Revenge of the Damned

by Chris Bunch

  Those they received.

  Both of them expected promotions—and had theorized on the long run back whether they would be kicked up one or more grades.

  Those they did not receive—yet.

  Their orders were quite similar:

  * * * *

  STEN (NI) (WITHHELD) Ordered to (WITHHELD) following (WITHHELD) leave time, authorized travel to (WITHHELD). Upon return to duty, you will report to (WITHHELD) for further orders. Conditions of reporting for further duty will be communicated to you by (WITHHELD) date.

  KILGOUR, ALEX (WITHHELD) Ordered to (WITHHELD) following (WITHHELD) leave time, authorized travel to planet of EDINBURGH and other systems as desired. Upon return to duty, you will report to (WITHHELD) for further orders. Conditions of reporting for further duty will be communicated to you by (WITHHELD) date.

  * * * *

  Sten and Alex looked at each other. Somebody up there had plans for their future. Probability: unpleasant. But there was little that could be done about it short of deserting. And both of them had spent enough time on the run.

  The second step was to collect their back pay, which would amount to a small fortune.

  One of the few productive pastimes the Tahn POWs had was figuring out how much money they were due and how they would spend it.

  The Empire paid its military somewhat differently than governments of the past. A soldier's paycheck was either given to him in cash on pay period or banked in a civilian bank and allowed to draw whatever interest or noninterest it paid, bank to be determined by individual.

  That was not done because of any particular kindness the Emperor felt toward each grunt. There were three very simple reasons that, one drunken evening eons before, the emperor had outlined for Mahoney:

  Number one—This is a capitalist Empire. I think. Therefore, money in circulation is healthier than money sitting in anybody's vault.

  Number two—I understand a lot of things. I can sketch you out, if you're interested, the mathematical correlation of the nine basic forces of the universe. I don't understand economics, and nobody else does, either. Therefore, I ain't gonna get involved.

  And now, for the all-important Number Three—Banks what get my troopies’ money are very, very rational people. Which means they do what I clottin’ tell them, when I tell them, or else suddenly they're on the “Not Recommended For Military Deposit” list.

  * * * *

  And so, when Sten and Alex paraded into the Prime World bank that for years had been favored, for some lost reason, by Mercury Corps and Mantis Section operatives, they expected to be greeted politely, as if they were stockholders.

  They did not expect to be ushered into the office of the bank president and informed they were now majority stockholders. And if it would please the gentlemen, now that they were ... ahem, available, would they be interested in advising the current members of the board on future investment possibilities?

  Sten gurgled.

  Kilgour, however, rose to the occasion. He reached for a cheroot—real tobacco, it would appear—from a humidor, struck it on the president's desk, leaving scars across what looked like real wood, and inhaled. He managed to bury the subsequent coughing spasm and called for a printout on both of their accounts.

  They were not just well-to-do.

  They were rich.

  Both of them had significant holdings in the most formidable corporations of the Empire. Plus a percentage in exotic metals. Plus a percentage in war bonds. Plus...

  Sten goggled at about page thirty-six of the printout. He was most grateful that the bank president had excused himself.

  "Uh ... Kilgour. I own a world."

  Kilgour was equally bemused. “Ah nae hae thae ... but it appears Ah'll hae the richest estate ae Edinburgh. Ah can afford to r'store th’ family castle."

  "You have a castle?"

  "Now Ah do."

  And both of them understood, just as the fawning banker returned with the contents of a certain safety deposit box, which, he said, was to be given to them personally and privately. Again, he withdrew.

  They opened the box, found a fiche, and booted it up.

  Gypsy Ida's less than conventionally lovely face appeared onscreen.

  Ida was a former member of Sten and Alex's Mantis Team. She was a hustler, an investor, and one of the best pilots Sten had ever flown beside.

  She had disappeared from the service years before but as she was leaving she had somehow tapped into her ex-teammates’ bank accounts and invested, invested, invested—leaving them most comfortable.

  The sound cut on: “Y'r clots, you know. Howinhell'd you two ever manage to get captured? Kilgour, you're as dumb as you are fat. Sten, why'd you listen to the clot?

  "Anyway.

  "I accessed your credits when I heard you were missing. Knew there weren't any Tahn smart enough to waste you on sight, and figured that you'd live.

  "Hope now that you're listening to this and it ain't your heirs and assignees and the war's over.

  "I started filtering all those credits you had sitting there and took care of you two clots.

  "Near as I can figure, there ain't nothing that can go wrong, unless maybe the Emperor surrendered—an’ by the way, you got holdings in the Tahn worlds if that happened—that can keep you from being richrich.

  "Reason I'm putting this on fiche, instead of bein’ there when you see how good care I took care of you, is ... aw, drakh, I went and listened to somebody, and, well, they want me to go do something out there somewhere.

  "So that's the way it is.

  "I guess ‘cause I'm dumb I miss the old days."

  Ida's image fell silent, and Sten was appalled to see what looked like a tear well up in her eye. Fortunately the image lasted only for a moment, as suddenly the Rom stood, turned, and hoisted her skirt. What looked like two oversize loafs of bread—pan point of view—went onscreen.

  And the screen blanked.

  "Th’ lass still dinnae wear knickers,” Alex managed.

  Somehow they made the correct noises to the banker and, each clutching a full briefcase that proved, with full details, that he was richrich, went for the closest bar.

  A day or so later, after sobering up, they made the correct noises at each other. Sorry to split up, mate, but that's the way the service works. Hell, it's a small world. Maybe we'll get lucky again and get paired.

  Sten drank Kilgour aboard the ship headed for the world of Edinburgh and contemplated.

  First he wanted a quiet place to figure out where he was going to spend his leave—whatever amount that WITHHELD figure was giving him before something else happened.

  Not to mention that planet that he appeared to own. Planet? he thought. Nobody owns a planet. That's disgusting. But maybe he did. If so, he would like to see what his real estate looked like. Preferably with a friend.

  He headed for a com and called the police.

  Specifically, he called Prime World Homicide and asked for a Lisa Haines. Years earlier, she and Sten had been quite seriously in love before Sten had been reassigned into the maze that took him into the Tahn War and captivity. He sort of hoped, just maybe, she was still solo and remembered him. The copshop advised that yes, a Lisa Haines was still a police person. And that they would accept a message for her. But she was unfortunately not available at the moment.

  "When do you expect her?"

  "That information is not available,” the synthesized voice began, and then suddenly the screen blanked, and a second, human voice came on. A very polite one.

  "This is Message Center. You were trying to contact Captain Lisa Haines. We are prepared to relay a message ... however, please stand by. We are experiencing difficulties receiving you. Do not break the transmission. An operator will be with you in moments when the signal is corrected."

  Sten, out of sheer habit and training, never stood inside camera range of any com. He was therefore unseen when the red receiving light glowed on. Shortly thereafter, he was some meters away, appear
ing to be in the middle of a bargaining session with a shopkeeper when two heavyset men with close-cropped hair thundered toward the com booth.

  Security thugs, he made them for. He paid for whatever it was he was bargaining for and slipped into the crowd.

  Lisa had been caught up in the war. Obviously she was somewhere in the bowels of Intelligence. Message Center, indeed. Sten grimaced. It looked as if he were about to spend a solitary leave, at least until he ran across some local talent. Speaking of which, he headed for a library to find out if his real estate included local talent.

  * * * *

  It did not—or so, at least, the various star riches he consulted suggested.

  The world's name was Smallbridge. About .87 E-size, commensurate gravity, E-normal atmosphere, three AU from a dying yellow star. Climate tropical to subarctic. Flora/Fauna...

  The slender report from the Imperial Survey Mission that said that there was nothing particularly interesting about the world of Smallbridge—then called Survey World XM-Y-1134 and many other numerals and letters—other than extensive members of the Orchidae family, giant specimens of Polyodiosida ... blur ... blur ... insect life ... blur ... blur ... nonmalevolent ... water potable, with following blur blur presences ... following water-dwelling species found edible, worthy of possible commercial exploration ... fauna ... nothing that would try to eat Sten, with the exception of a small, rather shy catlike creature that might try to nail him if he were passed out in front of its den—maybe. Nothing else of interest—which meant, to the survey crew, that nothing had tried to kill them. NO BEINGS OF HIGHER DEVELOPMENT OBSERVED.

  Sten appeared to be owner of an eight-tenths-scale Eden, if one that seemed never to have progressed very far.

  Now, what had man done to screw it up after discovery? After all, somebody had given Survey World Whatever-it-was a name. Sten fed in the fiche from his own files.

  The answer was—nobody. It had been acquired by an entrepreneur who had made his fortune doing something that nobody had ever thought of and had then decided he had a corner on entrepreneuring. He had named the world, built himself and, Sten gathered, his paid companions in joy a rather wonderful mansion, added a state-of-the-art spaceport, and then gone bankrupt trying to make a second, third, and so on fortune.

  Once again—an Eden.

  Sten swore a rather surprised oath in Low Tahn, suggesting that the hearer's mother had private parts that could accommodate a battalion—and jerked away from the screen, hearing a giggle.

  The giggle came from a very young, very tall, very blond woman sitting at the computer table next to him.

  "You understood?” he asked.

  "I understood."

  Sten, all too aware that his somewhat limited social graces probably had not been improved by his time as a POW, made himself blush and apologized.

  The woman, who introduced herself as Kim Lavransdotter, explained. She spoke High, Low, Medium, and War Tahn. She was a researcher and historian, doctor of this in Tahn culture and that in Tahn history, and very pleased that her studies had been honored by a request to come to Prime World and work with Imperial Social Analysis.

  "Maybe I shouldn't tell you this,” she said, looking worried. “I guess we've got some kind of feed into Intelligence, even though they never say anything."

  Sten reassured her.

  He had clearances. Right up to and including “Eyes Only—Imperial Staff,” although he did not tell her quite that much.

  She was very beautiful.

  And Sten was very lonely.

  He offered to buy her a caff.

  She stayed very beautiful.

  Sten bought her dinner.

  The next day, he took her with him to look up some old friends—Marr and Senn, in their crystal light tower.

  She charmed them. She continued to charm Sten. And she was very beautiful, he noted the next morning as he studied her, lying naked beside him. Perhaps ... Sten felt very lucky that it happened that Kim was well overdue for a vacation and thought that going with him to Smallbridge was perfect. She had never known anyone who owned his own planet, let alone the racing yacht that took them there.

  He should have realized.

  But he did not.

  Perhaps Sten's perceptions were still dulled from the time in prison. Or perhaps it was Kim. Or perhaps it was Smallbridge itself.

  Eden ... from its arctic slopes to the long sandy beaches on its islands, with waves that curled in perfectly and endlessly. The fruit was delicious; the mansion was lavish, roboticized, and seemingly equipped with any liquor or food that could be conceived of.

  Even that catlike predator turned out to be moderately friendly and more interested in lifeboat emergency rations than a human arm.

  As they lazed and explored, Sten was learning.

  Lavransdotter, he realized, deserved however many degrees she had and then some. She was an expert on the Tahn. Even Sten, who thought he had learned, by the whip, everything there was to know about the warrior culture, learned much more. And his hatred subsided. He almost felt sorry for any single Tahn, crippled by his or her background and his or her culture.

  Almost, but not quite.

  After the last Tahn lord had been destroyed and their culture and works lay in ruins, he might be willing to concede that the Tahn would be eligible to join the civilized races.

  Almost, but not quite.

  And so the leave passed, dreaming days and nights.

  Sten should have realized.

  But he did not.

  Not until the morning, when a remote from his spaceport buzzed and he came awake. Kim yawned, her head pillowed on his upper thigh, snorted, and went back to sleep.

  Sten stretched and flipped a screen on.

  He looked at the huge ship that sat on his tarmac, dwarfing the yacht, snarled, and was on his feet. He glowered at Kim as she woke again, stretched, and smiled.

  "What's your rank?"Kim's smile stayed in place.

  "Very good, Sten. Colonel."

  "Mercury Corps?"

  "Mercury Corps."

  The huge ship sitting in the spaceport was the Normandie. The Eternal Emperor's personal yacht.

  "Where,” Sten wondered aloud, “did I ever get the idea that somehow, someway, I am so charming and clottin’ attractive that, sitting in a library, the world's most beautiful woman just happens to fall in love with me?"

  "You sell yourself short,” Kim said.

  "Thanks. But why you?"

  "The Eternal Emperor said to tell you—when or if you figured it out—that the best kind of dictionary is one you sleep with."

  "Aw ... clot!"

  "It is a hell of a war,” Kim sympathized. “Now ... shall we get dressed and report?"

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  STEN GLOWERED HIS way up the ramp to the Normandie, saluted the OOD, snarled at Kim as she tried to say good-bye, and stomped off, following, as requested, a snappily uniformed aide.

  He barely noticed the interesting fact that there were eight Gurkkhas at the salute as he boarded, other than that they looked inordinately dumb wearing white gloves.

  As the aide led him into a paneled conference room, the Normandie's Yukawa drive hissed, and the ship lifted.

  Sten was not all that surprised to find Warrant Officer Alex Kilgour in the room. Alex was grunting—loudly.

  "Clottin’ Emperor. Clottin’ hae me, ae Ah'm supervisin't thae unloadin't ae cargo ae marble f'r my dinin't chambers. Clottin’ lairds wi’ nae clottin’ understandin't ae naught.

  "Clottin’ chop m’ leave wi'out clottin’ sayin't ae word, an’ next week wae the openin't ae shootin't season!"

  He paused in his diatribe long enough to register Sten.

  "Boss. Sorry the clottin’ pismire scragged you, ae well. Clottin’ Emperor. Whae w’ need't here is ae some sanity an’ nae a little anarchy."

  That was a little much. Sten's fingers flashed in Mantis sign language: Shaddup, clot. The ro
om's bugged!

  Kilgour sneered. “Clot him, clot his snoops an aye th’ Empire! Ah'll speakit ae Ah wan'. Wha'es the clot't’ do? Send us back twa Heath?"

  "That, in fact, is very much what I had in mind."

  The dry voice, of course, came from the Eternal Emperor.

  * * * *

  Fleet Marshal Ian Mahoney let the outrage from the babble of politicians die into silence. He walked to the conference room's window and looked pointedly overhead.

  Twelve Imperial superbattleships hung over the capital city of Gorj, their screens ringing the ships.

  Mahoney turned back to the assembled rulers of Gorj.

  "I shall reiterate the situation. Gorj determined to stand neutral in this war. The Emperor respects that decision.

  "However, under the original treaty signed between the Emperor and Gorj, your world requested our support and aid if, at any time in the future, Gorj was threatened with attack.

  "You agreed in that treaty that Gorj would provide any necessary logistical aid to that support.

  "The Empire has determined that Gorj is imminently in danger of being seized by the Tahn. This shall not be allowed to happen.

  "In exchange for our securing your independence, all we are requesting is access to three of your primary spaceports and the necessary real estate to develop basing for Imperial maintenance crews."

  "And if we don't willingly let you take over those ports?"

  "There is,” Mahoney went on, “recognized by Imperial law, either the rights of force majeure or eminent domain. The Empire will, of course, make proper restitution."

  "The Tahn have made no signs of attacking us!"

  "They are very subtle,” Mahoney said. He was starting to feel most diplomatic, even though he had wanted to start the meeting with: Look, guys. You clowns are sitting here, right on the edges of the Tahn Empire. You've gotten all the goodies from staying neutral. Too bad you've got the only populated and developed worlds handy for us to grab.

  "We'll protest this!” another politician said.