Battlecry: Sten: Omnibus One (Sten Omnibus)

by Allan Cole, Chris Bunch

  ‘I know one punch, little man,’ the giant said. ‘Do you want to play it with me?’

  ‘Aye. Ah do thae,’ Alex said.

  ‘You go first.’

  ‘Nae, m’lad,’ Alex said, a grin flickering across his broad face. ‘Y’be’t thae applicant. Ah be’t thae mon. Gie i’ y’best shot.’

  Without warning Kurshayne swung, an air-whistling roundhouse punch that caught Alex in his ribs. The punch tumbled him, rolling and spinning back against the couch, the couch crashing over, and then Alex slammed flat against the wall. He lay motionless for a moment.

  Then he picked himself up and came back. ‘Aye, tha be ae braw slug, m’lad,’ he said. ‘B’nae i’ be’t mae turn.

  ‘An’ Ah be’t fair. Sportin’, likit. Ah gie y’warnin’. Nae likit yae, wha hie me ae sucker punch ae i’ y’be’t ae Campbell. Nae, Ah w’hit ye, mon.

  ‘But since Ah want ye in m’troop, Ah nae will damage y’ severe’t. So Ah tell y’ whae Ah’ll be hittint y’. Ah be strikit y’ ae th’ center chest. Light-like, f’r Ah nae want y’ hurt.’

  Sten had never heard Alex’s dialect so thick. Correctly, he figured Kilgour was angry. Sten decided he was sorry for what was about to happen. Illogically, he was starting to like the dumb giant.

  Kurshayne braced for the punch.

  Instead, Alex delicately reached forward and picked Kurshayne up with … clottin’ hell, one hand, Sten realized … and lifted him clear of the ground. And then, seemingly casually, threw Kurshayne.

  Two hundred kilos of Kurshayne, as if the laws of gravity had been put on hold, flew through the air. Hit the wall – two meters off the ground – and the wall went, crumbling into plas destruction in the corridor outside.

  Kurshayne pinwheeled after the wall, out into the corridor. And, moving very, very fast, Alex went after him. He bent over the semi-conscious relic and near whispered.

  ‘Nae, nae, y’wee mon. Y’hae ae job, Ah reck. But y’ll no playit thae game twice, Ah reck.’

  Kurshayne fogged his way to his feet. ‘Nossir.’

  ‘Ah’m nae sir. Ah’m nae but aye sergeant. Yon Sten, h’be’t sir.’

  Kurshayne struggled into rigid attention. ‘Sorry, Sergeant.’

  ‘Ah ken y’be’t sorry, lad,’ Alex crooned. ‘Nae, y’be’t off aboot i’, an’ Ah wan’ y’back here in ten hours. clean’t up an’ ready t’fight.’

  ‘Sir!’

  And Kurshayne saluted and was gone. Sten and Egan were still gaping as Alex turned.

  ‘W’ noo hae 201 soldiers, Colonel Sten,’ he said. Then staggered to the console and snagged Sten’s bottle.

  ‘Clottin’ hell!’ Alex groaned. ‘Yon lad nie near kilt me! Th’ things Ah do’t frae th’ Emp—th’ cause!’

  Chapter Fifteen

  And I had a great future as a cybrolathe operator, Sten thought mournfully, looking at his assembled troops. They were standing in what could only be called Parade Motley on the landing ground, just in front of the Bhalder.

  Oh, Mahoney, I will get you, Sten groaned. There were Vosberh’s troops. Unshaven, unbathed, but well armed and, Sten conceded, fairly lethal.

  Beside them, giving many hostile looks, were Ffillips’ commandos. Spit and polish.

  There were other one- or two-at-a-time pickups and Egan’s crew of studious-looking Lycée kiddies.

  Why me all the time? Sten wondered.

  Beside Sten were flanked Vosberh, wearing a simple brown uniform, Ffillips in her personally designed dress uniform (suspiciously close to Guards full-dress), Alex, and Kurshayne.

  Kurshayne had evidently decided he was cut out to be Sten’s personal bodyguard and had equipped himself` with what he thought was an ideal weapon.

  As far as Sten could tell, since Kurshayne refused to let anybody examine it, it was a full-auto projectile weapon, with about a one-gauge barrel.

  Sten knew that no human could fire it without being destroyed by the recoil. Whether Kurshayne could do it was still a moot point.

  Oh. Mahoney, Sten thought again.

  Then, business. One pace forward.

  ‘UNIT …’

  ‘COMP’NEE … COMP’NEE …’

  The shouts rang across the wind of the landing field.

  ‘Unit commanders. Take charge of your troops. Move them into the ships.

  ‘We’re going to war!’

  And then nothing but the howl of the wind and the drumbeat of bootheels.

  And then nothing but Sten looking at Alex and both of them knowing why they’d chosen the profession they did.

  And so, without banners, without bugles, they went off to war …

  BOOK THREE

  TAKING THE BLADE

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Jann Citadel hugged the plateau crest of the high, snow- and ice-covered mountain. Three sides of the mountain dropped vertically. Only the fourth featured a machine-carved road that S-snaked up toward the crest. A road with manned and electronic guardposts every few dozen meters.

  The Citadel was more than just the theological center of the warrior faith/caste – it was also the training ground for all Jann cadets. And it was Sten’s first target.

  The Citadel had been located on a not especially welcoming world, near the tip of a northern continent. It promised, by its very appearance, monastic dedication, asceticism, and lethality – quite an apt summary of the Jann beliefs, in fact.

  Sten and his 201 mercenaries had been able to insert easily, using the talents and the ground-lighters of the Bhor.

  Now they lay crouched at the foot of one vertical precipice, the sheerest that Sten could pick from the vidpics aerial recon had taken. The sheerest and the least likely to be guarded, especially now.

  Far above him, atop the crest, the Citadel itself sprawled on the plateau. It closely resembled a black cephalopod, with its humped center section and, finger-sprawling out from the central bulk, the four tube barracks that held the Jann cadet cells.

  Lights were on in the barracks, red against the snow. And, in Sten’s mind, he could see the top of the ‘hump’ – the massive building containing the temple itself, gymnasium, arena, and administrative offices, see its weather membranes ‘breathing’ in and out as they adjusted and readjusted the environment within. Even from the base of the cliff, Sten could see one of the membranes, glowing yellow-red from the lights inside and gently moving in and out like a living thing.

  He pushed out of his mind the fear response that the entire Citadel was a living, brooding entity – an entity one of the mercenaries had immediately dubbed ‘the Octopus.’

  Snow crunched behind Sten as Alex moved beside him. A second crunch as the ever-present Kurshayne snow-crawled up on his heels.

  Sten tapped Alex on his shoulder and passed him the night glasses, then turned to check the rest of the mercenaries on the rock-strewn hillside behind him.

  The 200 men and women wore white thermal coveralls and were snuggled deep into snowbanks. Sten’s practiced eye could pick out a movement here and there, but only because he knew where to look. Not only were the troops white-cammied, but so were their weapons and faces.

  Which is why Sten started slightly when Alex lowered the night glasses and looked at him, peering through large, white eyes. White-camo contact lenses were very hard to get used to.

  Sten smiled about the obvious joke about holding your fire until you can see … Alex raised a questioning eyebrow over a pure white eyeball. Sten covered, smile gone. He didn’t think even Alex would appreciate the joke under the circumstances.

  Which were: the Citadel. A deadly octopus in profile. On top of a sheer mountain. With black spots of soft shale where even snow couldn’t stick. And where it did, the rock was old and rotten. Blanketed with ice and snow. Sten wasn’t worried about the crumbling rock. That he could handle. But the ice sheets were waiting, ten-meter-long razorblades.

  Sten shuddered.

  Alex took one more look at the kilometer-high cliff. Leaned close to his side.

&nb
sp; ‘Ah dinna lovit tha heights.’ the heavy-worlder confessed in a whisper. ‘Aye lads bounce whenit tha fall. Th’ Kilgours squash.’

  Sten chuckled and Alex whispered into his throat mike for Vosberh and Ffillips to come forward.

  Expertly the two swam-crawled through the snow until they were on either side of him. Sten gave his last instructions. He was pleased when the two professionals didn’t even raise an eyebrow as they saw the climb that faced them. Ffillips, however, put in a word for bonus money, and Sten shushed her.

  ‘I want to hit them where it hurts,’ he reminded. ‘The chapel. A legitimate target. Torch it. Melt it.

  ‘Ffillips? Your group has responsibility for the chapel. Vosberh – the barracks. They should be empty now. Blow them to hell for a diversion.

  ‘If you see an officer – a teacher – in your way, kill him.’

  He paused for emphasis.

  ‘But if you can help it, don’t kill any cadets.’

  Vosberh hissed something about baby roaches growing up to be ...

  ‘They’re kids,’ Sten reminded. ‘And when the war’s over. I’d rather face some ticked-off diplomats than angry parents or brothers and sisters with short-range murder in their thoughts.’

  Vosberh and Ffillips – very much the professionals – remembered wars they had won and coups they had then lost, and agreed with Sten’s reasoning.

  The cadets – unless some got in their way – were not valid military targets.

  There was a thump at Sten’s boot. He looked back and saw Kurshayne. The man had Sten’s pack of climbing gear. Sten sighed. Accepted.

  ‘All right, you can come with me,’ he said.

  Still, as he crawled forward to begin his climb, he felt a little bit better.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It was a temple of guttering torches. Deep shadows and oiled gold. A thousand young Jann voices were lifted in a slow military chant generations old. And the thousand-cadet procession moved in measured, slow-motion paces through the temple. The cadets were dressed in ebony-black uniforms, with white piping.

  At the head of the procession was the color guard, carrying two heavy golden statues. One was of Talamein. The other was Ingild, the man the Janns called the True Prophet. Mathias and his father, Theodomir, would have called him many other things. True, or Prophet, even, would not be among them.

  The procession was in celebration of the Jann Sammera: the Time of Killing. In Lupus Cluster history, it was a revenge raid by a small band of Jann. They hit one of the small moons off Sanctus that keep the potentially great tides in check, and slaughtered everyone. And then, trapped, they waited for the inevitable reprisal from Sanctus. When it came, there were no Jann survivors. A bloody historical note of which the Jann were immensely proud.

  The procession moved through the temple, past enormous statues of Jann warriors and the flags of the many planets the Jann had converted or destroyed. The temple was the Jann holy of holies.

  The cadets moved out of the temple, and huge metal doors slid closed as the last row of men passed. Then the cadets slow-marched down a hallway so enormous that in the summer months humidity brought condensed ‘rain,’ into an equally huge dining room.

  In the dining room, the color guard marched straight forward down the main aisle, toward the huge stage and podium where the black-uniformed guest of honor and the school’s military faculty waited.

  The others shredded off and wove black and white ribbons through the long aisles created by the dining tables set for a thousand young men who were soon to join the Jann.

  As the color guard approached the stage, General Khorhea – the guest of honor – and the hundred or so faculty members rose. From the wall behind them came a hiss as a twenty-meter-wide flag dropped from the ceiling. It was black with a golden torch.

  Gen. Khorhea raised a hand. ‘S’be’t.’

  And the color guard bowed, wheeled, and then began the slow march back to the chapel. Where they would return the statues to their positions and then quietly filter back for the celebration.

  General Suitan Khorea despised personal ostentation. Except for silver-threaded shoulderboards and a thin silver cord on his left arrn, he wore no clues that he was the head of the Jannisars. In his prayers he reminded himself often of the line from one of the chants of Talamein – ‘O man, find not pride of place or being/But gather that pride onto the Glory that is Talamein/For only there is that pride other than idle mockery.’

  Mostly Khorea was proof that, even in a rigid theocratic dictatorship, a peasant can rise to the top. All it takes is certain talents. In Khorea’s case, those talents were an absolute conviction of the Truth of Talamein; physical coordination; a lack of concern for his own safety; total ruthlessness.

  Khorea had first distinguished himself as sub-altern when a Jann patrol ship had stopped a small ship. Possibly it was a lost trader, more likely a smuggler.

  Khorea’s commander would have been content merely to kill all the men on the ship as an object lesson. But before he could issue orders, Khorea’s boarding detachment had slaughtered the crew and then, to guard against accusations of profiteering, had blown up the ship.

  Fanaticism such as that earned its reward – a rapid transfer by Khorea’s unsettled CO to an outpost located very close to the ‘borders’ of Ingild’s side of the cluster, a transfer probably made in the hope that Khorea would make himself into a legend in somebody else’s territory. Hopefully a posthumous legend.

  But luck seems to select the crazy, and, in spite of the best efforts of the Janns’ enemies, Khorea survived, even though he inhabited a body that looked as if a careless seamstress had practiced hem-stitching on it for a few months.

  In his rise, Khorea had gathered behind him a group of young Jann officers, either as fanatical or as ambitious as he was.

  Eventually Khorea ended as ADC to the late General of the Jann, who one evening had confessed to Khorea that he was struggling against a certain … desire … for one of his own orderlies. Before he finished speaking, the man was dead, Khorea’s dress saber buried in his chest.

  Khorea faced the court-martial with equanimity. The officers on the court were trapped. Either they executed Khorea, which would make him a convenient martyr for his following, or they blessed him and …

  … And there were no likely replacements to head the Jannisars.

  The answer was inevitable.

  Khorea returned to the court-martial room not only to find his dress saber’s hilt pointing at him (point would have meant conviction), but lying beside it the shoulderbars of a Jann general.

  Now the Jann priest’s voice droned on. He was nearing the end of the traditional reading of the Book of the Dead, the list of the casualties of Sammera. The cadets were drawn up at attention. Except for the priest’s voice, the hall was silent. Finally the priest finished and closed the ancient, black-leather-bound book.

  General Khorea stepped forward, a golden chalice in his hand. He raised it high in a toast. As one, the thousand cadets wheeled to their tables and raised identical chalices high.

  ‘To the lesson of Sammera,’ he roared.

  ‘To the Killing,’ the cadets roared back.

  The liquid in the chalices burst into flames, like so many small torches. And, in unison, Khorea and the cadets poured the flaming alcohol down their throats.

  Sten craned his neck back, looking up the sheer cliff of ice that towered above him. It was a near-impossible climb and therefore, Sten reasoned, the route where the Jann were most vulnerable.

  He looked at Alex and shrugged, as if to say: ‘It ain’t gonna get any easier.’

  Alex held out one hand. Sten stepped into it, and the heavy-worlder lifted him straight up. Sten scrabbled for his first handhold, found a crack in the ice, jammed a fist into it and the spiked crampon points into the ice, and began his climb.

  The most important thing, he reminded himself, was rhythm. Slow or fast, the climb had to be constant steady motion upward. After all th
ese centuries, science had done little to improve the art of climbing. It was still mostly hands and feet and balance. Especially on ice. His eyes scanned for the next hold, so he would always know where he was going before he committed himself. If Sten trapped himself on the cliff, with no way down, in the morning, when the Jann troops found him, he would be a very embarrassed corpse.

  Then he reached the first nasty part of the climb, a yawning expanse of glass-smooth ice. He looked quickly about, searching for handholds, already making his decision and digging out the piton gun.

  Sten aimed the gun at the ice and pulled the trigger. Compressed air hissed as the gun fired the piton deep into the cliff face. Quickly he snapped the carabiner onto the piton, laced the incredibly lightweight climbing rope through it, and spooled the rope from his climbing harness down to Alex.

  Climbing thread would have been far easier to manipulate, but it was not suitable for a main rope 203 men would have to use. Alex clipped his jumars onto the rope and slid up after Sten.

  Sten set the next piton, and then another, weaving his way up the cliff. By the time he reached the end of the sheet ice, he was tiring. But he kept climbing, thankful for the massive amount of calories he’d choked down before landing.

  Sten found a long, slender crack in the ice and jammed his way into and up it. He took advantage of the brief respite to suck in huge gulps of air to steady his trembling muscles. Still, he was constantly watchful, making sure that he kept his weight balanced over his feet. Behind him, he sensed Alex and Kurshayne.

  And then it happened. Just as he was reaching up for the next handhold … straining … straining … one spiked boot broke through rotten ice and Sten was scrabbling for a hold and then he was falling … falling … falling. He tried to relax, waiting for the shock when the rope brought him up short of the first piton.

  There was a jolt. And then a ping as the piton pulled out, and then he was falling again and … and … crack. The next piton held, and Sten was slammed up against the face of the cliff.