by Chris Bunch
Lo Prek waited for a moment, breathing in deeply, until his heartbeat returned to normal and the fear was gone. Then he padded up the stairs. On the top floor, he found a gaping hole in the wall where a window once had been. From there he had a clear view of the front entrance of Koldyeze and the narrow cobblestone street that wound up the hill to the old cathedral.
Lo Prek cleared a space and settled in to wait.
That it was probably going to be a long wait did not trouble him at all. It was patience that had allowed him to track his brother's murderer across many years and millions of miles, and now he was sure his moment was near. Lo Prek had added one more factor to Wichman's logic. If there was to be a final fight for Koldyeze, Sten was sure to be there.
Lo Prek would be waiting.
He loaded his weapon and made final adjustments to the sights.
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CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
THE SURVIVAL OF Koldyeze—and the lives of the many hundreds of VIP internees and POWs inside the walls—was perhaps attributable to the fact that Lieutenant Colonel Virunga had been a bit more of a musician than he had admitted to Sten.
When the young Virunga had become fascinated with reed instruments, to the point that his parents grudgingly paid for the astronomical cost of importing—from Earth—an archaic instrument called the saxophone, he had become part of a rebellion. The N'ranya's music at the time was formalized into a thirty-nine-tone structure, with each musical composition in two parts. Part one began with a certain number of notes, which were then repeated in varying patterns, with the section ending in a different key. Part two rang changes on those notes to finish eventually in the beginning key.
The N'ranya delighted in descending from their trees, gathering in great glades, and listening to those pieces. Virunga's generation found that boring, boring, boring and created other forms of music—music in which not only might a key never be repeated but each musician was permitted endless individual variations as he or she saw fit. They called it y'zz and gathered secretly in small clearings to perform the forbidden music.
Virunga, loving improvisation, was in no trouble when Sten's sonata in the key of freedom, for unaccompanied soloists, went badly awry.
The first movement opened in the cellars below Koldyeze. Combat-experienced prisoners unsealed the long-forgotten weapons in the crypts and trained those who were still sane and healthy enough to use them.
Grudgingly, Virunga let Kraulshavn and Sorensen prepare azimuth cards and range sketches for his soon-to-be-used artillery. He himself spent hours closeted with Derzhin and Avrenti, discussing what was inevitably going to happen—and what must occur. Avrenti, ever the professional, had no trouble realizing that he almost certainly would be serving new masters in short order. And Lord Pastour's increasing presence inside the prison made it easy for Derzhin to give in. The problem was Genrikh and the handful of uncorrupted Tahn guards he had as followers. But it was still not a problem, Virunga thought. His armed prisoners, plus Chetwynd's now-enlightened—translation: corrupted or scared—guards, would be capable of dealing with them.
The first movement closed, as expected, as Imperial ships blasted overhead. The landing was under way. Minutes later, sirens shrilled for an emergency formation and to open the second movement. The prisoners formed up slowly in spite of the screams of the guards. Virunga took the count. His formation leaders reported all prisoners accounted for. An alert Tahn was about to bellow in anger at the huge gaps in the formation. Instead, he found himself trying to shout through the ruins of a windpipe and then collapsed.
The killing had been done by Sorensen. Mahoney's giving Sten Sorensen's code word had done more than merely grant access to his mental battle computer—it also freed Sorensen to exercise some of his other Mantis Team skills.
Police Major Genrikh was standing at the head of the guards’ formation, facing the prisoners, when he saw that guard die. He could see other prisoners—armed prisoners—suddenly appearing on battlements and on balconies. He was shouting a command, gun coming up and aiming across the courtyard at Sorensen when Chetwynd moved. Initially, Chetwynd had growled at Sten's orders. By rights, he should have been out on the streets running his teams. He considered further. Suppose things did not go exactly right in the beginning? A being could get killed being the first to fight. Koldyeze seemed a fairly good place to wait until the Empire stabilized things. And there was something else to take care of.
The something else was Genrikh—Genrikh and all the clotting Tahn guards and cops who had bashed Chetwynd around from the time he had first jackrolled a drunk sailor to the present day.
Genrikh took aim—and two anchor cables smashed around him. Then he was kicking, lifted into the air in Chetwynd's bear hug. His shout became a gurgle of blood as Chetwynd's arms tightened, smashing ribs and caving Genrikh's chest in.
Chetwynd pitched Genrikh's body aside and went for the other “loyal” guards. He dived for the cobblestones as projectile weapons cracked and men went down. The POW marksmen practiced some restraint, killing the rest of Genrikh's bullies no more than two or three times apiece.
Virunga stood motionless, waiting for the slaughter to end. Then he turned his attention to Derzhin and Avrenti. The remainder of the guards fingered their weapons, unsure of what to do.
"It ... begun. Lay down ... arms. Return to quarters. Wait further orders. Follow orders ... no one harmed."
And so, when Lord Pastour and his escorts arrived, Koldyeze was already in Imperial hands. He was greeted politely and shown to very safe quarters deep in the castle cellars.
That was the end of the second movement.
The third movement should have been nearly pastoral. Imperial ex-prisoners manned Koldyeze's gun towers, the guns turned outward.
All the prisoners had to do was wait inside their prison for eventual relief by the Empire. Any still-fighting Tahn should have been easily discouraged by a few accurate rounds and convinced to go elsewhere to find more meaningful death.
Instead, the third movement opened with the grating of tracks as four heavy tanks rumbled up the cobblestone street toward Koldyeze.
Lord Wichman. And friends.
Those friends consisted of the squadron of heavy tracks, one squadron of recon tracks, a scout company of gravsleds, and nearly a battalion of soldiers. The prisoners of Koldyeze could be very grateful that Wichman had not been able to acquire any tacnukes.
A prisoner team manning one of the watchtowers ran a burst from its chaingun across the bow of the lead track—and the tank's cannon blew the watchtower apart.
The new arrivals were not there for a casual investigation.
Virunga got on the com to Sten.
The rest of the symphony would be y'zz.
* * * *
Sten, even though he had gone through the long, drawn-out defeat in the Fringe Worlds, still had not realized there were so many ways of being told he was clotted.
He stood in the middle of what had formerly been the K'ton Klub's main lounge and was now his com center. Koldyeze was up against it. There was no way that Virunga and the rest of the POWs could hold out against an armored attack. And there appeared to be nothing that could be done. His link with the Imperial Forces around Heath told him their attacks were stalled. They had three days minimum until they broke through.. There were still enough AA missiles sited to make any air support run nearly suicidal. And Wichman's units were too close to hazard even an operator-guided missile attack.
He glanced out a window and winced. He did not need a weatherman to tell him that a storm front was closing in. He saw drizzle and fog. Across the room, Kilgour was already at a computer terminal. A wallscreen cleared, and a map appeared. The map showed Heath's capital with five-meter contour lines. The map shifted, and Koldyeze was suddenly at the map's center.
Sten crossed to the map and studied it. The contour lines grouped very close together around Koldyeze, and Sten's leg muscles memory-ached, remembering the nu
mber of times he had groaned up that steep cobblestone street when he was a prisoner. Oh-ho.
"Turn that sucker and animate it,” he ordered.
The map changed, and Sten was staring at a lateral projection of Koldyeze showing that outlined, ruined cathedral atop the rise.
"Alex,” he wondered aloud, “you got any read on what kinda crunchies Wichman's got?"
"Negative, boss. But Ah'll bet it's nae th’ Tahn's finest."
Probably not, Sten thought. “Spin it again."
Once more Sten stared “straight down” at Koldyeze.
He had an idea—of sorts. But he needed one thing.
He asked Kilgour.
"Ah lack exact whae y’ need, but Ah hae a wee ersatz."
"Nobody's looted it?"
"Ah gie m’ word, wee Sten. Nae e'en a desperate Tahn'd go near it."
"You got two gravsleds running?"
"Ah hae."
And Kilgour was out the door.
Sten, who had planned to spend the last few days of the war sitting in his web being big daddy spider, grabbed the waiting combat harness from the wall and tugged it on.
He looked across the room at St. Clair. She shook her head in disbelief, and he shrugged, then went down the stairs.
Kilgour, already in fighting gear, was waiting outside at the controls of the gravsled. Behind him were two of Chetwynd's agents at the controls of a cargo sled. Both vehicles were battered and battle-damaged but still lift-capable. Sten clambered in, and Alex took off.
"How do you know the stuff's still there?"
"D’ ye ken,” Alex went on, “thae quadrped we noted, aye back th’ day we arrived ae Heath?"
Sten thought back—and recalled that four-legged creature ridden by a Tahn officer. “A hearse?"
"Close, lad. At any rate, dinnae y’ wonder whae happens to horses when they die?"
Sten had not.
"The term is renderin't. An’ stinkit. Th’ recyclin't center's still there an’ reekin't. We'll hae our social lubricant."
* * * *
Kilgour did not have an order of battle for Wichman's assault unit, but his guess had been correct.
The recon squadron was a recently activated reserve unit made up of soldiers previously invalided out of combat; the gravsled unit had been formed by cadets from one of the Tahn military secondary schools; and the infantrymen had been grabbed from the walking wounded, replacement centers, and transport depots.
The heavy tracks were factory-fresh and intended to be driven directly to the front lines and sent into combat. They were so new that they lacked even a coat of camouflage anodizing. Their crews were civilian—final line inspectors who had been grabbed and given orders by Wichman's people. Only one inspector had objected—and been promptly shot by H'nrich, Wichman's chief of security. The others did what they were told.
They attacked Koldyeze.
The first tank made Sten's plan possible.
The first watchtower destroyed, the tank ground into motion up the cobbled street, its cannon finger probing for a new target. The gunner's sights swept across the second watch-tower on the other side of Koldyeze's gates. There was no sign of motion. The gunner looked for a better target.
Very slowly, the chaingun in that second watchtower swiveled. The skinny man crouching in the gunner's seat turned to the equally emaciated man kneeling beside him. “Is it loaded?"
"I think so. You figure out how to shoot it?"
"Hell if I know."
"You know that popgun ain't gonna punch through that tin can down there, don't you?"
"Shaddup. I live a clean life."
The ex-POW loading the chaingun would have been correct—under normal circumstances. The antipersonnel rounds in the chaingun should have spattered off the heavy tank like raindrops. But the tank's designers had assumed that no clotting driver would ever be dumb enough to take that track over a pile of rubble and expose its belly and extremely vulnerable escape hatch.
The scared civilian behind the tank's controls was that dumb. And the Imperial soldier behind the chaingun's triggers was a very good shot. Ten rounds blew the hatch off its locks—into the tank's crew compartment—and then ricocheted.
Heavy armor could keep things in as well as out.
There were two survivors, and they were shot down by riflemen as they scrambled out the rear hatch for safety.
"Not bad,” the loader said.
"Not bad at all,” the gunner said.
Ten seconds later smoke wisped out of the tank's atmosphere exhausts, and the track “brewed up” in flames.
The easy way to take Koldyeze had been cut.
Virunga wondered what his still-unknown attacker would try next.
Probably an infantry assault.
* * * *
That indeed was what Wichman had in mind. But his cobbled-together assault unit was still getting itself organized, and most of the improvised platoons were nowhere near the line of departure when whistles shrilled.
About a company of grunts started up the hill. They were quickly shot down or into shelter. There was no second wave. Instead, they started building barricades across the streets and creating fighting positions inside the tenements.
Perfectly fine, Virunga thought. We have no intention of counterattacking, and if they turn this into a siege, perhaps we can hold on until the Imperial Forces arrive.
Perhaps. He went to prepare what he was trying to convince himself was his artillery.
* * * *
At twilight, Sten and Alex were crouched on the roof of one of the tenements, looking for a way in.
Below them, hidden in wreckage, was the larger gravsled, its cargo slopping and stinking, just as Kilgour had promised.
Sten saw an opportunity to create some chaos.
The cadets manning the gravsleds were evidently trying to attack Koldyeze as if they were Scythians bashing out a Roman legion. Their sleds darted back and forth and up and down, the sleds’ gunners occasionally blasting off a burst or two. Good shots. They hit Koldyeze almost every other time.
Sten waited until dark, then flipped on the light-enhancing sights of his sniper rifle. It was a fairly nasty weapon that fired a tiny, shielded AM2 round that on impact would blow a hole in a man's chest that a gravsled could be driven through. But unlike the issue willygun, the heavy sniper rifle used a modified linear accelerator to propel the round. The scope was used not merely to give a precise range and fix on the target but could be turned if the target happened to go behind a wall. On firing, the accelerator would spin the round at the appropriate time—and the gun was quite capable of shooting around a corner.
Sten did not need that much trickery.
He put the scope's cross hairs on a gravsled pilot and blew him out of his seat. When the gunner jumped for the controls, he died, too.
A few seconds later, five gravsleds were orbiting around the ruined streets below Koldyeze aimlessly.
That would provide the necessary chaos.
Kilgour and Sten dropped down the shattered tenement steps and into their own sled and moved slowly forward. Their advance went seemingly unobserved—at least none of the rounds that slammed into the ground nearby seemed particularly aimed.
They reached the still-smoldering tank, and Kilgour steered the sled around it. He turned, free hand questionmarked, then pointed down. Here? Sten signed: Ten meters more. Kilgour obeyed and then grounded the gravsled.
And they almost got themselves killed.
In spite of Virunga's bellows and protests about losing his battle computer and fifty percent of Gaaronk's operators, Sorensen put together an ambush team. He was—at least as far as he knew—the only Mantis operative inside Koldyeze. But there were POWs from other hands-on lethal units who wanted a bit of close-in revenge. They slid out of the cathedral toward the destroyed track.
Sorensen knew that Wichman's forces had to remove that hulk before they could send in more armor. Figuring that combat engineers were few and far between thos
e days, he intended to kill a few recovery specialists.
He saw the gravsled ground and crept toward the two Tahn—he thought—getting out of it. Eyes away, he reminded himself. His backup men flanked him. Sorensen readied the long ceremonial knife he was carrying. He would take the heavier one first. Then—
A flare bloomed on the horizon, and all five men became bushes. The flare sank down, and Sorensen's two targets were alive once more. The smaller man's hands moved to one side, then together, as if holding a package. Patrol sign language, Sorensen realized. Had the Tahn stolen that from the Imperials? He decided to take a chance and hissed sibilantly.
The two men crouch-spun, weapons coming up. But they did not fire.
"ID,” Sorensen whispered.
Sten realized that the whisper was not in Tahn. He assumed that the ambushers must have come out of Koldyeze.
"Imperials."
"One forward."
Kilgour rumbled toward Sorensen.
Sorensen's night vision was almost gone—the vitamin-lousy diet the Tahn had fed them ensured that. Even with the added rations from the discovered stores, he still was looking at a blur when Alex recognized him.
"Wee Sorensen,” he whispered.
The accent was enough.
Sorensen waved his team forward and hand question-marked. Need help? Sten nodded ostentatiously, then indicated. Two out as security. The rest—start pouring.
Sten lifted the gravsled's nose slightly, and the semiliquid cargo sloshed out. As Sten shoveled glop out onto the cobblestones, he wondered if it was a lum. Kilgour was always closing letters with some nonsense phrase about somebody's lum reeking. And dead hearse—horse, he corrected—did reek. Kilgour had been quite correct—no one had looted the rendering works. And the liquefied fat from the vats should work very well.
They finished and regrouped. Sten had planned on reentering Koldyeze with Alex through the still-undiscovered tunnel. But obviously Sorensen had a better way.