by Chris Bunch
"Mmm. Continue."
"Uh… the tramp's single-load destination was Heath, sir."
"You are truly a bundle of joy, Captain Sten."
Heath was the capital of the Tahn worlds.
"Captain, have you been drinking?"
"Nossir. Not yet."
"We'd better start." The Emperor poured shots from the 180-pure flask and drained his.
"Captain, I will now let you in, on an example of Eternal-Emperor-type reasoning. Either (A) the Tahn were responsible for greasing Alain"—the Emperor's tone changed—"plus some… others, and are running this whole operation, or (B) this whole thing is turning into the most cluster-clotted nightmare going."
"Yessir. I dunno, sir."
"Lot of help you are. Fine, Captain, very fine. Pour another one, don't come to attention, and stand by for orders.
"I'll start with the assumption that I can trust you. You're too damned young, junior, and fresh on the job to be involved with whatever's going on.
"I trust the Gurkhas. By the way, how good a man is your subudar-major? Limbu, isn't it?"
"None better, sir."
"I want you to turn the guard over to him. You're detached. I will be quite specific since I remember from your Mantis days that you sometimes… freely interpret orders. You are to go find this Dynsman; you are to bring him back unharmed; he is to be capable of answering any and every question that I can come up with.
"I do not want revenge, I want goddamned answers, captain. Is that clear?"
"Yessir." Sten touched the glass to his lips. "I'll need support, Your Highness."
"Captain Sten, you figure out your ops order. You can have any clottin' thing you want, up to and including a guards Division if you think it'll help.
"I want that Dynsman!"
Chapter Eighteen
The portal slid shut behind Tarpy's back. Reflexively, he moved to put a wall at his back while his eyes adjusted to the semiblackness. His pupils dilated, and now he could see overhead the spots of light that were stars and spaceships.
The scene in the hemispherical chamber shifted, and it was daylight, as one sun swam into closeup, and the imperial landing force hung "below" it, above the slightly larger dot that was the planet.
Across this moved the black strut-beam that supported the chamber's control chair, and Tarpy could make out the figure of Hakone outlined in the seat.
Again the scene shifted, and now the battleships and assault transports floated above the planet's surface, which wept to either side of the chamber. Tacships flared out and down, and remote satellites engaged them.
Five battleships split from the main force, their Yukawa-drives pushing them up toward the planet's pole, as the transports drifted down toward the landing.
Tarpy ran battles through his head, then snickered as he got it. Of course. Saragossa.
He could never understand why soldiers couldn't let go of the past. To him, the battles he'd fought in were meaningless. All they gave him was promotion, perhaps a medal, and that never-to-be-admitted satisfaction of close-range killing.
Saragossa. As far as Tarpy was concerned, the battle was not only long-lost but one that never could have been won. Hakone's laboring for some kind of culprit had never signified. But he caught himself. Not to reason why as long as somebody's paying the bills. He dug out a tabac and, making no move to shield the flame, set fire to its tip.
Hakone caught the reflection from a dial in front of him and spun the booth on its arm. "Is that you?"
Tarpy did not bother answering. He couldn't be bothered with nonsense—none of Hakone's servants had entry permit to the battle chamber. Therefore, whoever was inside would be whoever was expected.
The long beam swung down, out of the chamber and level with the chamber's lobby. Hakone climbed out, walked to Tarpy, and brought his hand through a 360-degree loop. The "battle" above died as the lights came up in the chamber. "The Emperor has saved us all some research," Hakone said. "We now have a line on this bomber our associate used."
He took a handful of fiches from his coverall's breast pocket and passed them to Tarpy. "The man fled into the Tahn worlds," Hakone said.
Tarpy half smiled. "It should be hard for him to go to ground there."
"You have whatever resources you need. If you wish, take a few of our Praetorian deserters with you for backup."
"Will it matter how I do it?"
"Not at all. He's a small-time criminal, adrift in a very violent society. No one will inquire."
Tarpy palmed the exit switch, and the chamber's portal swung open.
"By the way—the Emperor also has a man in pursuit."
"Do I worry?"
"No. He's inconsequential—some captain named Sten. Met him. Quite sloppy for an Imperial soldier."
"But if he gets close?"
Hakone shrugged. "The issue at stake is a great deal larger than the life of one Imperial grunt, Tarpy."
Tarpy stepped through the portal, palmed it shut, and vas gone.
Book Three
Mouton
Chapter Nineteen
Sergeant Major Alex Kilgour, detached Mantis Section Headquarters, parent unit First Imperial Guards Division, glowered down at his tasteful purple and green loose tunic and pantaloons and then across the cobbled street at the schoolyard. In the yard, a uniformed and elderly Tahn officer was drilling eight-year-olds in some sort of arms drill. When y' gie th' bairns pikes before th' war starts, Alex thought sourly, p'raps y' should be thinkit ae nae fighting.
The march-and-countermarch he was watching, however, was very low on Kilgour's pissoff list. There were many, many others. Waiting for Sten, he ran through them.
There was nothing wrong with being detached for special duty. In the back of Alex's mind, he had been considering a certain sense of morality. He'd spent enough years in Mantis to realize that sooner or later the ticking clock would stop. Just lately Alex had been hearing his personal clock slowing.
But that, he protested to himself furiously, was nae the prime reason. Ah join't th' Guard ae ah soldier, he went on. An' somehow now Ah'm on some strange world, dressed ae a panderer. One of these aeons, Alex promised himself, prob'ly on my retirement, Ah'll gie th' Emperor what Ah serve the full story. The poor wee lad cannae know.
The strange world was Heath, capital of the Tahn worlds. Alex and Sten had gone in covertly. Kilgour, however, quibbled at their cover—Sten had figured that high-credit pimps would never be questioned as to their real motives.
Whatever Alex had been expecting, in a long career that specialized in inserting him in the middle of bizarre cultures, Heath proved a great deal more.
The Tahn culture consisted of rigid, stratified subcultures. At the top were the warlords, landed hereditary politico/commanders. Under them fell the lieutenants, the tactical leaders and warriors. Then the merchant class, and, finally, the peasants. The peasants did all the drakh work, from spear-carrying in the growing Tahn military to agriculture to menial jobs.
That, Alex thought to himself furiously, dinna makit me fash. But th' stinkit peasants no seem to mind bein' serfs. A thousand years earlier, Alex Kilgour would probably have made a very acceptable revolutionary.
An' not only that, he went on, th' food's nae whae a civilized body should eat. Ocean weed, food frae' bottom-scuttlin' beasties, drakh-planted carbos dinna make a diet frae a human, he thought, and burped.
Alex, not being the sort who could keep himself at the bottom of a brooding barrel for long, was consoling himself with the thought that at least the Tahn beer and alk were strong and readily available, when Sten slouched up beside him.
"Y'r mither dresses you funny," he said. Sten's garb was even more extreme—which in Heath's underworld culture meant even less noticeable—than Alex's. His knee-length smock was striped in orange and black, and the leotards under them were solid black. It was, Sten had been assured, the height of fashion among those who sharked through the sexworld of prostitution.
Sten
merely grunted at Alex's sally. He, too, stared at the schoolyard. The Tahn warrior had discovered an error in some child's performance and was systematically shaming him in front of his fellow. Sten motioned his head, and the two men moved away, headed toward the red-light district they were quartered in.
"Hae'y found our mad bomber?" Kilgour asked.
"Yeah."
"Ah, Sten. P'raps y' dinna be telling me. It's aye worse'n Ah thought."
"Even worse," Sten began angrily. "The clottin' idiot went and did it again."
Lee Dynsman was an idiot. After he'd jumped ship on Heath, found a hidey-hole, a drink, a woman, and a meal, which consumed what was left of his credits, he'd put the word out in the underculture bars that he was an expert bomber and Very Available. A small gang with large ambitions had quickly recruited him to blow the vault on a Tahn credit repository. For once in Dynsman's career, the job had gone flawlessly, dropping the thick cement/steel back wall into rubble. The gang scooped up the loot, took Dynsman to their hangout, and drank him into celebratory oblivion. No dummies, they realized that since the Tahn "police" (actually paramilitary, seconded for special duties from the army) needed a culprit, they narked Dynsman.
"So our wee lad's in the clank," Alex said.
"Still worse."
"Ah, lad, lad. Dinna be makit aye worse. Y'know, Sten, when Ah was runnin' th' museum, Ah was consider-in' m'leave. M'mum's castle's in Ross Galen Province, aye the loveliest part ah th' planet a' Edinburgh. An the castle sits on a wee loch, Loch Owen. Ah could'a gone there instead't bein' here wi' these barbarians."
"Shut the hell up." Sten was in no mood for Alex's meanderings. "Dynsman isn't in jail," he went on. "The clot's been transported."
"Oool." Alex understood.
"I thought you would, you refugee from a clan of criminals. Transported. To a clottin' prison planet."
"Ah need a drink."
"Many, many drinks," Sten agreed. "While we figure out how the hell we tell the Emperor there is no way in the world to lift Dynsman off the Tahn worlds' worst penitentiary."
Alex then saved the day by spotting a bar that was just opening. The two men pivoted and swerved inside.
Chapter Twenty
Tarpy, too, had tracked down Dynsman. His cover for travel to Heath hadn't been nearly as clever as Sten's. He and the five Praetorian deserters with him masqueraded as a touring public fight team. Arriving unannounced, they had very few bookings, which left the assassin and his men more than enough time to look for the disappeared bomber.
Tarpy twirled the cup of tea in his hands and wished for something stronger in celebration. But he had rules—absolute rules that had kept him alive for nearly seventy-five years, rules that were never broken. Among the strongest was no mind alterants on the job.
He shot the tea back and motioned for his legman, a former corporal, Milr, to continue.
Milr did, and the warm glow that spread inside Tarpy came from more than the tea.
Very seldom had he taken a job that did not require violence, toil, and blood. But the current one showed every sign of being simple, painless, and well-paid.
Tarpy scanned the fiche on the prison planet. Pre-hominid. All prisoners sentenced for life. Average prisoner life expectancy—five years, local. Number of escapes—zero.
Unlike most people who kill for a living, Tarpy believed an old adage—Kill Without Joy. He had taken the adage one step further—don't kill if there's no need.
Dynsman's chances of returning to the Imperial worlds were near zero. All these people, Tarpy thought. Running around scheming after something, and none of them realize that the gods always take care of those who play with fire.
Tarpy stood, pulled the fiche from its reader, and crossed to the hotel-room sink. He rinsed out his cup, opened a cupboard, and took out a bottle of pure quill. He poured a cup for himself, then, as an afterthought, a glassful for Milr. Milr swilled the alk, without bothering to wonder about the unannounced suspension of The Rule.
He drained his glass. "Reassemble the team, Corporal. We'll transship back to Prime World on the next available."
Dynsman was no longer a factor, nor was that Imperial officer. Tarpy next considered exactly how much of the commission he would have to pay the ex-Praetorians to keep them from feeling cheated.
Chapter Twenty-One
A wry joke on Heath was that the huge river running through the middle of the capital city was the only river that had ever caught on fire.
It burned for days, seriously scorching the surrounding waterfront. But even after the fire on the polluted channel had died, the Tahn lords had done nothing to clean it up, in spite of their loud and frequent avowals of love for simplicity and nature. After all, the warlords had immaculate gardens to wander through and in which to compose the Tahn's superstylized poetry. The peasants could—sometimes did—eat drakh.
On the other hand, since all waterfronts throughout history have been the same, perhaps the fire could have been considered instant urban renewal. Not that it took long for the same abattoirs to spring back to life.
The Khag was a prime example. Its popularity was twofold: Not only was it close to both the onworld water shipping and the spaceport, but at the port anything or anyone illicit was available.
The two men at the bar fit right in—except for their soiled gray uniforms and pants bloused in knee-high swamp boots. They were armed, but so was almost everyone else in the Khag. Their weapons—stunguns, truncheons, fighting knives, and gas sprays—were hung on leatherette Sam Browne belts. Their voices were as raw as they were loud and semidrunk. One of them—Keet—owled at the ticket packet on the bar in front of them.
"Last day, partner. Last day."
His cohort Ohlsn nodded. "You know, I have been figuring our problem, Mr. Keet."
"We sure have a lot of them."
"Not really," Ohlsn continued. He was in that stage of drunkenness where brilliant ideas occur, still sober enough so that some of them make some degree of sense. "The problem with us is we're betwixt and between."
"I don't track."
"Keep drinking. You will. We sit out there for three planet-years at a stretch, and what do we want more'n anything?"
"To get our butts back to home world."
"Shows why we aren't warrior-class. 'Cause that's dumb."
"You've been sluicing too heavy."
"Not a chance. Look at it. Out there, we got power, right? How many times you taped somebody 'cause you didn't like his looks? How many times you had some konfekta show up at your quarters wanting anything but to go out there with Genpop?"
"That's part of the job, Ohlsn."
"Sure it is. So look at the two of us. We're peasant-class, right? But when we're walkin' our post, for three years we do better 'n any warrior or warlord I know."
"This is a new assignment. Maybe it's gonna be a drakhheap."
"Come on, man. Think about it. The job's the same as we been doin' for years—how in hell could the two of us do any better?"
Keet considered. Part of his consideration was emptying the liter-size carafe of quill in front of them into their glasses.
That was what Sten and Alex had been waiting for. They were at a small table, about three meters behind the two men. Sten waved, and the previously overtipped waitress was beside them.
"Those two," Sten said. "Buy them another round." He slipped her more than enough credits, then looked at Kilgour.
"Och aye," Alex agreed to the unspoken question. "Those are our boys."
By that time, another carafe had been set in front of Keet and Ohlsn, and they'd quizzed the barmaid on who was buying. Keet turned and puzzled at them. Sten hoisted his own mug and smiled. Keet and Ohlsn exchanged glances, considered their diminished drinking fund, and came to the table. They both were highly unimpressed with Sten and Alex, who were glowing gently in their pimpsuits.
"Don't like to drink alk from somebody I don't know," Keet growled.
"We're the Campbell brothers," A
lex smoothed.
"Yuh. And I know what you are."
"In our trade, it pays to advertise," Sten said. "You don't get the girls if you don't look like you can afford them."
"Got no use for pimps," Ohlsn said. "You ought to see what happens to 'em out there."
"An experience I plan to avoid," Sten said, refilling their mugs.
"Knock off the drakh," Keet said. "You know what we are. You ain't buying us 'cause you like our looks."
"Nope," Sten agreed. "We've got a problem."
"Bet you have."
"We thought maybe to take care of it before it happens."
"Lemme guess," Keet said. "One of your whores got staked, right? And she's headed out."
"This man's a mind reader," Sten mock-marveled to Alex.
"You know the rules, chien. Once they're gone, they don't come back. Unless they're stiff. So don't bother trying to buy us so that you can rescue your hole. Don't happen. Never has happened."
"We're no stupid," Alex said.
"So why the free?"
"Our friend, see," Sten began haltingly. "She's cuter'n leggings on a k'larf. But she ain't too swift. She went and got hooked up with somebody up there." Sten jerked his thumb upward, in the Heath-universal sign for any class above your own or the people you were dealing with.
"His third wife didn't like it. My friend ended up being took as a receiver."
"Hard hash," Keet said.
"She was a real moneymaker," Sten sighed. "And so I'd like to see she gets taken care of. She's the delicate type."
Keet and Ohlsn eyed each other.
"What are you looking for?"
"Somebody to take care of her. Don't want to see her end up on the wrong side."
"You want one of us to tuck her under a wing?"
"You have it."
"Don't make sense. Why do you care? She ain't never coming back."
"It's an investment. See, Din's got sisters growing up. And they're even cuter'n she is. So if I protect the family…"