by Chris Bunch
Goodnight had a sort of itinerary of Nowotny’s, gotten from the still-undiscovered cameras studded around the palace, and knew that Nowotny left his bombproof quarters for his equally bombproof command center just about noon each day, returning at dawn.
That gave Goodnight a route where the man wouldn’t be in the open, but would be moving along an evidently unshielded hallway, then through a garden.
It was the best option that he could find.
Grok set up a blurp signal that would alert Goodnight when someone was moving in the garden, which should, at that time of day, only be Nowotny and his immediate bodyguards.
Goodnight let two days pass, making dry runs, thought he had a pretty good chance of success, and determined to go for it.
On the third day, his receiver blurped at the correct time, and Goodnight launched the slender missile. It was no bigger than a man, and the size of a double fist in diameter.
Its launch point was about half a kilometer from the palace — Goodnight couldn’t figure a closer secure point.
The missile did just what it was supposed to do, homing precisely on those steps that led out into the garden. It would detonate with a blast that should shred the area, and that would be that.
That was very definitely not that — sensors picked up the missile as it reached the palace walls, predicted its impact point, and, as alarms screamed, a skein of slender magnetic wires shot up from hidden automated launchers around the garden.
The missile touched a wire, was told it had reached that impact point, and exploded.
The blast over the palace walls was fairly spectacular, and gave Nowotny a start.
But no more.
And now the man knew he was a target.
“I’m getting old,” Chas Goodnight gloomed as he touched self-destruct buttons and slid out of his launch center.
“Either that, or murder isn’t as easy as it used to be.”
FIFTY-THREE
Even over a com, with a synthed, neutralized voice, Goodnight sounded most piteous.
M’chel thought about the problem, then a flash of sorts came. It had a slightly malevolent quality for all hands that she sort of liked.
She commed Goodnight back at once.
“Now, Chas,” she said, grateful for the luxury of being able to grind it in through a lengthy transmission, since the com was being bounced between a dozen relays, “don’t give up. You merely need some guidance. We learned in the marines how to give that kind of help to lesser soldiery.”
The synthesizer couldn’t handle his rather outraged splutter. M’chel ignored the burst of static.
“And we’re more than willing to help out our fellows when their strategic planning falls short.”
“You realize,” Goodnight came back, “that one of these years I’ll get you for this, Riss.”
“I never worry beyond the next chow call,” M’chel said. “Now, stand by, and I should be back to you within the day with an idea or so.”
She signed off, actually having had the thrust of an idea, coming from the memory of Grok playing monster on another world for another contract.
M’chel talked to him about it.
“I love this,” he rumbled. “I was starting to think I was no more than another damned technician. Nobody seems to be aware I have certain … needs of my own.”
Jasmine patted his hand, and Grok bared fangs in what he imagined to be a friendly manner.
The plan, designed to lure Walter Nowotny into the open, went into effect that day.
It took about a week to implement, during which time Chas stewed and watched holos of Walter Nowotny playing Imperator Rex, which hardly improved his mood.
The plan, M’chel admired, was most sneaky and left-handed, if she did say so herself.
She admitted that possibly she could admire generic mayhem if she were the puppetmaster.
Especially when, amazingly, things went perfectly, as they did in this case.
The plot began by picking a target.
That was fairly simple.
“Everyone” knew that, sooner or later, the Alsaoud would be forced to invade Ras and Locand — the fifth and sixth worlds in the system, held by the People — plus, of course, their “homeland” — the asteroids of the Maron Region.
The invasion force was already being created.
The first wave of whichever world Premier Toorman decided to invade, at the behest of Cerberus, would necessarily be an elite formation.
The cheapest way to make heroes, someone discovered a very long time ago, on Earth, was to hand out bits of metal and ribbon called medals. It wasn’t necessary to create knights or lords, or grant land. People would cheerfully immolate themselves for one of these chest-hangings.
An even cheaper way to create an elite formation, without going to all the bother and expense of intensive training, selective recruiting or providing the best leaders merely required giving any formation an appropriately special title.
The sad thing, which spoke volumes about the inherent stupidity of mankind, was that sometimes it worked.
Of course, said flashily named formation might realize the fraud, but it wouldn’t do them much good, since most of them would shortly become cannon fodder, and their morale, or lack of same, could be tsked over by unreadably dull military historians in the dim future.
Hence the Alsaoud Second Infantry Division, newly dubbed the Second “Guards” Division.
They were headquartered on Khazia itself, in a great, sprawling camp a couple of hours’ flight time from the capital of Helleu.
There were two other units that had been named Guards, but the People just happened to have subverted five troops inside the Second, corrupted by that most trustworthy and dependable of causes — money.
That made them the pin-tailed donkey.
The Second was no better or worse than any other Alsaoud battle group, with its own transport, assault, and support units.
Intensive training was begun, and the troops knew they were doomed. It was only a matter of time before someone waved a saber and ordered them into the attack on some airless armpit of a world occupied by hateful people.
Suspicions were confirmed when they began training in space suits.
Some of the brighter members of the Second started reading up on the Maron Region.
Next step for M’chel was developing the problem.
Jasmine, working through the People’s agents, had the subverted men and women within the Second start building a rumor.
They weren’t to hang themselves out by actual defeatism, but, rather more subtly, to state firmly and patriotically that their designation as a Guards unit proved that the old story about the Second being a jinxed, doomed unit, wasn’t true.
Of course, denial spreads the word faster than formal confirmation, and everybody wanted to know what this was about a jinx.
M’chel let those denials percolate for three or four days, while Spada and Grok prepared the next step.
This was the acquisition of a perfectly normal lifter cab.
It was packed with explosive, and had a simple autopilot installed.
At just midday meal the next day, the taxi went screaming over the Second’s outer posts, and slammed into an enlisted mess hall just as it began serving.
Riss had coldly picked the lower ranks dining area, because they were the most innocent, and therefore the most likely to feel incredibly wronged and complain loudly.
The disaster killed eighty-three, wounded ninety. The disparity from the usual killed-wounded ratio was due to the sudden flash fire that shot through the debris after the explosion.
Now the rumors of the Second’s hard luck spread more rapidly, particularly when one of their field grade officers had the insensitivity to shrug the deaths off as having affected “only nonvital personnel.”
Grok was turned loose next.
Spada inserted him behind a hill about three kilometers beyond the main gate to the Second’s base.
He didn’t bother bamboozling the primitive security on the perimeter fences, but slipped through the gate itself, deep in the night, as the gate guards were blinded by an entering convoy of lifters.
It was very foolish, frequently lethal, to judge Grok’s stealthiness by his bulk.
He knew, from studied aerial holos pirated from Khazia libraries, just where to go — the division commander’s quarters.
There were two sentries in front.
They died, very quickly and silently, but messily.
Grok went through the front door, not bothering to unlock it, although that would have been simple. He thought it would be more impressive if the heavy, solid door was merely smashed in half.
He left as quickly as he’d entered.
Behind him, the division commander’s body sprawled outside his bedroom, his head still rolling two meters away. In the bedroom, a distinctly underage officer cadet, squalled loudly.
Now the rumors of jinx spread more rapidly.
A pair of outside agents of the People, with access to the holos, made sure reports were carefully written and given prominent play, denying the existence of the Second’s bad luck.
The new division commander snorted about the jinx nonsense, and was quite busy preparing the unit for a major war game, although no one could figure why such a game, which posited the invasion of Khazia by two divisions of the People, would have anything to do with the planned invasion of the People’s worlds.
Nevertheless, the Second moved into the field, lock, stock and lister bag.
Division Commander II prided himself on being “one of the troops,” and so had a small bubble shelter instead of the usual prefab palace most generals favored when they actually had to go into the boondocks and associate with their smelly underlings.
He also traveled by standard small lifter, with only a pair of aides and a single bodyguard/driver.
One of the People’s agents put a beeper on that lifter so, on the second day of the problem, as confusion was beginning to settle toward normalcy, it was easy to track DCII as he hastened to solve the latest catastrophe which one of his previous brilliances had most likely caused.
His lifter was just outside a unit’s position when it inexplicably grounded.
His driver had landed at the general’s order when the commander saw what appeared to be a strange animal in the brush.
Grok had deliberately allowed himself to be seen by the man, just as he allowed himself to be seen by the line soldiers as he roared out from cover, slaughtering the driver and one aide in his onrush, and smashing the second aide as he tried to protect his leader.
Grok ripped the blaster out of the hands of the general, lifted him high, then, while the man was screaming, tore his throat out with his fangs.
Then he vanished back into the woods, spitting to get rid of the unpleasant taste.
The troops went looking for an animal, not someone who hurried to a hidden lifter and was kilometers away before the first searcher reached the brush line.
Two generals murdered in four days — the Second Division was in a bit of shock. Or, at least, its officers were.
The shock was worsened the next day.
The assistant division commander was ordered to take charge of the formation while a suitable official leader with the appropriate number of stars was found, and cozened into accepting appointment to command of the Second.
The troops were told to hold in their encampments and send out patrols looking for the monster. When the new general had assumed command with the appropriate amount of ceremony, the war games could rebegin.
That day, just after the noon meal, an aircraft swooped across the division camps.
It looked like a standard Alsaoud military medium lifter, but for some reason its markings had been hurriedly obscured with what looked like mud.
The lifter sprayed a thin mist as it overflew the camps, then disappeared.
No one had an explanation for who the lifter belonged to.
Redon Spada had found the near-duplicate of the military model in a seedy back-alley lot, bought it with high-quality counterfeit credits, and had it hurriedly painted like it was service issue, then muddy paint sprayed over the paint. He wasn’t about to offer explanations, nor say just what slough he’d sunk the craft into after its single mission.
Soldiers started getting sick with a rather disgusting virus that caused a high fever, spots and diarrhea. Almost no one died, but everyone who caught the bug wished they would.
The only fatality was Division Commander III, who supposedly died of the virus, although rumors insisted that his body was found in his rather comfortable field quarters in several parts.
Morale in the Second Division was at rock bottom.
It was bad enough not only for other units to hear of the Second’s jinx, but wonder if bad luck was contagious.
The Alsaoud Command and Cerberus realized that the Second was up there with leprosy when it came to morale-building, to the point that the glooms were communicable.
Walter Nowotny was getting angrier and angrier, trying to figure out what the hell was going on, particularly the repeated stories about some strange goddamned monster stalking the Second.
He even thought for an instant that this nonsense might somehow be the doing of that damnable Star Risk. They did have a resident alien, one who’d worked briefly for Cerberus. But the records showed he’d been no more than an electronics technician, hardly the mobile slaughterhouse the Second was terrified of. Besides, the descriptions of the monster were of a creature far larger than this Amanandrala Grokkonomonslf. Nowotny looked elsewhere, found nothing, and assumed it was a mass delusion.
But something had to be done.
The first step that Fearless Leaders normally take to make the troopies happy is to provide alcohol or drugs in staggering amounts for free.
It may appear cynical, but it seems to work a lot of the time.
It didn’t, in this case. Big bubble shelters were flown in, barrels of beer rolled up, and the troops were given a stand-down to celebrate a freshly made up holiday honoring something the Second did before living memory.
It didn’t work very well.
First, Grok made a couple of flashing appearances, was seen by panicking troops, then vanished before anyone could even fire a shot in his general direction.
The beer had been adulterated by agents with a variety of interesting, tasteless liquids. Some made the drinker evacuate his bowels, others caused parabolic vomiting, still another simply turned the teeth bright magenta.
The soldiers started grumbling, then someone took a swing at someone else.
Several satisfactorily bloody riots ensued, and the military police came in with truncheons.
Someone didn’t like it, and had a few live rounds and a weapon to voice his discontent.
The MPs retaliated, and some thirty-four soldiers were wounded, only one fatally.
M’chel now held her breath, waiting to see if the Alsaoud Command responded as she hoped they would. She was assuming they were no brighter than the average set of generals and admirals.
They did just what she’d hoped.
For some reason, soldiers above a certain rank really believe that everyone loves a parade.
Maybe spectators do, but the poor bastards who’ve got to spitshine their very souls and march up and down and back and forth in endless rehearsal getting screamed at, do not.
It’s worse when it’s a pass in review, with full equipment, since that means not only do the crunchies have to be polished and buffed, but so does their gear and vehicles.
And so the Second washed, brightened, and burnished in a state of numb rage. A handful of sensible soldiers, given a bit of luck and an opportunity, went over the fence until the goddamned mess was over.
The others massed, sullenly, on a great plain with their lifters and ships and such.
It would be a famous show.
And to especially honor the Second Guards Divis
ion, Premier Toorman and a very high-ranking advisor from the Alliance itself would attend, plus full media attention.
After the pass in review, there’d be a serious crowd-pleaser — a live-fire demonstration of the Second’s, and its supporting arms’, awesome capabilities.
M’chel heard this gleefully, and seriously considered renewing her faith in a handful of gods she’d abandoned over the years.
Chas Goodnight needed no more of a kick-start.
The day before the review, he entered one of the ancillary fields where an aerial support battalion was based.
He was quite familiar with the small, in-atmosphere tactical support craft there, derived from Alliance ships he’d trained on years ago.
He slid to the flight line, where rows of attack ships waited. Since there weren’t enough barracks to go around, the pilots and crews of the ships had been ordered to sleep aboard, and mess from iron rations, which also didn’t help morale, already lowered by the seemingly endless preparations for this goddamned parade.
Sentries were posted on the flight lines, but as a formality — for who, a dozen kilometers from the field, would bother with anyone in this unit?
Goodnight would and did, not even needing to go bester to slip past the guards to the small, four-man ship he’d chosen at random.
He triggered bester as he went through the ship’s lock.
In a blur, he killed the two crewmen who were awake, then the two sleeping men.
Goodnight had tried to deal with them as neatly as possible, since he’d be in the company of corpses for a while.
He dragged the bodies into a cargo room, closed it off, then sat down to consider the ship’s command computer.
The parade instructions for the parade were not only at hand, but neatly printed off.
He studied the orders, then the ship controls.
Everything was most straightforward and well-remembered.
There was only one glitch, early the next morning, when the ship’s section leader wanted to come aboard.
Goodnight let him in, broke his neck, and put him with the other bodies, hoping no one would come looking. Or, that if they did, they would look somewhere else.