Revenge of the Damned (31 page)

Wichman looked up from the screen and smiled. "Captain, I think that I can definitely use a man of your caliber."

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

A
dmiral Mason's destroyer squadron made a full-power bounce on an entire planet. The planet was the Tahn home-world of Heath. The ships' noses were already heat-glowing from the atmosphere by the time the first alarms went off.

Antiaircraft crews who were more accustomed to ceremonial posturings and polishing brass fittings scrambled for battle stations trying to remember real-world target acquisition and launch procedures. Several crews lost minutes tracking down the officer with the input code for the armed missile loaders.

Civilian block wardens dug into dresser drawers for their arm bands and hard hats, fumbling through their time-passed briefings to find out what exactly they were supposed to do.

The invasion alert hammered out on a thousand channels, then rescinded, then rescreamed. Heath's workers sheep-panicked to the shelters that had never been anything more than the subject of jokes, following drills that were considered one more way to get in trouble with the police if one did not instantly obey.

The three interceptor squadrons around the capital, more familiar with providing ceremonial escort to VIP ships, took fifteen full minutes to get into the air.

By the time the first missile came out of its tube and the first gun opened fire, the destroyers were outatmosphere and under full emergency AM2 drive.

The raid was a carefully designed one-time affair. Mason's flotilla, equipped with every known ECM and spoofer, bulging with additional supply containers, and using Tahn codes broken after the debacle around Durer, took weeks to slither through the Tahn Empire.

The Eternal Emperor was making two statements.

The first was made by Mason's DD, the
Burke
, as it launched a lovingly tailored monster missile.

The missile was a slim needle, set with offset fins front and rear. Its AM2 drive unit had come from a Kali shipkiller and nearly-instantaneously flashed the missile to full speed. The warhead, many tons of nonnuclear explosive, was buried far behind the nose cone, which was a solid mass of Imperium X.

Six separate guidance systems, using everything from inertial navigation to a prewar street map of the capital, made sure the missile would not miss.

It did not, impacting squarely in the center of the Tahn Council chambers. And nothing much happened.

The watch commander in charge of the palace's guards had time to pick himself up from the ground where the initial shock had dropped him, recover, and grin to his second.

"Clottin' Imperials. All that trouble to drop a dud that—"

That went off.

The missile had driven nearly 300 meters underground, its Imperium X nose cone crumpling, before the detonator went off.

The explosion, far underground, created a cavern.

The original design was eons old and had been set aside as a peculiar footnote when the age of nuclear overkill had arrived. Its original designer, one Barnes Wallis, had originally described it as an "earthquake bomb," an incorrect if impressive label. More exactly, the bomb was intended to "camouflet"—to dive deep below the earth without breaking the surface. And then to detonate.

A more exact description was a "hangman's drop."

That is exactly what happened. The entire Tahn Council palace fell through the "gallows trap."

All that remained was a stinking hole whose perimeter was littered with the stone ruins of the Tahn's proudest symbol of power.

The strike had been ordered for the early hours of the morning, and so only a handful of Than noblemen died, and those low-ranking. Not only was the palace communication system destroyed, but the standby relay stations below the palace vanished.

The Emperor had not intended the strike to kill the Tahn Council. He preferred them alive, worried, and having to explain to the Tahn just how the unthinkable—an Imperial strike on Heath itself—could not only have been thought but carried out. Also, he wanted them alive to consider that he had proved he could kill them any time he felt like it. Even fanatics like those who ruled the Tahn Empire might think about that.

The second statement was made by the rest of Mason's destroyers as they contour-flew over the city, launch bays spewing thousands of tiny incendiaries.

Carpet bombing.

The Emperor might have told Sullamora he would try not to win by mass slaughter. But his histrionic speech one cycle after the war had begun might have been more accurate, when he promised the Tahn that eventually their own skies would be flame.

The heart of Heath exploded in a firestorm. The city center—and everything in it—melted. People outside—who probably were already doomed from the radiation generated by the missile's impact—disappeared. The pavement ran like liquid. Oxygen was sucked out of even the filtered shelters. Ponds, fountains, and one lake boiled dry in an instant. The firestorm, reaching thousands of meters into the sky, created a tornado nearly a kilometer in diameter, swirling carnage and rubble at speeds over 200 kph.

Fire departments, disaster agencies, and hospitals were buried in a tidal wave of catastrophe—those which survived the fire itself.

The city center of Heath burned for nearly a week.

Half a million people were dead.

The Emperor's second statement was self-evident.

CHAPTER FORTY

P
astour felt dirty, smelly, and just plain angry as he and his bodyguards exited the shelter. From the distance, he could hear the dying wail of all-clear sirens. Another clotting false alarm. In the three days since the bombing raid, at least two dozen false alarms had sent him, his bodyguards, and his entire household staff scurrying into the cramped bomb shelter about twenty meters under his garden. He was sick of feeling like a small rodent that bolted for a hole at even the hint of a predator's shadow. It was especially humiliating when the shadow turned out to be that of something innocuous, like a poor flying berry-eating creature.

He stopped just outside the steel door that covered the tunnel entrance to the shelter. Most of his staff headed straight for the comforts of the square-built structure he called home. As a man who had grown up in the greasy squalor that the Tahn called factories and had then fought his way to the executive suite, Pastour treasured his privacy over almost all else. He had constructed his home many years before on the edge of the industrial slum near the outskirts of Heath. Despite the grimness of the surroundings, Pastour believed it was important not to lose touch with his roots. That was definitely un-Tahnlike but was also probably the secret to his immense success.

A former factory slave himself, Pastour liked to believe that he knew how to get the most out of his workers. His industrial competitors used only the stick. Pastour had accepted that necessity. It had always been done that way. But he had also reinvented the carrot.

In a Pastour factory, the worker was treated with a comparative measure of respect, with healthy bonuses for the most ingenious or the hardest workers. It was not out of kindness. It was pure calculation—like his plan to put POWs to work for the Tahn cause at Koldyeze. His factories were far from being Utopias. In most other systems the conditions would have been considered barbaric. Even Prime World capitalists would have been shamed into shutting them down. On other worlds the workers themselves would have gone after them with bombs and guns. Still, if there ever was going to be a Tahn future history, Pastour would someday be judged "enlightened."

Therefore, the house had been built, in his words, "right among 'em." Still, he had a need for privacy. So he had his architect design a multistoried home that presented four blank walls to its neighbors. It was constructed around a sprawling courtyard, complete with paths, fountains, and, right in the center, a small-domed structure containing his garden.

He had almost lost the garden when he had become a full member of the High Council. A minus side of the perks and influence he had gained was the insistence that each council member "shall cause to be constructed or personally construct a facility which shall be capable of withstanding…" mumblemumblemumble and other legal jargon that bottom-lined out that he had to tear out his garden and put in a bomb shelter capable of standing up to a nearly direct nuke hit.

Pastour had actually been toying with telling Lord Fehrle where he could put the great honor he was about to bestow upon his proud Tahn brow, when he came up with a solution.

Armed with his pet architect, a great wad of credits, and a lot of heavy string pulling, Pastour had weaseled the military out of its heaviest-duty laser cutters and grayjacks. It still took months of cutting and burrowing to lift out the entire courtyard, ground and all. Then the shelter was constructed to the meanest standards possible—Pastour had no intention of wasting any credits on such foolishness. And the courtyard and his treasured greenhouse were lowered over it and sealed in place.

He glanced around, still noting the accomplishment with a bit of pride. True, there were a few flaws. Drainage had proved to be a problem, but he had tacked together a barely adequate system that dumped into the neighborhood sewer system. There was a tendency for it to flood the street, but Pastour did not mind taking on the burden of the pumping and the cleanups that followed a heavy storm.

He acknowledged the salute from his chief guard, who reported that the shelter had been secured and that they were ready to escort him inside the house. Pastour impatiently waved them away. Over the past three days of scares, the situation had become routine—something that did nothing to make it easier on Pastour. They would insist that he go inside while they doubled-checked with Security Central—a process that could take hours. Pastour would refuse, sending them all reluctantly away while he instead retired to the solitude of his greenhouse. There were purposely no means of communication once inside, and Pastour sometimes spent many hours roaming the aisles of hydroponic pans, where all he had to listen to was the soft hum of the recycling pumps and the buzz of the sunlamps.

That day was no different. The exchange had almost become formal. Once again Pastour won, and once again the guards went sullenly away, and once again Pastour stormed through the door of his greenhouse and peace.

But once inside, the scowl faded and the wrinkles of anger softened into the permanent grin lines that wreathed Pastour's face. Today, however, it was quieter than usual inside. He shrugged. It was probably because his machines did not have to work nearly so hard to maintain the false atmosphere inside. The same bombs that had killed and maimed so many of his fellow Tahn had also briefly left behind a more accommodating world for his beloved plants.

He moved along a row of legume vines, picking off dead leaves, replacing flailing tendrils on their support nets, and generally taking note of the small differences that only a careful gardener saw in his progeny.

Pastour was just turning the far corner of the center aisle when he realized that it was not the hum of pumps that he was missing. It was the whine of the supersensitive pollen-carrying insects that he had imported across vast distances at no small expense.

The insects darted for cover the moment they sensed an alien presence. They knew Pastour; he was no longer considered a threat. Ergo… someone else…

"Be very careful, Colonel," the man said. "You would be advised to rethink anything you're planning to do next."

It was better than good advice. Because as soon as Pastour saw Sten and the deadly weapon aimed at his gut, his first reaction was to throw himself on the man, pummeling and shrieking for help as hard and as loud as he could. He rethought. After murder, kidnapping seemed the next most obvious fate. Pastour relaxed. If kidnapping was the intent, then talk and negotiations must follow. Pastour was good at both. Therefore, outward calm was in order.

Sten watched the thinking process carefully. A moment before Pastour knew that he had reached a decision, Sten allowed the weapon to droop. He leaned against a tool bench and motioned for Pastour to perch on a gardening sledge. Pastour obeyed. He looked about curiously, wondering how Sten could possibly have penetrated his elaborate human and electronic security system. Then he spotted the grate lying beside the halfmeter-wide mouth of the greenhouse main drain. Pastour could not help laughing.

"I knew that clottin' bomb shelter was a rotten idea," he chortled.

Sten did not see what was so funny, but Pastour just said never mind. It would take too long to explain.

"How do you plan getting us both out of here?" he asked instead. "I'm much too old to crawl through that thing." He pointed at the drain.

"Don't worry," Sten said. "You're staying right here."

Pastour frowned. Was it assassination, after all? Was the man a maniac? Did he plan to toy with him first and then kill him? No. There was nothing maniacal about the young man.

"So what do you have in mind?"

"Talk. That's all. It was my boss's idea."

Pastour raised an eyebrow. Boss?

"You know him as the Eternal Emperor. Anyway, he suggested we chat. See if we can come to some sort of understanding."

Pastour was beginning to doubt himself. Maybe the man
was
nuts. How to handle this? He warned himself that whatever he said next, he must be sure not to condescend. Before he could form his thoughts into words, Sten casually reached into a tunic pocket, pulled something out, and tossed it on the floor next to Pastour. The Tahn picked it up, glanced at it, and was jolted back. It bore the Emperor's personal seal! Pastour did not need to have it checked to know the seal was genuine.

Sten was exactly who he had said he was, an emissary of the Eternal Emperor. Questions flooded into Pastour's mind. Then one huge, glaring one wiped the others away: Why me? And he became very, very angry. Did the Eternal Emperor see some supposed flaw in his character? Did the man think he was a traitor?