Revenge of the Damned

by Chris Bunch

  Any war, no matter how “just,” had opponents. Opposition ranged from true pacifism, through a quite logical reluctance to get one's ass shot off for any reason whatsoever, and on into less savory areas.

  It was a constant battle for the Emperor to keep his intelligence organizations somewhat under control. Someone who merely thought—or even said—that the Eternal Emperor was full of drakh was not a danger to society, the Emperor had to remind his CI types.

  It was a nice theory. At present, however, it was not widely practiced. Freedom of speech, like many other civil liberties, was not encouraged at that time. There were many thousand dissenters, who had merely mildly suggested that the Eternal Emperor did not have all the answers, and were spending the war in internment centers.

  The Democratic Education Center was something else entirely. Its philosophy was very simple: that the Empire had overreacted to the Tahn and that more peaceful means could have been used. Before the war the center had lobbied for Imperial funding to establish other centers within the Tahn Empire. The good people of the society believed that truth would win out—once a Tahn, no matter what his class, was shown that his society was inhumane, that society would be changed. Fortunately, funding was not granted, and none of the theorists ended up as missionary stew.

  The Tahn being what they were, had loudly welcomed the existence of the Democratic Education Centers as long as they were all located on Imperial worlds. And they had promptly used the organization as a front.

  All the active agents had been rounded up at that point, of course. But the center continued to exist—at the Emperor's teeth-gritted acceptance. The organization provided an excellent means of locating future dissidents and was riddled with Imperial Intelligence operatives. Imperial Intelligence did not realize that if it were not for their own agents, the center would have gone bankrupt years earlier. Even a front organization required regular dues paying, and very few of the center's members were considered politically employable at anything above the janitorial level.

  Chapelle had known of the center for some time. How he had learned about it, he was not sure. The information, of course, had been planted in an early subaudible broadcast.

  Not that Sullamora actually wanted Chapelle to join the organization. But once the man had reached that decision, the fourth stage of his education could begin.

  The problem was that Chapelle appeared to be somewhat brighter than Sullamora's profile would have suggested. Even though Chapelle was a näif, he had somehow thought that the evil Emperor's agents might have penetrated the center. His walking through that door, Chapelle knew, would be his death. The Emperor would use that as an excuse to grab and torture Chapelle and then put him into a lethal chamber, just as the voices had told him had happened to millions of others.

  But there appeared to be no alternative, Chapelle brooded.

  Realizing were was somebody standing beside his table, Chapelle brought himself back and cowered. Not that he had ever been threatened in the cafeteria—the other patrons realized that it was very unlikely that Chapelle had anything worth stealing. Plus there was a certain sheen in his eye that suggested that even pushing the man around for sport could produce unpleasant ramifications.

  The man did not belong in this dive, Chapelle thought; in fact, he belonged even less than Chapelle did. He was older. Gray-haired. Soberly and expensively dressed. Chapelle wondered why the man had not been instantly jackrolled, then eyed the bulging muscles and the barely visible scar on the man's neck.

  No. The man was not an easy target.

  The man looked sternly at Chapelle. “You don't belong here,” he said flatly.

  Chapelle stammered—and the man suddenly smiled.

  "I don't, either. But I seem to have a problem."

  Somehow, unasked, he was sitting across from Chapelle.

  "My problem is that I'm lost.” He laughed—a rich bass laugh that showed a man who had learned the vagaries of the world and appreciated them. “I thought that just because I still had that built-in compass I could find my way around a city. Wrong again, Colonel General Suvorov."

  Chapelle gaped. “You're a general?"

  "Forty years. Pioneer Development Corps. Retired. Guess it's a courtesy title now. At least the clottin’ Empire hasn't figured out a way to take that away from me, too. Or at least not yet."At any rate, I'm new here on Prime World. Thought I knew my way around. Got lost. Looked for somebody who might be able to help. Everybody I saw looked like the only help they'd give me is into a dark alley.

  "Except you."

  Chapelle was embarrassed.

  "I'd be grateful,” the man who called himself Suvorov said, “if I could get a guide back to the nearest pneumostation and out of this slum."

  Chapelle was only too happy to volunteer.

  At the station Suvorov checked the schedule and muttered. “Typical. Very typical.” He elaborated—the first pneumosubway run out to where he had rented quarters was an hour away. “Talk about your bureaucracies. Makes sense not to schedule runs out to where people who can pay live. But not when you've blocked all the gravcabs out of business.

  "Wartime contingencies.

  "You know, Sr. Chapelle, and I probably shouldn't be saying this to a stranger, but this is sure a good example of the way the Emperor thinks."

  Chapelle nodded eagerly.

  "Although,” Suvorov went on, “you'd have to have been out on some of the Pioneer Sectors to see what it's really like. Out where there aren't any laws. Except the kind one person makes.

  "And out there, you better not talk too loudly about things like that.

  "Guess I was lucky. All that happened to me was I got requested to resign. And then the agrofarm I'd built up got requisitioned by the Imperial Quartermaster Corps.

  "Why I'm here on Prime? Hoping I'd to get my toady rep to do something. Should've known better. He's been bought and sold so many times, he ought to have his soul in for a rebuild.

  "Sorry. Man doesn't respect somebody whining."

  * * * *

  During the wait, it was very natural for Suvorov to buy Chapelle a meal at a very expensive restaurant—and express amazement when he found out that Chapelle was an ex-landing controller.

  "Did a lot of things. Have to, when you're out on the frontiers. But I could never handle all the things you people have to keep in your mind.” He paused. “Not prying ... but what the hell are you doing stuck down there in that slum? You don't have to answer."

  Chapelle did, of course.

  Suvorov was aghast. “Guess you feel sorry for yourself for not having shoes till you run across the man with prosthetics,” he said. “You really got the shaft."

  He ordered a second bottle of wine.

  Chapelle, being a near-teetotaler even when he had credits, got a little drunk. And so did Suvorov.

  "You know, Chapelle,” he said over dessert. “One thing I'm sorry I never had was a son. Nothing left behind once I'm gone.

  "Clotting Emperor—sorry for the language—is going to make sure of that."

  They had brandies, and he called for the bill.

  Outside the restaurant, Suvorov looked at Chapelle and apologized. He had gotten his guide and new friend drunk. It sure as hell would not be safe for the young man to go down those mean streets in his condition.

  Chapelle should come stay with him. Hell, that clotting mansion he was leasing had room for a whole recon force.

  Chapelle, stomach and mind full, found it easy to agree.

  He also found it easy to agree the next day when Suvorov suggested that Chapelle might consider staying on. “Guess we both know I need a guide around this clotting planet. Besides, you're easy to talk to, son.

  "I really like what you've been telling me about the Emperor. Learning a lot, I am."

  Six weeks later Suvorov presented Chapelle with a willygun—and showed him the previously sealed shooting gallery below the mansion.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  CHAPTER
FORTY-NINE

  LADY ATAGO'S HEADQUARTERS/home was as Spartan and single-purpose as her mind. The furnishings were sparse and deliberately uncomfortable. It was not a place for lounging but for quick decision making. Aides came with their reports, sat on hard nervous edges for her decision or comments, and then were quickly gone, to be replaced by others.

  The only thing on her desk was a small, framed picture of the Eternal Emperor. She kept it there to focus herself constantly on her enemy. Atago would have been mildly surprised to learn that her opponent had done something similar; her picture had recently gone up in place of Lord Fehrle's in the Eternal Emperor's office.

  On the far black-glass wall was a constantly changing map of the disputed areas. The Imperial positions were in red, the Tahn in green. The green areas had been swiftly dwindling of late, pinching in from the sides, with a red spearhead driving toward the Fringe Worlds. Even Erebus, that distant system Lady Atago had single-handedly turned into one of the great war factories of history, was firmly in Imperial control.

  In any age Lady Atago would have been considered a military genius. And since Fehrle's death she had been poring over the battle map, desperately searching for an unexpected blow that would reverse the tide.

  Although she had never heard of the man, Atago would have known and approved of Napoleon's decision to land 35,000 troops in Egypt, seemingly far from the main contest. And she would have been dismayed at his failed attempts to flank Britain in Ireland. The reasoning was sound; it was only the application that had gone wrong. And, as happened to many great generals, it was the details that were overwhelming her. The only thing that was clear to her was that whatever the target, she had to set the stage first. She needed a victory, and she needed it badly.

  The only place she could see such a victory coming was in the Fringe Worlds. The most frustrating thing about that was that she had to wait for the Emperor to play the card before she could attempt to trump him. And Lady Atago was too much of a Tahn to be good at playing a waiting game.

  Adding to that frustration was the constant barking of her aides, calling her attention to this, bemoaning that, and continually demanding that she concentrate on the bottom line. Early that morning, for example, her financial advisers had descended, warning her of the empty treasury and waving demands for payments from allies and neutrals alike.

  "Tell them to wait,” she had said angrily. “I haven't heard of any Imperial bankers dunning the Emperor. And this war has to be costing him five or six times what it's costing us."

  "That's different,” one adviser had said. “The Emperor has a financial history. We don't. Besides, he's fighting on borrowed funds at three percent interest. We're fighting at upwards of fifty percent."

  Lady Atago did not know whether to scream for the adviser's instant execution or to cry, although crying was something no Tahn did easily. It wounded her soldier's soul that this conflict could boil down to something so filthy as money. But the advisers assured her that all was not lost.

  After the Fringe Worlds battle—assuming victory—they would be able to bargain for much better terms, and the money tap would be turned on again. But for the time being, the only thing she could do was order the seizure, stripping, and selling of everything of value.

  Her advisers did not dare tell her that there was almost nothing left. Even the plas inner walls and insulation in the meanest of Tahn dwellings had already been carried away by the tax collectors and sold for scrap.

  And so, blocked from action at every corner, Lady Atago turned inward. If she could not yet fight, she would put the Tahn house in order. At the top of her agenda was the leaked list of seventy-two traitors. She attacked the problem with cold glee. The Tahn military police were already sweeping them up.

  Along with the seventy-two, they were arresting anyone connected with those foul beings. Not only that, but more and more names were surfacing daily. Lady Atago realized that some of the victims were innocent—their names appeared merely because they had made the wrong enemies. But that was a fact she was willing to live with. Besides, she had a list of those who were providing the names. She was already ordering police visits to those homes. Filling the jails and military tribunals with suspects was providing an outlet for her frustrations. It was a new and different kind of body count, and she pursued it with relish.

  And so it was a flushed and glowing Lady Atago who ushered Wichman into her office. If only the livies could capture this, he had thought as she greeted him. She was beautiful and sensuous and deadly—every millimeter of her tall, flowing form was that of a great Tahn hero. To see her, to be near her, was to realize that the current difficulties were momentary, that victory must eventually fall to the righteous.

  The purpose of Lord Wichman's visit was to aid Atago in ferreting out wrong-thinkers. He came armed with Lo Prek's steadily mounting evidence of criminality and corruption on Heath.

  Lo Prek had examined thousands of police and intelligence log entries and had sifted out evidence that Heath was in the grip of a wave of crime and dissidence. Moreover, he had tracked many of the crimes that appeared to be minor hooliganisms back to the bureaucracies and officials responsible. That many of the tarnished were in fact blameless did not matter, because Lo Prek had uncovered a pattern that led to the flawless conclusion that an Imperial conspiracy was behind the crime wave.

  Lo Prek was correct in every detail, including the fact that Sten was not only behind that conspiracy but directing it. That was the only point that Wichman disbelieved and for the moment withheld from Lady Atago. When Lo Prek had haltingly spelled out his findings, Wichman had only buried a smile at the man's obsession.

  If the carrot of the mythical Sten produced such results, Wichman would only encourage him. Just because Lo Prek was insane, it did not necessarily follow that he was stupid.

  As Lady Atago leafed through the printout with growing enthusiasm, Wichman congratulated himself on his foresight in roping Lo Prek into his organization.

  "This is exactly what we need, my lord,” Atago said. “I admire your dedication. If only a few others ... I must confess, some of the members of the High Council are disappointing me.

  "They only do what is absolutely necessary. They take nothing upon themselves. No extra effort. Sometimes I wonder if they expect me to fight this whole thing alone."

  Wichman preened but quickly made halfhearted noises of support for his colleagues. Lady Atago waved him down.

  "Take Pastour, for example,” she said. “He's practically gone into retirement. I know he's ill, but ... Oh, well. I suppose we should be grateful for his support. And at least he's continuing his work at Koldyeze. An amazingly successful program. Personally, I never held out much for it. Expecting prisoners—cowards and malcontents all—to perform that well. In fact, according to the latest data, all previous performance records have been broken."

  The data she was referring to had all come from Sten and Virunga's Golden Worm. Fraudulent figures were hiding what was in reality a dismal performance that had only worsened as the Tahn shipped captured dignitaries to Koldyeze.

  The thought of Koldyeze darkened Wichman's mood. It did not help that the people he had placed there grudgingly supported the data that so impressed Lady Atago. Still, he firmly believed that if he were in control at Koldyeze, he would be able to find far better uses for the prisoners. Especially now that it housed the best and the brightest of the Imperial prisoners. Sometimes he was awakened by dreams of what he would do to them. He never remembered the details of the dreams, only that they were pleasurable.

  Lady Atago brought him back to his good mood and the business at hand. “I wonder if I could impose myself on you, my lord?"

  Wichman made self-deprecating sounds. Atago ignored him. She tapped the report compiled by Lo Prek.

  "I would like you to assume command of this program,” she said. “I've not been pleased with the results of the sweeps so far. So many seem to be slipping through the net.

  "I have
been finding myself distrusting the officials responsible for carrying out my aims. And from the information you have gathered here, I may have good reason. There may be more than laziness and inefficiency behind their lack of performance."

  Wichman did not know what to say. He was too overcome by emotion. To think that his efforts met favor with a hero the like of Lady Atago! He gladly accepted the new responsibilities. Also, not too far in the back of his mind was the realization of just how much power had been handed him.

  Just as he was regaining his composure and was about to thank her, Atago broke in with a new thought.

  "There seems to be one thing missing, however,” she said as she folded up Lo Prek's study. “There is a clearly indicated trail here. But it seems to stop short. It's as if something, or someone, has been left out."

  Lady Atago was right. The only part of the report Wichman had excised was the man Lo Prek believed responsible for the conspiracy: Sten. Wichman took a deep breath and then plunged in. He explained about Lo Prek and about the little being's belief that the person behind it all was also the being responsible for the murder of his brother. Lady Atago nodded as he talked. Lo Prek was clearly mad, but as a Tahn she could understand his obsession for revenge.

  "Who is this man?” she finally asked.

  Wichman told her.

  Lady Atago frowned. The name was familiar. “Sten?” she asked. “Would that be a Commander Sten?"

  Wichman said it was but wondered how she knew the rank. But he did not ask, because her face had suddenly gone blank. As if she was remembering something.

  * * * *

  The Forez was vomiting fire. Firing everything—anything—to stop the Swampscott. Lady Atago leaned over Admiral Deska, gaping in amazement at the damage the enemy ship was taking. There seemed to be little left, and even as she watched, huge hunks of the Swampscott were being hurled away into space as Deska's guns and missiles hammered, hammered, hammered. But still, the Swampscott's chainguns kept firing. Wild communications, monitored by her probes, told her that Commander Sten was the ship's CO. Over and over, Deska killed the ship, but it kept coming in.