Sten

by Chris Bunch

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  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Frick and Frack arced back and forth, high above the deck of the Bravo Project lab. Hugging the ceiling, they'd gone straight down the entrance corridor, above the security teams.

  They hadn't been seen by human eyes. There were, after all, no birds or even rodents on Vulcan. What the human eye doesn't understand, it doesn't see.

  * * * *

  The security watch officer eyeballed his fingernails. He'd chewed them to the quick last shift. And he'd systematically racked every patrolman within twenty meters. There wasn't anything to do but sweat and count his problems.

  And he had a lot of them. Guarding a lab whose purpose he had no idea of, for openers. Plus the clottin’ Migs were going crazy—his best off-shift buddy had been found with a half-meter glass knife through his chest. And now he'd been tagged that Baron Thoresen was on his way down.

  The last thing he needed was the computers being as berserk as they were, he thought. He glanced at the screen. Experimentally slammed it with one ham fist. Didn't change things. It still indicated flying objects were inside the lab proper.

  The watch officer wondered why he'd taken the Company's job. He could have been very comfortable staying on as head of secret police on his homeworld. He looked up at the two Techs trundling down the corridor, ‘bout clottin’ time, he decided.

  The beefy first-class Tech swaggered into his office and lifted a lip. Clottin'joy, the watch officer thought. I gotta get a deesldyke. All I need now is hemorrhoids.

  He smiled sympathetically at the poor third-class Tech behind Ida. Poor kid, he thought. Shows you. Bet that first-class clot tried somethin', an'her assistant didn't go for it, so the dyke makes her lug the toolboxes.

  "'Bout what I'd expect,” Ida snarled. “Computer cracks up, an’ all you can do is sit there puttin” your thumbs up your nose.” She turned to Bet. “Men!"

  The watch officer decided it was going to be a very long shift. He tried to keep it formal. “We're getting readouts,” he began.

  "I know what you're gettin',” Ida said. “We got terminals too.” She eyed the watch officer. “I tol’ you, kid, it'd turn out to be somethin’ simple."

  "What do you mean?” the security officer asked.

  "That bracelet. You hang that much alloy near a terminal, it's gonna get crazy. Figures."

  "But that's the automatic screen. We've always worn them. And nothin's happened before."

  "Yah. An’ those clottin’ Migs haven't tied up the computers before either. You tellin’ me every one a’ you patrol geeks wears them?"

  "Yes."

  "Dumb, dumber, dumbest. Get ‘em out here."

  "Huh?"

  "Everybody on the shift, stupid. Maybe this one'll be easy, an’ the only problem is somebody's got a bracelet that's signaling wrong."

  "We can't call in every patrolman,” the watch officer started. Ida shrugged.

  "So great. Me an’ cutie here'll go on back and file that we couldn't properly evaluate the situation. Sooner or later somebody, else'll come around and try to fix that computer."

  The officer eyed the screen. The flying objects were still there. Looked at the third-class Tech, who slipped him a sympathetic and very warm smile. Made a decision. Turned to the com and keyed it open.

  "Third shift—no emergency—all officers report immediately to central security. I repeat, all officers report immediately to central security."

  * * * *

  Bet slipped two bester grenades from her pouch and stood up. Bravo Project's security officers were crowded inside the small office. Ida stood near the door.

  "This everybody?"

  The watch officer nodded.

  Bet hit the timer on the grenades and dived for the door. She landed on top of Ida.

  The two grenades detonated in a purple flash.

  The Bravo Project patrolmen crumpled. Bet rolled off Ida and helped her up. Ida wheezed gently, muttered something in Romany, and shrilly whistled between her fingers.

  Sten and the other members of the team hurried into sight, running toward them.

  "We'll hold the back door. You stand by.” Ida stepped inside and lifted the toolbox tray, extracted two folding-stocked willyguns, readied them, and tossed one to Bet as Sten and the others ran into the Bravo Project lab.

  Meanwhile, Ida had turned the watch commander over. “What're you doing?” Bet asked curiously.

  "Private revenge,” Ida replied, planting one hoof firmly in the unconscious man's groin. “I suspect he thought nasty things about me."

  She lifted her other foot off the ground. Bet winced and turned back to look down the long empty corridor.

  * * * *

  "Wouldnae it be simpler,” Kilgour suggested, “to just blow th’ whole shebeen?"

  "Clot, yes,” Sten said. “But if we did"—he gestured up to the ceiling—"we'd be soyasteaking all those Techs up there.” He grinned. “Damfino why I'm stickin” up for ‘em."

  "Because,” Doc said, “mission instructions were to obliterate this lab with minimum loss of life.” He waggled tendrils at Alex. “Ignore him. Simple minds find simple solutions."

  Alex ignored Doc. “Ah gie ye pocket-size destruction, i’ ye'll tell me where Ah begin."

  The lab ceiling lofted high above them. High enough, Sten decided, for the hangarlike building to have its own weather. Frick and Frack curvetted among the ceiling lights. In the middle of the lab was a small space freighter, its cargo doors agape. Mysterious apparatus sat around it on the main floor. Doors opened off the sides into rabbit warrens of minor labs.

  "Set charges on any information storage file,” Sten decided. “Any computer. And any piece of equipment that doesn't look familiar."

  "Finest kind,” Jorgensen moaned as he shouldered back into his pack. “That means he's gonna shoot anything that don't look like a sheep."

  Alex wagged a meaty finger. “Frae yon teddy bear Ah take abuse a’ that nature. But no frae a man wi’ his feet still i’ the furrows."

  And they went to work.

  * * * *

  Thoresen, in spite of his fascination with weaponry and martial arts, had never been in combat. Nevertheless, as he entered the corridors that led to Bravo Project, he had sense enough to drop back and put two squads of the fifty-strong patrol company in front of him. Thoresen was still analytical enough to realize he was in a response situation. He might, he considered as he unobtrusively dropped back in the formation, still be running late.

  * * * *

  Bet wiped sweaty hands on the plas willygun stock. “Deep breaths,” Ida advised calmly. “Worry about them ten at a time.” She suddenly realized what she'd said, and chuckled. “On the other hand, do you think a surrender flag would be a better idea?"

  Bet pulled the willygun's trigger all the way back. The gun spat AM2 slugs out into the packed mass of oncoming patrolman.

  Screams. Chaos. Ida thumbed a grenade and over-armed it down the corridor, then heaved her bulk under the deck plating as the riot guns roared.

  Bet dropped the empty tube from her gun and slammed a new one home. She was midly surprised that she wasn't scared when she watched the patrolman come on.

  "Ida!"

  "Go,” the tubby Rom said, without taking her eyes off the corridor.

  She squeezed the trigger.

  "If I was with the Delinqs,” Bet managed, “Id say the time has come to haul butt."

  "But you ain't. You're with a big-time Mantis Section team. So what we're gonna do is haul butt."

  Ida rolled out the door, finger locked on the trigger, then through the entrance to the labs. Bet slid after her. The two women turned, and sprayed down the corridor, then dashed toward the main lab.

  * * * *

  Alex sang softly to himself as he unspooled the backup firing-circuit wire back toward the center of the lab.

  "Ye'll set on his white hause-bane, An I'll pike out his bonny blue een; Wi’ ae lock o’ his gowden hair
. We'll theek our nest when it goes bare..."

  Clipped the wire and fed it into the det box. Ran his firing circuitry through his mind, and glanced at Sten. Sten high-signed him, and Alex closed the det key.

  "Ye ken we best be on our way. An hour an’ yon labs'll be a mite loud for comfort."

  Then Ida and Bet doubled into the room. Ida crouched next to the door and sprayed down the corridor.

  "The patrol,” Bet shouted. Slugs spattered through the lab doors, and the team members went flat, scuttling for cover. Ida emptied her magazine and scrambled toward the ship.

  The team formed a semicircle perimeter just before the freighter. Sten ducked behind a large machine resembling a drill press as the first of Thoresen's troops burst into the lab.

  "Can you stop the charges?” Sten shouted.

  Alex cut down the patrolmen inside the lab, then said calmly, without turning his head, “Ah may've outsmarted mesel’ on this one, lad. Each an’ every one a’ those charges I fitted a antidefuse device to."

  "Sixty minutes?"

  "We hae"—Alex checked his watch—"nae more'n fifty-one now."

  * * * *

  Tacships, darting in front of the Guard's assault transport, hammered through the drifting security satellites off Vulcan, not knowing that Bet's massacre of the Creche workers meant most of them were unmanned.

  Monitors moved straight for Vulcan. Over the past months, Thoresen had acquired some moderately forbidden antimissile devices and installed them in blisters on Vulcan's outer skin. The combination of the Guard's sudden attack and the half-trained status of their crews, however, meant only a few went into action before the monitors’ own missiles wiped the positions out.

  Obviously the normal canister-dispersing assault transports couldn't be used. Conventional freighters had been laboriously modified for clamshell-nose loading and unloading. Proximity detectors clacked, braking rockets shuddered the transports down to a few kilometers per hour, then still slower as the pilots dived out of the control positions, sealing locks behind them as the transports crashed through Vulcan's outer skin, half burying themselves into the world.

  The noses dumped away, and suited guardsmen spilled out. There was little resistance. None of the patrolmen inside had realized what could happen in time to suit up.

  The Guard smoothly broke down into small, self-contained attack squads and moved out. Behind them moved their semiportable maser support units and, around the ships, combat engineers went into action, closing off the vents in the outer skin.

  Resistance, compared to the Guard's usual opposition, was light. The Sociopatrolmen may have thought themselves elite thugs, but, as they discovered, there was a monstrous difference between larruping unarmed workers or crudely armed resistance fighters and facing skilled, combat-experienced guardsmen.

  * * * *

  Mercenaries make rotten heroes, Thoresen decided as he watched the Sociopatrol officer wave his squad forward. About half of them huddled even closer behind the improvised barricades Thoresen had ordered set up just inside the lab's entrance. The other half reluctantly came to their feet and moved forward.

  The Mantis troopers across the room opened fire. The fastest-moving patrolman made it three meters before legs exploded and he sprawled on the bodies of previous waves. The accountant part of Thoresen's brain shuddered at the tab. They have five men— Thoresen hadn't seen Frick and Frack, sheltered high above him on a beam—we came in with almost seventy. They've taken no casualties, and we've lost thirty patrolmen?

  The com at his belt buzzed. Thoresen lifted it. He listened, then hastily muted the speaker. Slowly going white as anger washed over him. Mostly at himself. He had assumed the Emperor wouldn't move in without some pretext, but the panicked communications center Tech had notified him that the guardsmen were already in. Including the rebels’ sectors, almost a third of Vulcan was taken.

  Thoresen slithered backward to the patrol officer. “We'll need more men,” he said. “I'll coordinate them from the security office.” The wall above his head exploded as he snaked his way out of the lab into the corridor.

  He got up and ran down the corridor toward the end. Stopped and took the tiny red control unit from his pocket, touched the fingerprint-keyed lock, and opened the unit. He tapped .15 onto the screen and closed the circuit, then forced himself to calmness as he walked away from the Bravo Project labs. A gravsled waited for him. “The Eye,” he ordered, and the sled lifted.

  Behind him, under the floor of the lab's main controls, the timer started on Thoresen's own Doomsday Device—a limited-yield single megaton atomic device that would obliterate the entire project lab and give Thoresen his only chance at remaining alive.

  * * * *

  Ida raked fire across the patrolmen's barricades and grunted.

  "Alex. You realize that if we stay pinned down and your charges go off, I'll never take you drinking again."

  Alex wasn't paying attention. His eyes were locked on one of the instruments from his demopack. “Sten. We hae worse problems tha’ the charges Ah set. Ah hae signs a’ some nuclear device's running."

  Sten blinked. “But where? Who set it?"

  "Ah dinnae. But best we find it. Mah name's Kilgour, nae Ground Zero.” He set the detector to directional, and swept its pickup around the room. “Ah, tha's so fine. Yon bomb's right across there.” He waved across fifty meters of open space toward the central controls.

  "Gie us some interestin’ thoughts,” he said. “Firs', we manage t'gae ‘crost that open space wi'out gettin’ dead. An’ then Ah hae the sheer fun a’ tryin’ a’ defuse it, wi'out knowin’ when it's gonna go."

  "Mad minute!” Sten used the aeons-old shout, and the team opened fire, spraying rounds at the barricades.

  Alex grabbed his pack and rolled to his feet. Running, zig-zag. Riot shells crashed around him.

  "Over there!"

  Jorgensen elbowed out of cover and sprayed the patrolman shooting at Alex. Exposed for only a moment, and the patrol officer fired. The riot round armed and exploded hallway across tne lab, and barbed flechettes whined out.

  Jorgensen's shoulder and arm were momentary pincushions, then the flechettes exploded. The Mantis troopers stopped shooting momentarily, but discipline took over, and they continued mad-minute fire. Sten watched Alex as he ripped the meter-wide floorplates up and slid down belowdeck.

  "Our broodmate, almost. Yes he—” and Frick and Frack launched themselves from the dome. Frack armed one of her tiny wingbombs and folded her wings.

  Plummeting in a vertical dive, she and Frick made no attempt to release. They died instantly as their tiny bodies slammed into the patrol officer. Then the bombs went off. The officer became a fireball, and shrapnel sliced through the squad crouched beside him.

  Sten saw Doc crawl from his hiding place near Jorgensen's body and move toward the dead man's willygun. The small panda awkwardly turned the willygun toward the barricades, then staggered up with the crushing—to him—weight. One hand pulled the trigger back and held it until the magazine went empty. More shock. Doc really isn't...

  Sten swept his sights over the barricade, and blew off the arm of a momentarily exposed patrolman. As the man reared up, screaming, Bet finished him.

  Alex knelt beside the nuclear device under the floor-panels. Ah ken on'y hope, he thought, the amat'oors who built this lashup hae some respectfr betters an gie some shieldin'. Ah c'd build a better A bomb then this be wi’ a crushin’ hangover an'mah teeth, he thought.

  The bomb was an idiot-simple device. A metal ball covered with what resembled modeling clay. Small, directional blasting charges studded the surface, hooked to a radio pickup and what Alex assumed was a timer.

  He started to yank the wires off, then squinted. There were extra wires he didn't see any purpose for. Booby traps, he decided.

  Thin, he thought, we'll gae the hard way. And began gently lifting each blasting charge out of its slot. Ah, wonder how many ae these Ah'll yank out afore this wee bomb blows?
He wiped sweat away.

  * * * *

  The driver pushed the sled wide open, and he and Thoresen ducked behind its shield. The sled flashed down the corridor, and the Mig resistance fighters ducked. They spun, and the few with riot weapons opened up.

  Far too late as the sled banked around the corridor and out of sight.

  Thoresen looked up. Ahead of him was the entrance to The Eye. He sighed in relief—It was still held by a detachment of Sociopatrolmen.

  * * * *

  "Ahhaeit! Ahhaeit!"

  Sten saw, out of the corner of his eye, Alex's muscular form bounce out of the below-floor space and bound across the open area. He dived and skidded across the last five meters into shelter. “Yon wee beastie's safe'n mah gran,” he said.

  "Leaving us only one problem."

  "Aye,” Alex said. “Figuring how we haul butt afore we're hoist wi’ our own petard."

  At least fifteen patrolmen were stubbornly holding behind the barricades. “I don't think,” Ida said, “they'd be much interested in a mutual truce."

  "Correct,” Doc added gloomily. “Prediction: Since they've been cut up so badly, they'll assume we're bluffing.” He ran another few rounds through the willygun that Sten had wedged into position for him. “Kilgour. You realize this is all your fault. Now I'll never be able to have my own practice."

  "Nae tha's an advantage Ah no considered,” Alex managed. “Tae many bloodybones aroun’ as ‘tis."

  Bet shook her head in disbelief.

  "Ida,” Sten said suddenly. “Come on. Alex. We're going to try a superbluff. Flank ‘em if they go for it."

  Ida rippled to her feet, and the two dodged out, toward the freighter's lock. Puzzled, Alex, Bet, and Doc opened up with covering fire.

  * * * *

  Sten wedged the flare to the freighter's control room window, and shoved the portable com into his coveralls. “You think they'll believe it?"

  Ida lifted her hands helplessly. “Rom don't believe in death songs. So we might as well go out trying."

  Sten checked his watch. Alex's charges had only ten minutes to go. He and Ida hurried to the lock and began firing at the patrolmen. Alex, momentarily unobserved, sidled out of the Mantis Section's improvised fort toward the patrolmen's flank.