Requiem for the Conqueror

  A bustle of new people scurried through the halls of the converted concert hall they'd made into the Regan Expeditionary Headquarters. Rega had responded with a vengeance after the virtual annihilation of the first pacification divisions.

  Outside Operations, he had to wait twenty minutes before being called in. A panel of five Personnel Second officers took his salute.

  "Private Fist." One of the officers looked up from the comm monitor before speaking to the others behind a privacy screen. One by one they studied him, each hidden behind a bureaucratically-stiff face. "Would you please scan the following report and make a declaration of accuracy for the panel?"

  Sinklar was handed a flimsy. Scanning the page, he read a general statement of his escape with MacRuder and Gretta up to the point when they were picked up by the patro craft.

  "Accurate to my knowledge, sir, with the exception that I disagree with the final conclusion that I single-handedly saved their lives. We worked as a team. And one last correction, sir. I noticed that the report states and I quote, 'Private Fist's concern regarding the possible rebel strike to the post office command center was ignored by Sergeant Jeen Hamlish.' That wasn't the case, sir. I didn't have time to inform the sergeant." He handed the flimsy back.

  The lead Personnel Second nodded. "Your objections are noted, Private." He looked at his colleagues who nodded one by one. "Further, considering those objections so stated, the board hereby promotes you to Sergeant Third of the Second Section of the First Targan Assault Division. Corporal First MacRuder of your Section will relinquish command to you at the D Block Barracks. Pick up your orders, promotion, and equipment at the Supply Depot. Dismissed."

  Sinklar snapped a salute, swallowed, and left at a trot. It took more questioning to find Supply. After he made his way through the line, they handed him sergeant's chevrons, a new assault rifle, and compete field pack, including orders. Dazed, he finally found D block—a commandeered residential section just behind the energy barriers of the perimeter. And a seedy one at that, he thought, seeing a private clearing old bedding platforms from what had obviously been a whorehouse.

  Halfway up the barracks steps, he heard MacRuder's barking voice. Turning, he spotted the corporal running a bunch of wide-eyed, panting privates across the open square where trollops had once hawked their bodies.

  "Hey! Mac!" Sinklar raised a hand.

  "Cump'neeeee, halt MacRuder's voice bawled over the pounding feet. "Sink!

  You're alive!" MacRuder started over at a trot. He stopped short at the chevrons and whistled. "By the Rotted Gods, they made you a sergeant. I was happy enough to make Corporal First."

  "Yeah, they told me I'm your commander." He dropped his gaze awkwardly. What trouble did this brew for his newfound friendship. "Um, look I. ..."

  "Shut up. I recommended it. Wonder how it happened they listened to a lowly Corporal First?" MacRuder turned and looked over his squad where they watched curiously. "Gretta and I, well, we're alive because of your leadership, Sink."

  He smiled. "I'm not enough of a crud that I don't recognize when I owe somebody my ass—at least, not yet anyway. And I like working with you. We make a great team."

  "Yeah. Gretta's okay?"

  MacRuder's eyes glinted. "Yeah, and she's been worried sick about you. They made her Corporal First, too. She's in charge of A Group and I've got B." , Sinklar shook his head. "I don't get it. Why all the promotions?"

  MacRuder's smile fell. " 'Cause we're veterans, pal. We're still alive.

  Promotions come fast when a division takes almost ninety percent casualties.

  You, me, and Gretta are all that's left of the Second Section, Sink. Nobody else made it out of the Gods Rotted post office. Just us."

  "Blessed Etarus!"

  "Yeah, and you keep us alive. Gretta and me, well, we're counting on it."

  "Anything I should know?" Sinklar asked, oddly nervous at the sudden responsibility that had dropped on him like so many bricks out of a crumbling wait.

  "Yep, we're headed out tonight at dusk. I had orders to wait for a new CO.

  That's you, buddy. Division First Atkin has ordered us to take a position on a road up in the hills. It's some sort of pass between here and the back country. They think the rebels are using it to get supplies into the city. Our ob is to cut that supply ine and hold it."

  At his words two LCs roared overhead in a wide sweep, wings spreading and gear dropping. Sink had a sudden understanding of why D Block had been chosen for a staging barracks. LCs could land in the open square.

  "Get the bloody hell out of the way, you bastards!" MacRuder ordered, waving his still standing troops out of the square. They scattered as the LCs settled in a vortex of dust and grit.

  "Dumb!" MacRuder cursed. "Targans will rip these sheep apart!" And he left to berate his huddled command.

  A ramp dropped and a flight tech came bouncing down and out. "That all of them?" he called over the growl of the LCs. "There's supposed,to be a whole Section!"

  "All of who?" Sink asked.

  "Second Section. We're transport. Something about getting them all to a pass west of here. Let's go! I've got two more drops to make today!"

  "Rotted Gods, man, I just got here!" Sinklar bellowed. In desperation he turned and waved at MacRuder. "Mac, get some of those goons hopping! Clear those barracks of our people and let's get loaded. Detail some of those guys to find the other Groups. Let's go!" And with his new pack on his back and his assault rifle hooked into his armor, he scrambled up the ramp. Was that what command was all about? Just make it up as you go?

  Sinklar stowed his gear, wondering what to do next, and went down to see if he could orchestrate the growing confusion. One by one, he directed the raw recruits to crash benches.

  He glanced out of the LC and saw her as she came up the ramp, following an armored rabble which evidently made up

  A Group. Sink's breath caught in his throat. Gretta's hair hung around her shoulder, a swinging mahogany brown wave behind her too-well formed features.

  Her blue eyes caught his and held. She stopped, slim body silhouetted in the afternoon light.

  Sink started forward, mouth oddly dry. "Gretta?"

  She smiled, eyes lighting. "You're all right? Oh, Sinklar, how I worried about you." Then she stepped into his arms, hugging him tightly.

  "Sergeant Fist?" Came a call from the flight tech.

  "Guess that's me."

  "We'll talk when this is all settled." She winked at him and pushed him forward.

  Sink sighed and followed the man back to engage in a paperwork nightmare.

  Sink didn't meet his other corporals until the LCs had lifted. Mac introduced him to Hauws, First for C Group;

  Ayms for D; Kap was first for E; and Shiksta for heavy ordnance. Of them all, only he, Gretta and Mac, had seen combat experience. The rest, including the privates, were totally green, fresh draftees from various parts of the Empire.

  Some didn't even speak Regan.

  "All right," Sink told them as he leaned back against the crash webbing. "Mac, you and Gretta go out first. We'll assume we're not landing in an ambush. Pray to the Rotted Gods intelligence is better than that. I looked at the map.

  We're being set down in the pass. Off to the right is a rocky knoll. I want a thin perimeter laid out around that knoll as best you can organize it. Groups C, D, and E will fill in the gaps. Shiksta, I want the heavy stuff set up where you can give covering fire to any part of the perimeter. Understood?

  Good, let's hope nobody shoots at us."

  They all nodded assent.

  "Now, the first thing you do is dig in. Get your people down in the dirt."

  Hauws asked, "What about regulations on health and exposure to foreign soils?

  I mean, I was a health inspector on Ashtan and you'd be surprised at the organisms that grow in Targan soil."

  Sinklar blinked. "And you'd be surprised at how a human body looks when a pulse gun explodes it. Dig or die. You make the choice. Any other
questions, Corporal?"

  Hauws swallowed. "No, sir."

  "Uh, sir?" Kap asked. "From what you lined out, how do we justify quick mobility as stipulated in the attack command manual?"

  "What do we attack?" Sinklar asked dryly.

  "Their assault columns, sir." Kap's red face screwed up with concern, as he struggled to remember. "It says in the manual that assault columns can be disrupted by rapid hit and run tactics. Such actions depend on rapid deployment and quick mobility." He jerked his head, as if satisfied he'd gotten the rote right.

  Sinklar pursed his lips. "I read the manual Corporal Kap. That manual killed exactly ninety-seven percent of the Second Section in Kaspa. This is not an assault on a planet. This is a different kind of war—one the manuals don't talk about."

  He looked into their suddenly nervous eyes. Mouths worked silently. They waited, jittery at the thought of hearing more heresy. Ayms was wringing his hands. Shiksta tapped his foot energetically, eyes lowered.

  Sink nodded at their disquiet. "Yeah, I know. No one has fought a war like this for a long time. They call it social revolution. In the old times, it was called a guerrilla war. You wil rarely see the people shooting at you. They won't come in assault columns. They'll fire out of the dark, hit when you least expect it, where you least suspect it."

  "But that's in violation of Imperial honor," Hauws declared indignantly.

  "That's savage!"

  "And terribly human. It's the oldest form of war, one someone either reinvented, or dug out of the history books." And at that he frowned. "I wonder."

  Mac cocked his head. "Boys, you better pry the wax out of your ears. Gretta and I told you. We been there. What are you onto, Sink?"

  "Just thinking. Two hundred years ago, at the start of the Imperial period, the governments had an interplanetary conference on war and the manner of its conduct. At the time, comprehensive and sophisticated programs of military education swept Free Space. That's where the concepts of honor in war were founded. I wonder, could it have been a political attempt to alienate the people from guerrilla war? Social programming by the political elite?"

  "Got me" Mac told him. "I never heard the term before."

  Sinklar nodded. "Yeah, well, like I said, it's old. I wonder if the Empire has any idea what it's up against?"

  "So, if it gets too bad, the Star Butcher will show up and the Targans will melt!" Ayms grinned and looked back and forth.

  "Perhaps," Sinklar mumbled, lost in his thoughts. "Or perhaps the masterminds behind this revolt have dug something out of the past to handle the Butcher, too."

  The words were hardly out of his mouth when the LCs dipped and decelerated at five gs. Idly, Sinklar wondered if they ever slowed gradually.

  He got one wish. No one shot at them as they unloaded. He even got his perimeter established in the rocky ground and all the ordnance set up with good covering fire. One thing about green troops, they let him make an innovative deployment without arguing the rule book with him.

  They didn't get hit until dark. Sink got to test his strategy first hand. From that moment on Second Section learned what war was all about—but they only took eleven casualties: three dead and eight wounded by the time dawn reddened the eastern sky.

  * * *

  Skyla had never considered the impact Staffa had made on her life; He'd always been there. She chewed her lip, feeling uneasy. She found herself lonely with him gone.

  He'd been worried about her. That thought stuck as she leaned back from the console in her small bridge. Tapping a stylus, she studied the vector on which the CV should have returned to Ashtan. In her plush personal cruiser, she mapped the radiation spike and pinpointed the direction in which the highly dissipated reaction was moving. The acute sensors picked up positron dancing out of the past to annihilate themselves. Fro the frequency, her superior instruments calculated half-life possibility and tied the origin to Staffa's acceleration.

  No, he hadn't returned to Ashtan. Instead, he'd laid his tracks straight for Etaria, and what? One of those Priestesses? He had the choice of how many women in the Itreatic

  Asteroids? Or the pick of women from any of the conquered worlds, for that matter. No, this was Staff a being clever. Etaria remained on open port.

  From there, he could lose his trail.

  The computer locked a line-of-sight laser onto receive in the Itreatic Asteroids. Tasha's anxious face formed in the monitor. "You've got a fix?" he asked.

  "Etaria," she told him. "I'm off. I'll holler if I find anything. Be ready."

  "Affirmative . . . and good luck."

  She killed the connection and studied the course plot, the worry-cap easy on her head. To hesitate is to lose the trail. Damn you, Staffa, why are you putting me through this?

  Skyla laid in the course and settled into her cushioned command chair. No matter what Staffa might think, he didn't have the skills to be turned loose among civilized people. He might be a brilliant tactician and a superb mercenary, but what did he know about the vipers out there? Especially ones like she had grown up around?

  She triggered the main drives and built Delta V for the jump, noting with satisfaction that she was eating most of the vanished CV's radiation.

  Excellent, that put her right on target.

  And if I'd had a child? Yes, I'd be just as preoccupied as Staffa is.

  "Getting to be a sentimental old bitch," she muttered under her breath, adding more thrust to the fusion reactor and tightening the bounce-back collar.

  "Be ust like him, though, to be up to his neck in trouble by the time I get to Etaria. Probably have to call out the whole fleet to break him out of it."

  Where after Etaria? "Targa? That's what the Praetor told him. There are a lot of Seddi on Targa."

  She shook a fist in victory. If passage could be arranged to Targa from anywhere, it would be from Rega or Etaria.

  She vented an explosive sigh as she stared at the starfilled monitor and studied the ship's feedback as it rolled into her brain via the shiny worry-cap. Her agile mind stored and sorted ship's data, maintaining the delicate nav systems.

  Simultaneously, a consuming curiosity ate at her. Just what sort of woman had Chrysla been? How had she managed to put a lock on Staffa's hard heart? Had she met him with iron and defiance in her soul, or given him her love and soft compliance? What did it take to win Staffa kar Therma's love? Chrysla had been his perfect woman. How did he expect to replace her?

  She mulled it over as she stared out into the star-gray heavens and suffered an increasing anxiety. He had only been gone from Itreata for somewhat more than twentyfour hours. How much trouble could he get into in that time?

  "Oh, Staffa, I hope I'm not too late."

  Ily Takka studied the scanner input, watching the small cruiser as it built for jump. "What do you think, Commander?"

  "Three person cruiser Minister. Could be anybody." The commander pulled on his nose nervously, as always, afraid to meet her probing black eyes.

  "How many credits would you make that craft to be worth on the open market Commander?" Ily asked, voice soft, eyes narrowing.

  "From the style and the g's it's putting out, I'd say somewhere in the neighborhood of four hundred thousand ICs, Minister."

  "Indeed, and I sincerely doubt that just any of Staffa's people can. . . . But we don't know that, do we?" She tapped her chin with a stylus. "Official business, perhaps? Or the Wing Commander running to tell Staffa we've already made offers? You have the destination triangulated?"

  "Etaira, Minister. No doubt about it." He paused, taking a quick look at the navigator who nodded vigorous agreement.

  "Hmm, isn't her cruiser accelerating rather rapidly?" Ily frowned, wishing she were more familiar with such things.

  "Weapons First?" the commander called, "Can you get a Doppler on that craft in the targeting comp?"

  "Aye, sir!" The Weapons First bent over a monitor, fixing the targeting comp on the moving dot of light. "She's pulling almost sixty g's sir."
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  The commander frowned. "Good ship Minister. She's got some pretty powerful gravity compensating equipment in there. I raise my estimate. You might not buy that craft for less than six hundred thousand ICs."

  "And how many g's can we pull?" Ily raised an eyebrow.

  The commander swallowed. "My crew, ma'am, can take forty g's by straining our equipment. With you aboard, I wouldn't want to pull more than thirty to leave us a high enough safest margin percentage just in case—"

  "We will accelerate at forty g's Commander." She nodded her satisfaction as she narrowed her eyes. "We can always slow on the other side, but I want us close when she comes out."

  "Ma'am, do you understand what kind of energy we're talking about? Forty g's is like slamming your body—"

  "I gave you an order."

  "Yes, ma'am," the commander agreed with a heavy sigh. "But first, we'll need to get you into combat armor. This won't be much fun if you insist on—"

  "I do Commander. Where's this combat armor. Show me what I have to do."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  As she walked off the bridge, a klaxon started wailing. "Prepare for high g acceleration! All hands, high g acceleration! Stow all loose objects and prepare for forty g's, ladies and gentlemen."

  And Skyla, my dear, Ily thought, next time we meet wil be in the Regan Empire—and so many things can happen in my Empire!

  Bruen thought Butla looked like a restful tiger. Tension pervaded the air, even here, in the chambers below Vespa. The rock walls of the chamber showed signs of the passing of ages. Scars marked on the stone where various changes had been made to the room. Places like this were old, very old, dating to the terraforming of the planet. No wonder they were tense. They had taken so much on themselves, all in a wild gamble orchestrated by the thrice-cursed Mag Comm.

  Hyde coughed hoarsely in the silence. He sat on the opposite side of the table from Bruen while Ret sat at the head.

  Butla Ret twisted sideways in the chair, muscles dancing under his midnight flesh, eyes thoughtful as he looked down his long flat nose. He wore a Master's off-white robe that was loosely belted around his slim waist. "On the surface Kaspa appears to be completely in Regan control. They patrol in Groups, always ready to return fire. When we snipe at them, they retaliate by blowing away entire buildings—despite the civilians. Fear is becoming a way of life in the capital."