by Chris Bunch
Lady Atago felt her cheeks redden, her hand move toward her personal weapon, and fought to keep herself under control.
"I am honored,” she managed, and was surprised that her voice was not shaking. “But if I am to command the diversionary attack—who then will take charge of my twelve fleets—correction, my twelve, and those additional elements the council has decided to add to the attack?"
"Since this is an all-out effort,” Lord Fehrle said, “I will have that honor. It is our decision that the attack should seamlessly represent the force of our Empire."
Lady Atago managed the formal bow to the Will of the Tahn, the formal salute to her replacement, Lord Fehrle, and then she broke.
Somehow she was out of the battle chamber and in her own quarters before she exploded into rage and words that even a Tahn dockwalloper would have admired.
She calmed.
She took out her personal weapon.
Yes, her honor was besmirched. But not, she realized, by her own doing. Injustice had been done. That was the way. Such things had happened. She had risen above many wrongs. Just as her race had. Beyond those was victory. Very well, she would accept orders. She would command that deception fleet. She would do more, far more, than any timeserver would have accomplished. And she would stand by, ready to assist.
Because she knew that her plan would work—even with the idiot modifications of Lord Fehrle. But after Durer was obliterated, as the combined Tahn fleets struck toward Prime, Lord Fehrle would discover just how hard it was to truly lead rather than merely replace the battle leader and become a last-minute figurehead.
For the final victory, she knew Fehrle would need her help.
And she planned to make him, pay most dearly for that, after the defeat of the Empire.
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CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
ONE-THIRD OF a meter to go. Sten could almost feel the cold blackness of the Tahn night just beyond the skim of earth on the other side of the tunnel. It pulled at him relentlessly, like an immense moon at the high tide of freedom. All he had to do was scrape away a little more dirt and he would be out. His long years as a Tahn prisoner would be over—leaving only his own survival to worry about.
He turned back, choking on the acrid air thick with fat-lamp smoke. It bit into his eyes, making them tear. He wiped the tears away with a sleeve and surveyed his troops, the men, women, and beings he had handpicked for the escape.
"Motley” was a distinct compliment. Some, like Cristata and his three converts, were dressed in the rough pale green and brown of Tahn peasants. Ibn Bakr had put all his sewing talents into his uniform and that of his partner, a tiny woman whose name Sten vaguely recalled as Alis. Bakr was dressed in what appeared to be the gutter of a full admiral. Alis's uniform was just slightly less so.
Actually, they were posing as the stationmaster of a grav-train and his assistant. They had identification and papers showing that they were on an inspection tour of all the main hub stations of Heath. Sten had laughed when Ibn Bakr had first shown him the sketches of what he and Alis would wear. He was instantly sorry when he saw Ibn Bakr's hangdog expression—there was nothing so mournful as a giant with his chops dragging on the ground. And then Ibn Bakr had explained about the Tahn love of uniforms and how the lowliest office tended to have some of the most glittering clothes.
"You should see the head garbage collector,” Ibn Bakr said.
Sten closed his eyes against the glare and decided that was something he would just as soon skip.
The other members of the escape team were dressed somewhere in between Cristata and Ibn Bakr, ranging from fanners to shopkeepers to grunts to medium-and low-level Tahn officers.
One other standout was St. Clair. She was dressed in boots and a camo cloth jumpsuit so form-fitting that Sten found himself waver between lust and dislike. She had a small matching bag slung over her shoulder. Tucked into it were a change of clothing and the superlightweight camping gear favored by wealthy Tahn sportsmen and women. What St. Clair was relying on was that twice a year a very rare and very tasty tuber appeared in the ground on Heath. The tubers were so prized that only the nobility and the very rich were permitted to gather them. So twice a year the sports world turned out to comb the forests and meadows of Heath for those tubers. The locations where they could be found were as jealously guarded as the trout streams the Eternal Emperor had restocked on Earth.
St. Clair was posing as one of those hunters. She was convinced she could go to ground with ease and wait for just the right opportunity to get off Heath. Sten was not too sure. Still, he had turned down St. Clair's bet—even though the odds she offered were fairly juicy.
Sten observed it all in semisilence, waiting for the lay reader and his followers to finish their prayers for “the Great One” to look with favor on their efforts. The only words Sten could make out were the “ahhhmens” sighed by the three each time Cristata paused. Finally he finished and waddled over to Sten, plucking at die dirt clogging his fur. Every centimeter of his squat form was purposeful and somber. Only the sensitive tendrils ringing his nose squirmed with what Sten was sure was excitement.
"The spirit of the Great One is with us,” Cristata said. “He told us it was nearly time to go."
Sten buried any sarcastic remarks that came to mind. After many thousands of tons of digging and shoring, who was he to criticize another being's beliefs? Besides, maybe it was some kind of “Great One” who had given Sten a nutball like Cristata in the first place. Would he have ever found the cellars that honeycomb Koldyeze otherwise? As far as Sten was concerned, it the Great One wanted the credit, he could clottin’ have it.
So, instead, Sten grinned a weak grin and said, “Fine. Uh ... Next time you talk ... uh, tell him, or it, or whatever, I said thanks."
Cristata took no offense at all. He understood that Sten meant none.
There was a rumbling sound from the far end, and everyone pressed up against either side of the tunnel as Alex came around a corner hauling an enormous load of supplies on three trained-together carts, the same carts that had been used to move rubble back from the tunnel's face. The heavy-worlder moved with ease, as if he were pulling a few tots in a wagon. When a wooden wheel stuck in a rut, he simply lifted the front end of the train up and shifted it to an easier path. He was hauling at least a ton and a half of gear.
"Thae be the last of it, Horrie, lad,” he said, stepping away as a few of the others began unloading his cargo and stacking the supplies at one point of the hollowed-out eye that was the tunnel's face. He glanced around at the faces in the small crowd, nodding pleasantly—a man without a nervous bone in his body. Then he casually moved over to Sten and leaned close to whisper.
"Ah dinnae like this, lad,” he said. “Thae all appear dead't’ me. Noo, ae we could only teach a few Mantis tricks ... Aye. Thae they'd hae a hope."
Sten shook his head. “This dress rehearsal went as smooth as anyone could want,” he said. “And as for teaching them any tricks ... All they'd do is learn enough to be confident amateurs. Clot! Might as well kill them all right there, save the Tahn the pleasure."
"Still, lad. Ah'd feel bonnier ae they kenned a few more wee tricks ae th’ craft."
"Believe me, Alex,” Sten said. “They're better off this way. It's sort of like a style of fighting I read about. A few thousand years ago, they used to pile troops into these big clumsy aircraft. They'd load ‘em down with maybe fifty kilos of gear, strap this big silk bag around them, and kick ‘em out the door when they were maybe two three klicks up."
Alex looked at Sten in shocked disbelief. “Th’ puir wee lads. Musta had Campbells f'r officers. Atrocity committin’ Huns! Pushin't boys oot't’ squash ‘em ae thae be't bloody bugs."
"Weellll ... That wasn't their intention. See, the silk bags were supposed to open, and the soldiers were supposed to float gently to the ground.
"Anyway, they used to train these airborne troopers for the jumps. Some of the toughest trainin
g of that era."
"Ah should hope so,” Alex said, still a little shocked.
"Funny thing is,” Sten pressed on, “when the drakh really hit the fan, sometimes they used to just grab any old grunt, put a sack on him, and toss him out just like the fully trained types. And you know what? There was no difference in the casualty rate. Just as many trained troopies ate it as the grunts who were still wet behind the ears."
"Ah dinnae believe it,” Alex said.
Sten surveyed the nervous beings jammed into the tunnel and thought about what terrible things surely awaited them once they crawled out of the safety of Koldyeze.
"I want to,” he said. “They go out in two nights."
* * * *
Virunga put the word out during the morning mess. He wanted to see Sten. Urgently. Sten moved casually across the crowded central yard, weaving his way through small garden plots and exercising prisoners. He stopped here and there to chat, to laugh at the right moments, and to scowl and shake his head in disbelief at others.
It was an elaborate and constantly changing ritual he had to perform, else a Tahn stoolie might start taking note of how often a lowly firecontrolman visited the camp CO.
All the while, his mind churned with possibilities. Some news of how the war was going? Badly for the Tahn, he hoped. With a great stretch of luck, Virunga might be calling him in to report the greatest success in Koldyeze so far. Maybe, just maybe, they had managed to plant what Alex called “the Golden Worm."
They had spent an enormous amount of time and effort figuring out a way to suborn a petty bureaucrat named Fahstr. She was the middle-aged chief clerk in charge of pay vouchers. Every Tahn feared her. Even Derzhin, the camp commandant, walked softly around her. At the slightest insult, a pay voucher could be lost forever. And it would take another three small forevers to get it back. What was worse, if she felt particularly nasty, she would misinterpret the coding, and a Tahn victim might find himself docked a whopping chunk for back taxes—whether he owed any or not.
The problem was that Fahstr was seemingly incorruptible. No matter how hard they leaned on N'chlos and their other tame guards, they could not find a single weakness. The woman was fat—but did not particularly favor any type of food. She was obviously sexless, which Alex had remarked was a good thing, because he did not want to be the man who asked for volunteers. She seemed to revel in living a Spartan life, so money was out. How to get to her? It was important, because Fahstr was the key to planting the Golden Worm.
St. Clair stumbled onto the answer. She had gotten herself assigned to a janitorial shift at the payroll office, figuring that a woman of her experience certainly ought to be able to spot another's weaknesses. If nothing else, she might be able to scrounge a few cleaning fluids that might be put to more interesting use.
St. Clair had bumped around the office for half a day before she saw it. As the other clerks kept their eyes glued to their duties, afraid even to lift their heads and be seen not working, Fahstr had spent the entire morning enjoying herself.
It was an emotion that was difficult to recognize right off. Because to Fahstr, enjoyment seemed to be slamming away at her computer board and gritting out a long string of obscenities that almost made St. Clair blush, interspersed with occasional screams of what seemed to be victory. St. Clair finally sidled over to the computer to see what was going on. A bewildering stream of figures swirled on the screen, then firmed. Shouts of disgust came from Fahstr to be followed by more hammering at the keyboard. More figures. More cursing. Then it slowly dawned on St. Clair. The figures on the screen were algorithms. There was a game going on. And the game was bridge.
St. Clair had not just found a weakness. She had found a gaping wound.
"Typical bridge freak,” she had told Sten later. “Including her charming disposition. There isn't a thing in this universe the woman cares for except bridge. She hates people. But to enjoy bridge, you gotta have people."
"She's got her computer,” Sten said. “It can give her any kind of game she wants. At any level."
"You sure aren't a cardplayer,” St. Clair had said. “To enjoy cards you have to see your opponent squirm. Especially bridge-type cardplayers. You can't see blood when you beat the bejesus out of a computer."
"So you hinted broadly that you might know something about this—uh, what was it called?"
"Bridge. And as for hinting broadly, clot that. I told her right off that I had been watching her. Couldn't help myself, I said."
"And she didn't get ticked? I would have figured she'd have cut you off at the knees for even daring to talk to her."
"No way,” St. Clair said. “Bridge players can't help themselves. She understood right off. Especially when I told her I was fleet champ."
"Fleet what? Of what? There's no such thing!"
"So? She doesn't know that. Or care. Especially since I allowed that although she might be good, I could wipe the ground with her."
Grudgingly, Sten had to admire that. From what he could gather, there was no way the type of fanatic St. Clair was describing could turn down such a challenge.
"Okay, you get tight with her. Win a few games. Lose a few to keep her interested. Then you find out what it takes to get her over on our side."
"Don't need to.” St. Clair sniffed! “We're programming the computer to partner up with each of us. I got complete access to that thing any time you want."
Sten had instantly put Kraulshavn and Sorensen to work on the Golden Worm. They had completed it a week before and, with St. Clair's expertise, had coded it into a cutthroat north-south pair of hands.
All St. Clair had been waiting for was the chance to plant it. The problem was that time was running out. She was going out the next night. If she did not succeed in planting it immediately, they would have to start all over again. But after the escape, the bloody reprisals might make the whole thing pointless. Because the Golden Worm was their only hope to keep the Tahn from cutting all their throats.
Sten walked into Virunga's cell. There was only the old man to greet him. From the dark, solemn look on his face, Sten knew mere was something very wrong. He assumed it had to do with failure. And that failure involved the Golden Worm.
"They caught her,” he said flatly, meaning St. Clair.
"No,” Virunga said. “She ... was successful. But ... there is another ... matter."
Sten decided to quit guessing and let Virunga tell it.
"As you know ... St. Clair has complete ... access. To the computer."
Sten nodded. Fahstr pretty much let St. Clair noodle at will on the Tahn computer in her spare time. To have an opponent of any worth, St. Clair needed time to toy with new bridge strategies. But that had not seemed important to Sten.
The only records in there were the mundane details of Koldyeze life: Tahn payroll and personnel and the basic files of the prisoner. Sten could see little value in snooping and pooping in that area.
"St. Clair has ... noticed something,” Virunga said, interrupting Sten's thoughts.
He went on to explain: As St. Clair logged in and out of the computer, using Fahstr's code name, she had become familiar with the other people who used the same system and with how frequently they used it. Then another code name had popped up recently. It not only did not seem to belong to anyone in the camp, it was searching through the records with a regular one-plus-one-plus-one pattern that was slower than clot but guaranteed not to miss a single detail.
St. Clair had become curious about who that person was and what he or she was looking for.
"And did she find out?” Sten finally asked.
"Not the ... seeker,” Virunga said. “Only what was ... sought."
"Okay. So what was the person looking for?"
"You,” Virunga said.
That rocked Sten back. “But how..."
Virunga told him the rest of it. The unknown person was searching the records for someone matching Sten's description. It was a methodical search designed to see through any di
sguise or assumed identity. It was only a matter of time before Sten's file popped up.
Virunga assumed—with very good reason—that whoever was looking for Sten did not plan on throwing his or her arms around him and greeting him with a shower of gifts and kisses.
Bottom line:
"You ... and Kilgour must ... go!"
There was no argument from Sten. He and Alex would go out with the others. All he had to do was get his escape team together one last time and fill them in on what he hoped was the final hitch in their plans.
* * * *
The news was greeted with silence by the others. They took a quick look into the roles they were supposed to play, checked to see how Alex and Sten would affect them, saw there was no problem, and just shrugged. The more, the merrier.
Then St. Clair stood up and announced there would be one other change in plans. She was no longer going out solo. She was taking L'n with her.
"That's the stupidest idea I ever heard of,” Sten blurted before Alex could dig an elbow into his ribs and suggest a more diplomatic way of dealing with St. Clair. Later on, Alex explained that Sten should have hesitated first—then told the woman she was around the bend.
"Just the same,” St. Clair responded. “That's the way it's going to be."
Before Sten could do something so foolish as try to forbid St. Clair, she played her ace.
"Don't bother trying to stop me. We're both going out tomorrow night—one way or another. Through the tunnel with the rest of you. Or under the wire."
Sten had no choice but to give in. If St. Clair did another cowboy run, she would blow whatever chance the tunnelers had—and Sten was pretty sure that nothing he could come up with short of murder would stop her. But he always wondered why St. Clair had decided on that course of action. As far as he was concerned, it was way out of character—because with L'n along, St. Clair would certainly get caught. He wondered what St. Clair thought she would get out of it—because personal gain could be her only reason.