Revenge of the Damned (32 page)

"All my boss wants," Sten said, as if sensing what was going on in Pastour's mind, "is to let you know that he is aware of you. He said to consider this nothing more than the opening of a dialogue."

"And just what does he expect me to do or say?" The words were etched in heavy frost.

"Nothing right now," Sten said.

"Is anyone else being contacted?" By "anyone else" he meant other members of the High Council.

"Just you."

Sten allowed a long silence to follow. He wanted Pastour firm in his anger. He wanted hatred to build. Because when the shift came, confusion would follow. And then he set the hook.

"How did you like the little party my boss threw the other night?"

Pastour squirmed, knowing that Sten was referring to the bombing raid. To him the raid had been a sign that the Emperor could strike at will. And Sten's presence in his private garden only underscored that fact. Still…

"If the Emperor believes his cowardly attack on innocent people will in any way weaken our resolve…"

"You're sounding like a politician, Colonel," Sten said. "I hope that's not what you really think. Because if it is, you might as well kiss a lot more of your innocents good-bye."

"You didn't answer my first question," Pastour came back. "Or, if you were, you were just being glib. I don't like glib. Once again, what does he expect from me?"

"If you think my boss wants you to turn traitor," Sten said, "you're dead wrong. If you were a traitor, you'd be no use to him at all."

"And what use does he see in me?"

"At some point in time," Sten went on, "you people are going to realize that this thing is over. That you've lost. And when that happens, the Emperor would like to have someone sensible to deal with."

Pastour knew that Sten was talking about surrender. How odd, he thought. The word doesn't make me angry. The lack of feeling disturbed him. What kind of a Tahn was he? Surrender? It should have been unthinkable. Instead, it seemed… inevitable. "Go on," he said.

And by those two words, Sten knew he had struck pay dirt.

"There's not that much more. Except to say that a great deal of grief can be avoided if some sort of Tahn government survives. The Emperor is betting that it will be you."

Pastour nodded. Survival was something he knew a great deal about—unlike most of his brothers and sisters on the council.

"What else?"

Sten hesitated. What he was going to say next had nothing to do with his instructions. Then he plunged headfirst. "Koldyeze."

"What about it?" Pastour was puzzled.

"The Emperor is worried about the prisoners there," he said, lying, lying, lying. "He hopes that no matter what happens, they'll be treated humanely. And since the place was your idea to start with…"

Now it made sense to Pastour. He had heard that the Eternal Emperor had some strange ideas about the treatment of the lower classes. Even prisoners of war. Why the man bothered with the plight of cowards, he had no idea. Still, what would it cost him?

"Tell your Emperor that he need not concern himself about their fates. I'll do my best for them. As long as he doesn't interpret this as some kind of concession. Or acknowledgment from me that anything but his final defeat and humiliation is—"

Sten laughed and raised a weak hand, calling for surrender. Pastour could not help laughing with him. There he was, sounding like a politico again. Sten straightened up and headed for the mouth of the drain.

"Are you just going to leave me here?" Pastour asked. "How do you know I won't instantly call the guard?"

"There's a lot more lives at stake here than mine" was all Sten said. And then he dropped out of sight.

Pastour only had to think about that for a second. The man was right. He kicked the grate back in place and returned to tending his garden.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

A
historical atlas fiche, equipped with a time tick, would show the Imperial assault on the Tahn Empire as if the war were a liquid projector. The red—or whatever color—representing the Tahn conquests would ebb back as the color assigned to the Empire and its allies flowed smoothly forward, excepting, of course, those blotches representing fortress worlds like Etan that had been isolated and left to rot.

That would suggest that the average Imperial grunt also had an idea of how the war was going.

He, she, or whatever did not.

The sailors loaded supplies and ammunition, boarded ship, and transited in minor fear and major boredom to a certain point, where they off-loaded supplies on a ramp and offloaded ammunition through launching tubes.

The soldiers trained, boarded ship, transited in major fear to a drop or landing point, and attacked. When the last Tahn lay dead, they returned to their base or were moved to a new location where they built a new base, trained, and tried to find ways to burn off the sickening realization that the only end to it all was death, wounding, madness, or victory.

Seeing the next sunrise became the only major victory.

It took twenty years, fortunately, for a statistician to come up with the cheery news that during the war against the Tahn, a combat troop could expect to survive no more than thirty personal days in battle.

Also fortunately, very few Imperials experienced those thirty days back to back.

But there were exceptions, just as, contrary to what that "liquid projector" showed, there were disasters.

One was the landing on Pel/e.

The Pel/e systems were priority one to the Emperor's strategists. They were at the midpoint of a galactic arm that was a longtime part of the Tahn Empire. Once the systems were taken, the Empire would have a base, a striking point to search and find the long-sought secret Tahn shipbuilding system.

The always hard-luck Eighth Guards were chosen for the "honor" of the assault. After two weeks of prior bombardment, the Imperial Navy advised that all Tahn resistance was battered bloody. The assault transports went in. The first wave was shattered in-atmosphere. The second made it to the ground—and then the Tahn opened fire.

Imperial strategists and psychologists had blundered. Because the Tahn used a rigid military and social structure, it was assumed that once the command elements were destroyed or out of contact, the soldiers themselves would stop fighting, commit suicide, or at the worst fight ineffectually.

The ignored statistic, known to the Empire before the war began, was that the Tahn used far fewer officers and noncoms per serving soldier than did
any
of the regular Imperial units. And so the Tahn regrouped, by squads, by fire teams, by pickup combat elements, and fought back.

Conquering the Pel/e systems was supposed to have taken two E-months and required only the Eighth Guards to accomplish. Final victory took two
E-years
before the last Tahn element was killed. Six divisions were used in the process, and it became SOP for a new division to spend time on one of the Pel/e worlds getting final live-fire training before being committed to a frontal assault.

The Eighth Guards was shattered. Two commanding generals were relieved, and the unit took eighty-three percent casualties before being pulled from combat. Its colors were cased, the guardsmen were reassigned to other units, and the unit was rebuilt from scratch.

That was disaster enough. What made it worse was that the assaults on Pel/e were made before St. Clair discovered that the secret shipyards were in the Erebus System—half an empire away from Pel/e.

Seventy-five thousand Imperial deaths. One and a quarter million Tahn corpses. In a completely meaningless battle.

Six battlefleets hit Erebus under the flag of Fleet Marshal Ian Mahoney.

So-called panacea targets—hit here and the war's gonna come to an end the day before yesterday—were normally a joke, useful only when a space force was arguing for larger appropriations that would probably bankrupt every other service if made.

Also, those glamour targets usually got hit once and once only. If the factory was trashed, they would not have to worry about it ever, ever, ever producing nasty widgets anymore.

The fact was always ignored that after a war, when the bean counters went in to figure out how effective the bombs had been, they learned that said factory probably was not trashed that badly and that concerted effort brought it back online within a few months.

Erebus looked to be such a panacea target.

Mahoney, coming from a more realistic background than most of the skyjocks serving under him, approached things differently.

The Erebus System was a bastard target, defended by every onworld weapon and heavily armed spacecraft the Tahn could afford to divert from mainline combat. And the pilots and missile crews fought to the death.

Mahoney made sure it was a real death.

His first strike took thirty percent casualties. There were splintered destroyers and tacships broken on the ground of Fundy, the Erebus System's main world, and more hulks spewing debris out in space.

He sent his ships in again the next day.

Twenty-eight percent casualties.

There were ship crews who broke and refused the attack order. Mahoney calmly ordered their courts-martial and relieved any skipper who hesitated at his orders.

Then he threw his guts up in his cabin, washed his face, and sent more men and women to their deaths.

After six days of hammering, the Tahn had nothing left to fight back with.

Mahoney sent in his battleships, monitors, and cruisers.

Three battlewagons and two of the ponderous cruisers went down—but the Erebus shipworks appeared to be permanently out of business.

Mahoney ordered the strike repeated the next day.

He had to relieve a fleet admiral for objecting.

But the attack ships went in again. And still a third time.

The worlds of Erebus looked to be suitable parking lots.

But just to make sure, against all conventions of war, Mahoney had the worlds dusted.

The factories of Erebus might go back to work—but every worker assigned to them would glow in the dark.

The First Guards, Mahoney's old command—now led by Major General Galkin—spearheaded the landing on Naha.

By that point they knew how to fight the Tahn:

Don't shoot at the civilians—they've got their own set of problems. Get them to the rear. Don't believe that
anything
isn't booby-trapped, from the ceremonial flag to the ugly plas casting of Lord Fehrle that'd make a great souvenir.

A Tahn can be anywhere. In a crater beside the road. Tied into a tree. Sited in a weapons position in the base of a statue. Waiting for days inside a burnt-out track, waiting for the chance to kill any Imperial within range, whether fighting man or woman, clerk, or civilian. And very competent at his or her trade of slaughter.

Eventually, Naha fell, in spite of the fact that the final days of the resistance were personally commanded by Lady Atago. The casualty rate was twice what had been expected, and the battle lasted three times longer than expected—expected that was, by staff people. The line grunts thought themselves damn lucky and damn good to have gotten off that lightly.

Naha gave the Empire the long-needed major base inside the Tahn worlds.

Now the real hammering would begin.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

E
ven an experienced Tahn watcher might have drawn some wrong conclusions if he had observed the meeting between Lord Fehrle and the leaders of the two major factions on the High Council, Wichman and Pastour. If a hidden camera had captured them sitting at ease in Fehrle's darkened study, the Tahn watcher would have been most interested in who was
not
present. Meaning Lady Atago, Fehrle's heir apparent. The expert would make the instant assumption that new alliances were being struck and that Atago was on the way out, obviously because Fehrle perceived her new hero status as a threat.

The expert would have been wrong on both counts. Yes, it was true that Fehrle had thought of her when he had issued the invitation to Wichman and Pastour. It was because of her "white knight" image that he pointedly ignored her.

He did not want what he was about to propose to tarnish her image in any way. If he fell, he wanted her to be able to pick up his sword wearing armor that was mirror-bright. Fehrle was about to suggest a plan that assumed and depended upon the corruption and disloyalty of his own people. Atago would be enraged at his even suggesting that such a thing existed. It was a fact that Atago's simple soldier's mind could not accept.

Wichman would argue, it was true, but he could eventually be convinced. With the help of Pastour, the realist, Fehrle would have no difficulty at all.

Lord Fehrle served his guests with his own hands, helping them with their choice of delicacies on the tray and building them drinks. And as they ate and drank, he talked, setting the background: There were traitors everywhere, spies at every level, and fools who leaked vital information to enemy agents. To make his point, he vastly overstated the situation.

As expected, Wichman was shocked and immediately called for a heroic medicine-style purge to remove the poisons of disloyalty. What he had not expected was Pastour's reaction. The man sat in silence, his face growing bleaker with every word. Had Fehrle misguessed? Instead of support, would Pastour take on the role of an Atago and back Wichman's call for a bloodletting? If so, Fehrle would have to do some fast reanalysis of the situation or his plan would never get off the ground.

What he did not realize was that Pastour was suffering from a nearly terminal case of guilty conscience. Did Fehrle suspect him? Were there guards waiting with drawn guns just behind the door? If so, why did the man keep looking over at him, as if he were looking for help? Gradually, he realized that was exactly what Fehrle wanted. But help doing what? What the clot! He already had his genitalia on the table. Maybe it was time to dare the knife.

"Forgive me, my lord," he said. "Along with you, and my Lord Wichman, I certainly deplore the situation you are outlining. We should take drastic action. But…"