Revenge of the Damned (7 page)

"I don't know anybody here but you and Virunga. There may be doubles, there may be stoolies, there may be agents."

"Thae e'en may be Campbells."

"Don't bet on it. Even the Tahn have some standards."

"Y' hae ideas on how we'll blow th' place?"

"That's what you're for, Mr. Kilgour. That's why you're a warrant and I'm a clottin' firecontrol man."

Alex grinned, and the two fell back into their roles just as there was a thud on the door that might have been a gorilla knock. It was just about that—and it was also the senior officer, Colonel Virunga. Both men came to attention.

Virunga had little time for preambles.

"Tahn have made it… clear… cooperate. Drakh. Promise under duress… meaningless."

Sten and Alex did not need to show their agreement.

"Drakh. Drakh."

Sten's eyebrows lifted. He had never heard the N'Ranya repeat a word. He must be quite angry.

"Duty… soldier… escape. Resist. Am I correct?"

A repeat—and a full sentence!

"Yessir."

"Knew… agree. Why you're now Big X."

Alex started to say something, and Sten waved him to silence.

"Colonel. You can't do this to me!"

"Just did."

"Goddammit. Why?"

The chain of command in any prison was complex and often unspoken, even in a military prisoner-of-war camp. Big X was part of that secret command link. The title was eons old, dating back to a time even before the Empire. Big X was the head of
all
escape attempts in a camp. His authority was absolute. Part of the hypno-training that all recruits into Imperial service received was "how to behave if you are captured." That conditioning included the obvious: Reveal nothing of military value until physically or mentally forced; do not volunteer services unless ordered; remember that although you are a prisoner you are still at war and are expected to continue to fight by any means available.

Continue to fight.

Escape.

Big X's orders, within the very narrow confines of escape attempts, superseded all others, including those of the senior Imperial officer. And once he was appointed, his authority was absolute. Big X, the head of the escape committee in any camp, could be any rank, private to fleet marshal. It was a dubious honor. If Big X was revealed to the captors, of course he would be skedded for immediate death, brainburn, or, at the very least, transport to a death-camp.

That was not Sten's objection.

The real objection was that Big X was normally picked because he or she was the most accomplished escaper or resister in a camp. But because all escape attempts had to be registered with his committee, he or she was honor-bound
not
to personally participate in any escape.

Colonel Virunga, by appointing Sten, had also ensured that he was doomed to be a POW until the end of the war. Or until the Tahn discovered the identity of Big X and had him killed.

Virunga answered Sten's question. "Because… trust. Known quantity. These others? Unknown."

There was no possible argument. Virunga saluted once more and left. Sten and Alex looked at each other. Neither of them could find any obscenities sufficient to the occasion, and neither of them felt that tears would be appreciated.

Very well, Sten thought. If I can't be a personal pain in the butt to the Tahn, I'm going to create me 999 surrogates that'll give the Tahn a rough way to go.

Nine hundred and ninety-eight, he corrected himself, looking at Alex. If I'm gonna be stuck here in this clottin' ruin for the rest of the war, I'm gonna have at least one other clot for company.

CHAPTER TWELVE

S
enior Captain (Intelligence) Lo Prek stared at the battered mail fiche on his desk.

A normal human being might have cheered, exulted at closing on his enemy, or snarled in happy rage.

But to Prek, the mail fiche merely verified what he had known: Commander Sten was not only still alive but within Prek's reach.

He had come up with a unique method to check his theory, a method that did not require either approval from his superiors or any out-of-the-ordinary efforts from Intelligence. He had merely prepared a letter.

The letter was packeted in a routine drop to one of the Tahn deep-cover agents within the Empire. The agent was instructed to deposit the letter normally and use a return address of one of his safe houses.

The agent followed orders.

The letter purported to be from one Mik Davis. It was quite a chatty missive.

Davis, according to the letter, had gone through basic training with Sten. "Of course you don't remember me," the letter began.

I got washed real quick and never got to the Guards. Instead they made me a baker. Guess, probably, they were right.

Anyway, nothing much happened to me. I served my term, making dough, and got out before the war started.

Got married—got three ankle-biters now—and started my own business. Guess what it is—prog you do—a bakery.

Compute you're laughing—but I'm making a credit or six. Guess I can't kick on what bennies I got from the service.

Anyway, here I am out in nowhere and I saw this old fiche, talking about some captain named Sten who's up there running the Imperial bodyguards. I always knew you were gonna rise to the top like yeast.

I told my lady, and she thought I was blowing smoke when I said I knew you back when. I decided I'd drop a line, and maybe you'd have time to get back to me.

Do me a real favor, if you would. Just scribble out a mininote so my lady doesn't think I'm a complete liar.

No way I can do paybacks, unless you show up on Ulthor-13, and we'll take you out for the best feed this planet's got. But I'd really appreciate it.

Yours from a long time back, Mik Davis

That letter put Prek in a no-lose situation. If the letter was answered, he knew that Sten was still in the ranks of the Empire. If it went unanswered, he knew the same. It would have been delivered at least. Prek had a far greater faith in the Empire's mail system than did any of its citizens.

Instead, the mail fiche bounced, being returned to the Tahn agent in a packet with a very somber, very official, and very formal note.

Dear Citizen Davis

Unfortunately your personal letter to Commander Sten is undeliverable.

Imperial records show that
Commander Sten
is carried on
Imperial Navy
records as
Missing in Action
, during
Engagements in the Fringe Worlds
.

If you desire any further information, please communicate with…

Sympathetically…

Captain Prek felt that he had begun his self-assigned mission in an adequate manner.

Sten was not only alive but within reach.

A prisoner.

Prek refused to admit that Sten could have died of wounds or been killed in captivity. He was still alive.

He
must
still be alive.

Prek keyed his computer to begin a directory search for the records of all Imperial prisoners of war captured in the conquest of the Fringe Worlds. He felt he was getting very close to the murderer of his brother.

BOOK TWO
SUKI

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

T
he first escape attempt was go-for-broke.

Captain Michele St. Clair had watched closely for two weeks as the first working parties were formed, assigned tasks, and marched down into Heath. She thought she saw a possibility.

The procedure was rigid: After morning roll call, Major Genrikh would order X number of prisoners for Y number of outside duties. They would be broken down into gangs inside the prisoners' courtyard, and Tahn guards would take charge. Each detail would have, on the average, one noncom per ten prisoners and three guards per five POWs. The Tahn were being very careful.

The ethics of the work gangs were still being debated by the prisoners, a debate that St. Clair took no part in. The debate ran as follows: Participation, even unwillingly, contributed to the enemy. Nonparticipation, on the other hand, could contribute to the prisoner's own death. St. Clair thought both points nonsense—she knew that the eventual boredom of being in the prison would make people volunteer for any detail that was not actually pulling a trigger. And personally she was all in favor of the outside gangs. Once outside the cathedral, the possibilities of successful escape would be… she did not try to work out the exact odds, but she did not have to.

Michele St. Clair had grown up with an instinctive appreciation for the odds and was quite content with the comfortable, if somewhat hazardous, living a "gambler's share" gave her.

St. Clair, very young, had considered the various careers available on her native world, one of the Empire's main transshipment centers. Whoring or crewing on a spacecraft she saw as a mug's game, and running a bar kept one from being a moving target. St. Clair had been a professional gambler from the time she was tall enough to shove a bet across to a croupier.

She learned how to play a straight game against the suckers and how to shave the odds if she was playing with cheaters. She knew when to get her money down, when to cut her losses, when to fold a bet and get offworld, and, maybe most importantly, when to stay out of the game itself. She was broke many times and rich many more. But the credits themselves were meaningless to her, as to other professionals. They were just markers on how well she was doing.

She had a hundred names on a thousand worlds, and nicknames, as well. All of them related her to the same sort of animal—a sleek, good-looking minor predator.

But for some years the odds had been coming back on her.

Since she preferred to gamble with the wealthy, she maintained a host of identities, all of them well-to-do if a little mysterious. She was very fond of one of them—that of a purchasing agent for the Imperial Navy. Since she had a certain respect for the laws of the Empire, she actually was an officer in the Empire. Standby reserve, of course.

Unfortunately, St. Clair paid no attention to politics. When war broke out, she was systematically cleaning out an upper-class tourist world in her military role, a tourist world with a medium-size garrison on it. St. Clair grudgingly admitted that she might have done too good a job setting up her various identities as unblowable, because no one would believe that she was not actually a first lieutenant, Imperial Navy. Her cover was so well constructed that three months later she was promoted to captain and reassigned as executive officer on a transport.

The convoy her ship was part of was ambushed by a Tahn deep-strike destroyer force, and Michele St. Clair found herself a prisoner of war.

Fortunately, St. Clair was, like all gamblers, an inveterate optimist. In the first prison camp she started running the odds again. What were the odds of surviving as a POW? She saw a gravsled carrying away bodies, shuddered, and estimated ninety-ten against.

What were the odds of improving her lot by collaborating?

Two other calculations were required: Could the Tahn win the war? Sixty-two-thirty-eight—against. The Empire: sixty-forty—in favor. Now, collaboration: seventy-three-twenty-seven—against.

Option: Escape.

St. Clair did not run odds on the likelihood of her getting free. That would have meant factoring in the failed escape attempts of others, and she knew damned well that she was superior to any of those other clots. Proof: They were soldiers or sailors, and she was not.

Michele St. Clair found a new career. And a new nickname—the Lucky Eel. She had made more than twenty attempts to escape, almost all of them solo. And while she had never succeeded in being free longer than four days, she also had never been executed. Somehow the commandant was feeling kindly, she had a convincing excuse for not being where she should have been, or she managed to get away from the chaos before the sorting out started.

Captain St. Clair was ready for her twenty-first attempt.

Observing the work details, she had noticed an absolute consistency to their actions. Buried in the middle of a thirty-man work gang, she hummed happily to herself, watching that routine play out once more.

Shuffle… shuffle… then wait as each work gang was singly processed through each of the three gates in the center sanctuary, being swept and counted at each gate. Then each detail moved across the guards' courtyard to the outer gate and waited until that gate came open.

Her gang started through the process. As they were herded across the inner courtyard, St. Clair worked her way to the outside of the knot of prisoners.

The outer gate was opened, and the gang went through. It was time.

St. Clair had noticed that as each gang exited the cathedral, the Tahn guards would turn, come to attention, and salute the colors hanging on either side of the Koldyeze's entrance.

Five seconds of inattention.

More than enough.

As the guards saluted, St. Clair elbowed a prisoner aside and darted for the edge of the path that wound downward toward the city. Six to three, she had thought, they won't see me. Five to two there'll be an incline I can scramble down. Eight to one, even if it's a cliff I can spot a ledge or something I can drop to and get out of the line of fire.

One meter short of the edge, St. Clair realized that she had made another sucker bet and slid to a stop.

The edge of the path dropped straight down for more than 100 meters. All the outcroppings she could see were obviously rotten. St. Clair had no interest in ostentatious suicide.