Revenge of the Damned (21 page)

Virunga started to attention as the door to the commandant's office swung open. A cold-faced guard nodded to his two fellows standing on either side of the prisoner. A hard object jammed into his side, and Virunga caught his breath from the pain. He pushed the annoyance from his mind, positioned his crutches, and creaked up on his haunches. He shifted position, jammed the crutches forward, and leaned into them with his massive weight. He swung his body at the door as if the guard were not there. It was not physical strength but the sheer force of Virunga's immense dignity that made the guard step aside.

The atmosphere in the room was forcedly mild. Avrenti was slumped in a chair in a corner, seemingly riffling through some minor papers. The commandant, Derzhin, was standing at the window, his back to Virunga, gazing outside as if witnessing something of mild interest. Virunga came to a halt in the middle of the room. He did not look left or right or hint for a chair to hold his crippled body. He just stood there, leaning into his crutches, waiting silently for the game to begin.

After a very long time, Derzhin turned away from the window. He seemed to note Virunga's presence for the first time.

"Ah, Colonel. Thank you for coming."

Virunga did not give him the pleasure of responding. But Derzhin did not seem to notice. He crossed to his desk and sat down. He picked up a printout, studied it, then replaced it. He tapped his fingers on his desk as if trying to remember why he had called Virunga.

"I have some information about the… uh… shall we say lost members of your command."

Despite himself, Virunga stiffened. It was as if an arctic wind had suddenly cut through the thick fur guarding his spine. "Yes?"

He did not trust himself to say more.

"Forgive me, Colonel, but I am forced to bear grim news. From your point of view, that is. They've been caught. Every single one."

Virunga sighed, a little relieved. It was over, then. Okay, they were captured. Now he would have to make sure of their treatment.

"I… wish to… see them. At once. To assure… they are… treated in accordance… with the laws… of wartime."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Avrenti sneer.

"I'm afraid that will be impossible, Colonel," Derzhin said.

"You… refuse?"

"No. I wouldn't be so rude. The fact of the matter is, there is little to see. All of them are dead."

Virunga found himself gasping. His twin hearts thundered. His ears rang from the sudden pressure. "What? Dead? How could—"

Shouts came from the courtyard outside. At first it was just a few voices. Then it grew in size and panic and anger. Derzhin smiled at him and waved him forward. Somehow, Virunga found himself leaning on his crutches, staring out the window. At first all he saw was a crowd of prisoners swarming around something in the center of the courtyard. Then he saw an old flatbed truck with a team of horses hitched to the front. On the truck was a contingent of Tahn guards. And Genrikh. They seemed to be unloading something—or somethings—pulling whatever it was from dripping gunny sacks and hurling it to the ground.

And then it was as if Virunga had suddenly acquired telescopic sight. He saw what they were unloading. Arms… and legs… and heads. The butchered bodies of Ibn Bakr and Alis.

CHAPTER THIRTY

C
hetwynd, spaceport/waterfront thug, labor organizer, convicted felon, political prisoner, and now somewhere between a trusty and a pardoned guard at Koldyeze, contemplated the angles as he bulldozed his way down the dockside toward a needed and, he felt, richly deserved double quill.

Chetwynd had matured beyond the hustler who knew he knew what was going on—which was what had put him on a prison planet in the first place—into a hustler who knew he did not know what was happening.

Not that the change had produced much difference in Chetwynd's behavior.

What should have happened after the mass break from Koldyeze was suitable retributions. Derzhin should have been lowered by a head, Avrenti should have been transferred to a penal battalion, Genrikh should have been given command of the prison, and draconian measures should have been meted out. Chetwynd had already sounded out connections for another assignment—anything to avoid being sent back to Dru and being chased by gurions. Instead, nothing happened.

Nothing much, at any rate.

Two escapees had been nailed, dragged back, and blasted. But the others?

Nothing. Even through the guards' rumor mill.

More important than those vanished POWs was the fact that little had changed at Koldyeze. Things and people continued in their measured course. Chetwynd cursed in an aside at his wasted credits supplying that worm Genrikh's seemingly inexhaustible pit with alk to create a note of sympathy when the drakh came down.

Another angle that he had not figured out was what had happened to his richly beloved government, out there beyond somewhere. Chetwynd had been thinking aloud when he had told Sten that the Tahn needed a fast, vast victory. But, he realized later, it was so.

Something, out there in the far beyond—and Chetwynd was not sure where or what—had happened. Something that the Tahn were not pleased with.

His union might have been smashed when Chetwynd was convicted and sentenced to a prison world, but his contacts were not. There were still friends around. Friends… acquaintances… enemies… people he had knocked over gravsleds with as a boy. The labels did not matter—growing up on the wrong side of the power structure of Heath created a lifelong alliance. Us against Them. At least so long as it was profitable.

Heath was suddenly the transshipment point for strange cargoes—materials, tools, and shipwrights—to the previously unheard of Erebus System, and medical supplies and personnel by the kiloton to other worlds where Tahn hospitals were not based.

The far beyond, which meant the Empire, had not been kind to the Tahn, Chetwynd reasoned. That was another card he did not know how to play yet.

He stopped just outside the entrance to the Knag, the prime bar on Heath if one wanted anything illegal, immoral, unavailable, or beyond priorities—and his headquarters. Filled with his cronies.

Chetwynd put on a brave leader face and entered.

He bought a round for his boyos.

He sipped the shot he wanted to slug down.

He held court, awarded and withheld approval, granted or withheld favors—and told the latest joke:

"A mister finally gets the vid. He's on the list. Through priorities. His gravsled is fin'ly available.

"He goes bug. 'Bout time. Paid for it six years ago. When is he gonna get it?

"Salesclot says four years down. Whitsl-cycle. Fourth day.

"Mister asks that be in the morning or afternoon?

"Salesman says, 'Mister, that be four years away! Why do you care if it's morning or night?'

" 'Cause I got the plumber coming in the morning.'

During the laughter he blasted down the rest of the shot and waved for another.

Court business over with, his cronies drifted away to let the great man be alone with his thoughts. Chetwynd, rerunning the angles, was not pleased to have his concentration broken by two boiler-suited, drakh-reeking dock scrapers sliding into his booth. He was about to summon ancillary thugs for the slaughter when he recognized them and sprayed his mouthful of quill across the booth.

Alex smiled at him in sympathy. "Dinnae be wastin' thae lifewater, lad. Tha'll come ae time when y' regret it."

Sten was motioning for the barmaid. "Chien," he said, "you look like you need a carafe."

Chetwynd did. "I thought all of you'd be heading for the woods," he managed, proud of not having asked any of the usual boring questions or made any of the expected responses.

"Can't speak for the others," Sten said. "But I'm a city boy. Scared of the dark, out there in the bushes."

"The bully patrols check in here regular," Chetwynd said.

"Ah hae nae problem," Kilgour said. "We're sittin' wi' our respect'd friend. Kickin't thae gong around."

Chetwynd grudged defeat. He could shout and scream—and the two escapees would be taken. He would be eligible for some kind of reward. However, he thought, if the official word is that all these clots were shot attempting to escape, how would my masters explain two suddenly alive Imperials?

"Besides," Sten said, reading Chetwynd's thinking, "we'd both be up for brain scan—and both of us have been spending five minutes a day thinking about how much we love you."

Chetwynd did not believe that—he did not figure that anyone, even these obviously talented Imperial Intelligence types, could precondition themselves to provide false information to the Tahn torturers. The problem was, his belly rumbled, he did not think the Tahn believed that.

"Excellent, cheenas. There are back rooms. There are 'freshers. You two stink. But first—what are you looking for?"

Sten explained. They had slid out the prison and gone to ground with no escape route or anything other than the most superficial false ID. They wanted identification—not false. They wanted to become real citizens of Heath. Sten—correctly—assumed that as the manpower barrel drained, the Tahn were drafting the young, the out of work, the criminal, and the dissident—all of which sounded as if they could be friends of Chetwynd.

Sten and Alex planned to replace any two of Chetwynd's cronies who were up for the high jump. They then would volunteer for the Tahn military. Certainly no one would look for two Imperials in the service. Chetwynd's cohorts could then go on about their business. "Ah'm assumin't," Alex added, "thae y' noo hae problems gie'in a bein' another name."

Once in the military Sten and Alex knew they could go through training easily, volunteer for a combat assignment, and then slither through the lines, ground or spatial, to make their home run.

At that point, Chetwynd started gurgling. Not in protest, Sten realized, but in laughter.

"Cheenas, cheenas," he finally said. "Now I see why you Imperials ended up in this war in the first place."

He stood waving—and Sten's knife slid out of his arm. Two barmaids bounced up.

"My friends," Chetwynd said, "need almost everything. They want a quiet room. Baths. Two baths. Each. Food. From my private supplies. Any alk they order. And someone to rub their backs." He turned back to Sten and Alex. "Women satisfactory?"

There was no dissent—Kilgour and Sten were gaping.

"Clean ones. And another pitcher now."

Chetwynd sat back down. For the first time in days, his angles coincided, and he knew what to do next.

"You want me to do all that, in the vague hopes that you two orphans can get home? Cheenas, let me tell you. All of my people are so safe from this war, it is disgusting. Your deal is the worst I've heard of late.

"Correction. The only worse one I can think of is if I recaptured you two clots.

"Now. Shall I tell you what is going to happen?

"There are chambers below this hellhole. You will disappear into them. You will be fattened and battened, dighted and knighted until a certain date.

"When I order, you shall be moved quietly through the streets to a certain place, where I shall introduce you to a charming man named Wild. Jon Wild."

Chetwynd was most surprised when first Sten and then Alex started laughing. Jon Wild was the urbane smuggler they had carefully cultivated years ago, before the beginning of the war. Sten had promised Wild to leave his operation alone provided that Wild smuggled no war goods into the Tahn Empire and was willing to provide intelligence. When the war had started, Wild's home base of Romney had been destroyed, and Sten assumed that Wild and his people had stuck around a little too long even though the warehouses were empty and there were no baddies in the ruins.

Maybe he had spent too long being one of the emperor's cafe society toughs in Mantis Section—but Sten was privately delighted that Wild and his operation were surviving comfortably.

"We know him," Sten said. "Go ahead."

Sails somewhat sagging, Chetwynd finished. Wild would take them out of the Tahn systems and deliver them to a neutral world. They would be provided with whatever money and identity they needed to get to an Imperial world from there.

"I'll finish," Sten broke in. "Since you obviously assume that we are connected, you would like a little gold carat in your fiche, so that when the Empire lands on Heath you don't get stuck in my old cell on Koldyeze."

"Of course."

And Chetwynd never realized how much that response meant to men who had spent years hearing of defeat and death.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

T
anz Sullamora had constructed his fishing retreat in a time when he not only still believed in heroes but imagined the Eternal Emperor as the leader of any laughing band of handsome devils. It was built out of his desire to emulate the Emperor in every way.

The Emperor loved cooking, so Sullamora slavishly copied his recipes and presented them at elaborate banquets for his friends. Except that everything tasted like drakh—which Sullamora, having no palate, did not know, and he was too rich and powerful a businessman for his friends to tell him.

Then there was fishing. The Emperor loved fishing to such a point that he had invested over 300 years of effort and a large fortune to re-create a fishing camp on the banks of the Umpqua River in the ancient region of Oregon on the planet Earth. Sullamora built his own camp—on a vastly smaller scale—many kilometers upstream from the Emperor. He threw himself into fishing with great enthusiasm and no talent at all.

For several years he would celebrate the end of any difficult business negotiations by taking off—with great fanfare—to the wilds of Oregon to relax on the banks of his retreat. After a suitable period he would return, boasting to everyone within hearing distance about how relaxed he was and about how a being could not really know his own inner nature until he had tested himself against a canny salmon fighting to escape his hook. What he did not admit to anyone, much less himself, was that he hated everything to do with fishing. After his first trip he hired gillies to catch the salmon for him, and after another trip he even refused to eat his catch and fed the fish to his servants and aides instead.