  Clot, Sten thought. We'd better step up the sabotage program.

  "As a reward, I have authorized the issuance of your Prisoner's Aid parcels. That is all. Colonel Virunga, take charge of your men."

  Virunga saluted like a being in a trance.

  The prisoners were equally amazed.

  "I din’ know there was parcels,” somebody muttered ungrammatically.

  Sten knew what they were; in the three-plus years of captivity, a softhearted camp officer—who had been quickly shipped off to a combat unit—had issued the boxes once.

  Prisoner's Aid was a neutral society, overseen by the ostensibly neutral Manabi and intended to give POWs on both sides some rights, some method of appeal, and most importantly support. The Tahn ignored the first two goals of the society but encouraged the latter. Each parcel contained supplementary rations, vitamins, minerals, and replacement clothing for ten prisoners. Sten wondered if the kindly little old ladies—that was how he pictured them—ever realized that those scarves, gloves, and tidbits in the parcels almost never reached the prisoners they were meant for. If the parcels were not sidetracked by the Tahn supply system itself, the prisoner guards would ensure that the prisoners never saw them. The one parcel that Sten had seen had been most thoroughly picked through long before it was sent into the gates.

  "Food,” someone whispered.

  The formation swayed forward a little.

  Virunga blinked back to awareness only seconds before his military formation turned into a food riot.

  "Formation! Ten-hut!"

  Military discipline took over—at least for a moment.

  "Three volunteer
s ... break down ... parcels. Cristata ... Kilgour ... Horatio!"

  Lay Reader Cristata muttered but evidently decided that task was allowable and waddled forward, Sten and Alex behind him.

  "Sir,” Sten said. “Request that—"

  Virunga interrupted him. “Quite right ... forgot ... task. One more being! Sarn't Major Isby!"

  The supply specialist swung out on his crutches toward Virunga. In an age when few injuries were permanent, Isby was a man with only one leg. That he had lost it through medical inattention was one atrocity to be chalked up to the Tahn. But it could be explained away as an excusable oversight during wartime. There could be no explanation for not providing him with a new one. The only war crime trials the Tahn were counting on would be overseen by them.

  "Rest ... dismissed! Distribute parcels ... two hours."

  The formation broke up, but none of the prisoners left the courtyard. They intended to watch—very closely—just how the parcels were divided. At least all three of the “volunteers” were trusted by the prisoners—more or less.

  Sten glanced at Alex, who nodded. Alex would take Colonel Virunga aside and give him a very interesting piece of information that had been learned during his and Sten's pre-Tahn War Mantis training.

  If that bit of information still applied, those Prisoner's Aid parcels might prove very useful.

  Sten, thinking hopeful thoughts about the continuity of sneakiness, saluted Virunga and hurried away. He did indeed have another task.

  * * * *

  The two guards snarled at Sten. He kept well back. They unlocked the cell door and snarled once more. A moment later St. Clair walked out, squinting at the light—walked, not tottered or stumbled. During the month of isolation, her bruises had mostly healed. She was even skinnier than before—half rationpaks and water had done that—but, Sten noted, must have maintained some kind of exercise regimen in the cramped isolation cell.

  "Next time,” the Tahn said, “it'll be worse."

  "There won't be a next time,” St. Clair said. The guard pushed her away, down the corridor, and banged the cell door closed.

  St. Clair stopped in front of Sten. “My welcoming committee."

  "Call it that,” Sten said.

  "What's been happening in the big wide world?"

  "Not much worth talking about."

  "So the war's still not over. And by the way, why aren't you calling me by my rank, Firecontrolman."

  "Sorry. Captain."

  "Forget it. I'm just up to here with clottin’ screws. Thanks for the welcome. Now I want to see if the ‘freshers are on yet."

  They were in a deserted section of the corridor.

  "We have something to talk about first,” Sten said.

  "GA."

  "You tried to get out solo. A real cowboy move."

  "So?"

  "No more. Any escape attempt's gotta be registered and approved by the committee."

  "Not mine,” St. Clair said. “Committees screw things up. Committees start war. I like my own company."

  "This isn't a debate, Captain. It's an order."

  St. Clair leaned back against the wall. “You're Big X?"

  "You have it."

  "Nice meeting you. But as I said—"

  "Listen to me, Captain. Read my lips. I don't give a damn if you want to try a single run. Anybody who's got any way out of this coffin has my blessings. But I am going to know about it and approve it—before you go."

  St. Clair allowed herself six deep breaths before she said anything. She smiled. “Again, my apologies. I'll follow orders. Of course. Whatever you and your committee want."

  "Cute, Captain St. Clair. And I think you're blowing smoke at me. Those are my orders. You will follow them!"

  "And if I don't?"

  Sten spoke very quietly. “Then I'll kill you."

  St. Clair's face was impassive.

  "One more thing, Captain. Just to keep you out of trouble, I'm appointing you my chief scrounger."

  "Scrounger? I'm not familiar—"

  "Thief."

  St. Clair bristled. “I am a gambler. Not a clotting burglar!"

  "I don't see the difference."

  Again St. Clair buried her anger. “Is there anything else, Firecontrolman?"

  "Not right now."

  "Then you're dismissed!"

  Sten came to attention and saluted her.

  St. Clair waited until Sten had rounded a corner, then gave herself the luxury of a silent snarl of rage. Then her face pokered, and she started looking for her long-overdue shower.

  * * * *

  Outside in the courtyard, the distribution of the Prisoner's Aid parcels was under way. Sten noticed that as each crate was opened Alex would remove one or maybe two packs and set them unobtrusively aside. Good. Then he saw, leaning against one of the half-ruined columns, what had to be the Empire's oldest warrant officer. The man looked like the grandfather Sten had never known. He was holding a small pack of what Sten guessed were biscuits and an equally tiny pack of fruit spread. Part of his share from the parcels. The man was crying.

  Sten shuddered.

  It was time they all went home.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  BIG X WAS flexing his muscles.

  Through his cutouts, Sten had deployed the surveyors. The surveyors were reluctant prisoners who were given improvised metric rules and told to measure everything and anything. Sten was trying to find out what he had to work with and work from. Since there were no plans that he could find or steal for Koldyeze, he would make his own.

  The details reported back. A hallway measured so many meters wide, long, and tall. The rooms branching off that hallway measured B meters wide, long, and tall. The wing itself measured C meters wide, long, and tall. And none of the figures matched in Sten's mind. He wished desperately that Alex and his team could move a little faster on the computer. What the clot! Probably wouldn't work, anyway.

  Sten tossed aside the bits of paper he had been figuring on. Later for that drakh. In the meantime, which meant on the morrow, he was on a work detail.

  The work detail was commanded by someone who seemed to be the first of the Tahn quislings.

  * * * *

  Chief Warrant Officer Rinaldi Hernandes seemed to call everyone “my friend"—except the Tahn guards, whom he referred to, with a completely obsequious bow, as “honorable sirs."

  "My friends,” he cajoled. “Come, now. Lift together. We can do this."

  "Doing this” was muscling a huge generator that should have had a McLean sled to raise it up a ramp into a cargo ship.

  "You aren't trying, my friends,” he said. “I am disappointed that I shall have to report you to our commandant when we return. Remember, we are being given a fair day's ration, and we should be prepared to deliver a fair day's work."

  Sten grunted, along with twenty others, and slowly the generator groaned up the ramp into place. He, like the others on the work crew, hated Hernandes. Suddenly Sten realized that in spite of the constant threat, no one assigned to Mr. Hernandes's work crews had ever been reported for anything.

  Interesting.

  The generator loaded, the prisoners sagged in exhaustion. Hernandes walked among them, patting, joking, and ignoring the muttered obscenities he heard.

  "That wasn't bad, my friends. Come on. The shift's barely begun. Come on. We've got to show our honorable masters we're as good as they are."

  The prisoners groaned to their feet. The next task was simpler: loading crates into another offbound ship.

  Sten realized he was spending less time watching Hernandes than watching Heath's spaceport. Which ship could be stowed away on? Which ship was outbound for where? What were the security measures taken once a ship was loaded?

  He humped a crate up a laddered ramp. Hernandes was standing at the ship's cargo door in his typically baggy oversized coveralls.

  "Hi-diddle-diddle,” the officer chanted. “Right up the middle, friend.
We've got to get this ship loaded and offworld."

  Definitely, Sten thought, a traitor. But isn't he a little obvious to be an agent?

  "There are troops freezing on an arctic world,” Hernandes went on. “We've got to make sure they have what they need."

  Sten glowered at the warrant officer and continued on, part of the antlike procession, into the ship's hold, where he dumped the crate he was carrying. And then he stared at the loading slip on its side: Uniforms, tropical, working dress.

  He quickly scanned some slips on other crates: Recreational equipment, E-normal environment (low-caloric); Rations, beasts of burden (not for Tahn Consumption); Livies, medical, educational, avoidance of social diseases; Livies, counselatory, what to do when your mate leaves; Spores, seedable, rock garden, for issue to general officers and above.

  That should have had an interesting effect on any Tahn crunchie—on whatever frozen world the ship was bound for—who had to unload or consume any of the crates.

  As he made his way back toward the ramp, Sten looked at Mr. Hernandes a bit differently. To make sure, he bumped against him. Mr. Hernandes's coveralls clanked.

  "Careful of what you're doing, my friend,” the grandfatherly warrant officer cautioned.

  "See me tonight,” Sten ordered in a low voice.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Big X,” Sten said. What the clot. If he was blown, he was now thoroughly blown.

  * * * *

  He was not.

  In case Hernandes was wired, Sten had him strip searched and then, finding he was clean, took him for a long and aimless walk down one of the wing's corridors.

  Rinaldi Hernandes was a building tradesman, a general contractor who had been a master plumber, carpenter, plas-man, ceramic specialist, and so forth, who had joined the service at the beginning of the conflict. He had been assigned to the Imperial construction units—for once the grinding bureaucracy that was the military had put a square peg into a square hole.

  Hernandes desperately hated the Tahn. His only grandchild had been killed at the beginning of the war. Then Hernandes himself had been captured. He had survived and, during the years of his captivity, resisted—resisted in ways that would keep him alive until the time came when he had a weapon in his hands and could kill.