Battlecry: Sten: Omnibus One (Sten Omnibus)

by Allan Cole, Chris Bunch

  Kirghiz was showing less the stoicism required of a man worthy of ruling the warrior Tahn than that of a man with worries far more serious than the indignity of being chauffeured in a troop transport. To begin with, less than one third of the Tahn council had agreed to the summit meeting, and those who had deserted him were the most adamantly anti-Empire, pro-war faction of the Tahn lords.

  Kirghiz’s control of the Tahn council was very tenuous, based on an uneasy agreement among a majority of the various Tahn factions. In his absence, he knew that the ruling council might very well change its entire structure.

  Still worse were the demands he was required to make on this, the first day of the summit. Several were deal-killers, conditions which Kirghiz knew, from his decades as a diplomat and power broker, the Emperor could not agree to.

  In fact, if he were the Emperor, Kirghiz would consider breaking off the meeting moments after hearing those demands.

  He prayed, to whatever gods he disbelieved in, that the Emperor was the consummate politician he should be, and would recognize the demands as nothing more than cheap grandstanding for the Tahn peasants and the peasant-mentality of those lords who proposed them. Because if the talks broke down, Kirghiz saw no other alternative than war between the Tahn worlds and the Empire.

  No computer he’d used could predict the outcome of such a war, but all of them showed one thing: Defeated or victorious, the Tahn worlds would be in economic ruin at the war’s end.

  Kirghiz being a Tahn, a Tahn warrior, and a Tahn lord, he did not even think about the other result to the talks breaking down – the certainty of his own trial for treason and execution if he returned without a treaty.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  If he survived the breakout attempt, which was very unlikely, Sten made a note to put the cost of replacing his mini-holoprocessor on somebody’s expense account. Because sure as death and dishonesty, Sten’s hobby machine was ruined.

  The holoprocessor was intended to create the illusion of very small – no more than 100-centimeters-high – figures, machines, or dioramas.

  Cursing his ineptness at electronics, Sten had replaced all of the holoprocessors’s fuses with heavy-duty wiring stripped from a shaving light and cut the safety circuits out. He had searched through the holoprocessor’s memory looking for some sort of horrible beastie to use, then laughed and input the description and behavior of the wonderful gurions he and Alex had met shortly before.

  That complete, the mini-processor was pushed to a few meters from the door. Its actuating switch was boogered to a remote, under Sten’s foot.

  Sten took the required position, directly across from the door opening, and then considered cheap lies. Sick? Nobody’s that dumb, not even a Praetorian. Hungry? Still worse. Then Sten was struck by inspiration. He tossed a vid-tape at the door and got an appropriate clunk.

  ‘What is it?’ came the guard’s suspicious voice.

  ‘I’m ready now.’

  ‘For clottin’ what?’

  Sten allowed puzzlement to enter his voice. ‘For Sr. Hakone.’

  ‘We have no orders on that.’

  ‘Hakone – you must have heard – told me to contact him immediately after our meeting.’

  ‘He didn’t tell us that.’

  Sten let silence work for him.

  ‘Besides, he’s given orders that no one is to see him until further notice.’

  ‘Kai Hakone,’ Sten said, ‘is in the Imperial com bunker. I think he would like to speak to me.’

  Any sergeant can fox a grunt, just as any captain can fox a sergeant. Or at least that’s the way it had worked when Sten was on duty in the field. He hoped things hadn’t changed much.

  ‘I’ll have to check with the sergeant of the guard,’ came the self-doubting voice.

  ‘As you wish. Sr. Hakone told me that he wanted nobody to know.’

  There was an inaudible mutter, which Sten’s hopeful mind translated as a conference, consisting of yeah, Hakone works things like that, nobody told us nothin’, that figures, what’th’clot we got to worry about if we just take him to a com center. And then the louder voice: ‘Are you back against the wall?’

  Sten held out his hands. Indeed, he was standing, obviously unarmed, against the far wall. The guard eyed him through the freshly drilled peephole, then unbolted and opened the door. He was three steps inside, his backups flanking him, when the two-meters-high image of the gurion rose from the holoprocessor and walked toward the guards.

  The reaction was instant – the guards’ guns came up, blasting reflexively and tearing hell out of the ceiling.

  Sten’s reaction was equally fast: he flat-rolled, hit, half rose over the self-destructing holoprocessor, his knife lanced before him, and then buried it in the chest of the lead guard.

  Sten used the inertia of the guard to stop himself, and the knife came out, splashing blood across the room, through the rapidly fading gurion. And Sten was pivoting, his left, knuckled hand smashing sideways, well inside the second guard’s rifle reach, into the man’s temple, while his right arm launched the knife into – and through – guard number three. Cartilage and bone cracked and broke in guard number two, and Sten recovered into attack position before any of the three corpses slumped to the floor.

  Wasting no time in self-congratulation, Sten catted down the corridor, heading for the palace’s catacombs.

  Kilgour, too, was trying moves.

  ‘Clottin’ Romans,’ he bellowed down the corridor. ‘Y’r mither did it wi’ sheep. Wi’ goats! Wi’ dogs! Clottin’ hell, wi’ Campbells!’ No response came from the guards outside the cell.

  He stepped back from the window and looked apologetically at the 120 Gurkhas sharing the huge holding cell with him.

  ‘Tha’ dinnae ken.’

  Kilgour’s plan, for want of a weaker word, was to somehow anger the guards so much they’d come into the cell to bust kneecaps. Alex hoped that, regardless of weapons, he and the 120 stocky brown men in the cell could somehow break out.

  Havildar-Major Lalbahadur Thapa leaned against the wall beside him. ‘In Gurhali,’ he offered helpfully, ‘you might try one pubic hair.’

  Alex laughed. ‘Now that’s the stupidest insult Ah’ve heard in years.’

  ‘Stupider, Sergeant Major, than calling someone a Campbell – whatever that is?’

  Without warning a section of seemingly solid stone in one wall slid open, and Sten was suddenly leaning nonchalantly against the far wall. ‘Sergeant-Major, I could hear your big mouth all the way down the corridor. Now if you’d knock off the slanging and follow me.

  ‘The arms room,’ Sten continued, as the Gurkhas recovered from their astonishment and bustled into the low tunnel Sten had emerged from, ‘is three levels up and one corridor across.’

  ‘Ah’m thinkit Ah owe y’ a pint,’ Alex managed, as he forced his bulk after the Gurkhas. Sten looked very knowing as he palmed the rock wall shut.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Years later, Sten and Alex would have a favorite pondering point. They could understand why the Emperor built Arundel. They could also understand why a man who believed in romance required a castle to have secret passages.

  The problem was the why for some of those passages. Both men thought it very logical that a backstairs went from the Imperior chambers to feed into the various bedchambers. Sten could even understand why the Emperor wanted a tunnel that provided secret egress from cells in the dungeon far below.

  They were never able to explain to everyone’s satisfaction why a few of the tunnels opened into a main passageway.

  Some of the former Praetorians involved in the revolt might have wondered, too, if they had survived. Most did not.

  A Praetorian paced down a seemingly doorless corridor, then a panel swung noiselessly open and a small grinning man swung a large knife that looked to be a cross between a machete and a small cutlass.

  There were only a little over a thousand Praetorians facing 120 wall-slinking Gurkhas.
The battle was completely one-sided.

  The reoccupation of the palace went quickly, silently, and very, very bloodily, as Sten deployed his troops in a slow circle, closing on the Imperial chambers, the communication center, and that one room with the com-link to the Emperor.

  The armored door to the com center was sealed, which offered no potential problem to the Gurkha squad deployed around it. The lance-naik already had his bunker-buster loaded and the rocket aimed at the door’s hinges when Sten kicked him aside. ‘Yak-pubes,’ he snarled in Gurhali, ‘do you know what would happen if you discharged that rocket in this passageway?’

  The lance-naik didn’t seem worried. Kilgour was already slapping together a shaped charge from the demopack he’d secured from the armory.

  ‘Best w’ be all hangin’t on th’ sides ae the corridor,’ he muttered, and yanked the detonator. Sten had barely time to follow the suggestion before the charge blew the door in. The Gurkhas, kukris ready, leaped in the wreckage but could find nothing to savage. The Praetorians inside had been reduced to a thin paste plastered across the room’s far wall. Kukri in hand, Sten ran past them, leapt, and his foot snapped into the thin door leading to the com room itself. He recovered and rolled in, low, to find himself looking at a shambles of crushed circuitry, looped power cables, and spaghetti-strung wires.

  And Kai Hakone, standing in an alcove away from the doorway, mini-willygun leveled at Sten.

  ‘You’re somewhat late, Captain.’ Hakone motioned with his free hand, eyes and gun never moving away from Sten.

  ‘You have the palace, but we have the Emperor. The com-link is destroyed. Before it can be rebuilt …’ and Hakone gestured theatrically. His eyes flickered away as he scanned for Sten’s accomplices – enough time for Sten to grab the end of a severed power cable and throw it into Hakone’s face.

  Hakone fried, and in his convulsions the willygun went off, its projectile whining away harmlessly as his flesh blackened then sizzled before the circuit-breakers popped and the body collapsed, leaving Sten in the ruins of the com room.

  ‘’Twould appear th’ only hope our Emp hae is us bairns doin’t o’er th’ hills t’ far away.’

  Sten nodded agreement, and then he and Alex were moving, headed for the palace’s command center.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  ‘… And lastly, the Aggrieved Party solemnly petitions His Imperial Majesty to publicly display his historic sense of justice, and deep feelings for individual tragedy, by recognizing the heroic and tragic death of Godfrey Alain. Alain was a man respected by …’

  Admiral Ledoh droned on and on, reviewing once again the demands of the Tahn. His audience consisted of two very bored men: the Eternal Emperor and Tanz Sullamora. Sullamora was fighting to stay awake, and doing his best to remain attentive. He kept watching the Emperor for a signal of his feelings. It was an impossible task. The Eternal Emperor’s face was a complete stone.

  ‘… and, by an agreed time, the Emperor will read, or have read, an agreed-upon message to his subjects, whose basic points should consist of—’

  ‘Enough,’ the Emperor said. ‘Clotting enough. I got their point. Now, the question is, what is our response?’

  Admiral Ledoh raised an eyebrow. ‘I was about to suggest that if we agree that we are completely familiar with their demands, we should have them analyzed by the diplomatic computer.’

  The Emperor laughed. ‘Relax, Ledoh. You’re starting to sound like the damned Tahn.’ He picked up a pot of tea and refilled three cups. ‘As for the diplomatic computer, forget it. I can run it down faster and more accurately. I’ve been doing this kind of thing for more centuries than I’ve got stars.’

  Sullamora nodded. ‘I was waiting for you to say just that, sir. And I hope that you don’t think me immodest to point out that I have had many years of experience with these people.’

  ‘That’s why I brought you along. They trust you about as much as they can trust any non-Tahn.’

  Sullamora smiled. ‘It isn’t trust, sir. On their part it is pure greed. After all, I am the only person you have sanctioned to trade with them.’

  ‘That’s why you’re my ace in the hole,’ the Emperor said. ‘Because you are gonna be my well-baited hook.’

  Sullamora hadn’t the faintest idea what the Emperor meant, but he recognized praise when he heard it, and smiled back graciously.

  ‘Now,’ the Emperor said, ‘let’s translate some of this into plain talk. They have five basic demands, and I believe all of them are negotiable.

  ‘Starting with number one: they want my Imperial contract to administer the Fringe Worlds. Translation: they want a gift of all those systems.’

  ‘You’ll say no, of course, sir,’ Sullamora puffed.

  ‘Sort of, but not quite.’

  Sullamora started to protest, but the Emperor held up a hand. The Emperor barely noticed that Ledoh had been strangely noncommittal.

  ‘Let me boil the rest down, and then I’ll tell you how we probably ought to play it.

  ‘Second demand: open immigration. My objection: they can pack the system with their own people. That’s a double giveaway.

  ‘Third: unconditional amnesty for Godfrey Alain’s people. No problem. Granted. I can always round up the real hard-core types later, on the quiet.

  ‘Fourth – and here’s another sticking point – they want to set up a free port in the Fringe Worlds.’

  ‘That has a lot of commercial possibilities,’ Sullamora said.

  ‘Sure. But it also means I’m supposed to increase their AM2 quota. Which means they can stockpile even more and give me much bloody grief down the line.

  ‘Last of all, they want me to publicly apologize for Godfrey Alain’s death.’

  Ledoh raised his head and gave the Emperor a thin smile. ‘You never apologize, do you, sir?’ he said bitterly. No one noticed his tone.

  ‘Clotting right. Once I start apologizing I might as well start looking around for someone to take my place.

  ‘Last time I admitted I was wrong, it cost me half my treasury.’

  ‘A firm no, sir,’ Sullamora advised. ‘Frankly, I don’t see a single point we can give on. My vote is to send them packing.’

  ‘On the surface, I would agree with you, Tanz. But let me run back what I propose. Then see what you think.’

  Sullamora was suddenly very interested. He could sniff a profit.

  ‘To start with, I flip their last point to my first.’

  ‘You mean the apology?’ Sullamora was aghast.

  ‘Sure. Except I do it this way. I propose that we build a memorial to Godfrey Alain. To commemorate his death and the many deaths on both sides of this whole mess.

  ‘Instead of an apology, I put it to them that all peace-loving peoples are responsible for this ongoing tragedy.

  ‘For frosting on the cake, I fund the whole clotting shebang. I build a memorial city on the Tahn capital world. A sort of Imperial trade center.’

  Sullamora grinned wolfishly.

  ‘In other words, you get to put a garrison on their home planet.’ The Eternal Emperor laughed loudly. ‘Good man! Not only that, but I guaran-clotting-tee you that every man and woman will be from my elite troops.’

  ‘Excellent! And if I know my Tahn, they’ll swallow the whole thing,’ Sullamora said.

  ‘Next: Instead of letting them administer the Fringe Worlds, I propose a peacekeeping force. Manned fifty-fifty.’

  Sullamora shook his head.

  ‘Not so fast, Tanz. I let them appoint the commander.’

  Sullamora considered. ‘But that would be the same as handing it over to them.’

  ‘It would appear that way. Except, since I provide the ships, and those ships would be commanded by my people, their top guy would be helpless when it came to any action.

  ‘And to copper my bet, I double the basic pay of my troops.’

  Sullamora especially liked this. ‘Meaning, compared to the Tahn, they’d be relatively rich. Also meaning, you�
�d be undermining the morale of the common Tahn soldiers.’

  He made a mental note to try this tactic in some of the more difficult trading posts under his corporate command.

  The Eternal Emperor continued. ‘Open immigration, fine.

  ‘Now, for the free port concept, I’ll agree. With the proviso that I get to appoint the man in charge.’

  ‘They’d have to go for that,’ Sullamora said. ‘After you let them pick the chief of the peacekeeping force. But who would you propose?’

  ‘You,’ the Emperor said.

  That rocked Sullamora back. The profits he had been sniffing were soaring to the sky.

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘You understand them, but your loyalties are to me. Therefore, I keep complete control of the AM2 supply. Through you, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’ Sullamora knew better than to cook his books as far as energy supplies were concerned.

  ‘Finally,’ the Emperor said, ‘I have a magnanimous proposal. It’ll really sound that way when the diplomatic fools get through flowering it up.

  ‘The Tahn’s main problem, besides being plain fascist clots, is they’re under heavy population pressure. That’s why we’re knocking heads in the Fringe Worlds.’

  Sullamora nodded.

  ‘Therefore, to take the pressure off, I agree to fund an exploration force. I will bankroll the entire thing and provide the ships and crews.’

  Even the silent chamberlain came forward for that one. ‘But what advantage—’

  ‘The ships will be ordered to explore away from the Fringe Worlds. If we find anything …’

  If there was to be any further expansion, the Tahn would be moving the other way. With luck, that pioneer rush to other systems would bleed some of the tension out of their military culture.

  ‘Well?’ The Eternal Emperor leaned back in his seat, looking for comments from his two key men.

  ‘It seems fine to me,’ the chamberlain said quickly.

  Sullamora, however, thought for a very long time. Then he slowly nodded. ‘It should work.’

  ‘I sure as clot hope so,’ the Eternal Emperor said ‘Because if it doesn’t—’