Requiem for the Conqueror

  Ily bent her head in deep thought. "Which brings us to the Companions. I couldn't interest them in any of the offers I tried to make. One possible exception might be the Targan affair. Wing Commander Lyma hinted that Staffa might contract to fight for the Empire in that 'domestic' matter. As a result, I propose we allow that stew to boil for a whie longer."

  She took a step and raised a hand to her chin, indicating deep thought; and Tybalt nodded his agreement during the pause.

  Her eyes flashed up. "I suggest, Lord Emperor, that we allow the Rebels to gain some ground. Perhaps a shipment of arms might fall to them? And afterward, suppose a green commander took a punitive force into the field?

  Let's assume that details of his orders and command were somehow to fall into Targan hands. And if there were a foul-up in the chain of command at the critical moment, would it not be possible that our situation might appear desperate enough to appeal to the Companions and their sense of vanity in arms?" She raised an eyebrow.

  It might indeed work. Oh, how precious my Ily is. Had I a complete Council of her caliber—Staffa and his butchers be damned—I'd have the whole of Free Space in my very palm! Indeed, there has to be a likely candidate to promote. Staff Second Kapitol? No, too much family clout there. Perhaps someone from the lower ranks, an insignificant man.

  It began to come together.

  "And the First Targan Assault Division—already decimated once—could be launched again into the fray," Tybalt noted. After all, it had only recently been filled with the rankest of the inexperienced drawn from twenty different reserve cadres. "Nothing there to lose."

  "In the meantime, Lord Emperor, I will await your verdict on my report." Ily bowed her head submissively, a mockery only Tybalt could understand as he stared at the falling veils of her glossy black hair.

  He turned to his own equipment. "My Lord Minister of Internal Security. Your report and recommendations are accepted and approved. I only have one other order: Find Staffar

  Private Sohnar came aware slowly, his mind piecing itself together, drawing strings of thought into a continuous whole.

  Pain filtered through the black recesses of unconsciousness. Pain made it difficult to align thoughts into a coherent string.

  "Sohnar?"

  The voice sifted through the pain and confusion, giving him something with which to identify. Sohnar, thats me. Thats me, repeated in his hazy mind, a simple fact he could cling to.

  "Sohnar? Wake up now. You should be able to hear us."

  The voice came louder, and through the pain, he managed to feel his body, tingling in places, but still there. The effort to move his tongue came automatically. He recoiled from the dry, desiccated feel of his mouth.

  "Water," he heard himself croak, awed by the quality of his voice.

  Soothing wetness filled his mouth, causing him to almost choke as the gag reflex triggered. His reeling mind recovered, swallowed, and sought more of the wondrous liquid.

  "Sohnar, we must talk," the voice came again, distinct this time.

  He sought the familiar neural pathways and blinked his eyes open. Images and colors blurred his vision. He heard:

  "Give him a couple more ccs of stimulant."

  The prick of the injection barely penetrated the mantle of pain. Warmth rushed through him, allowing his thoughts to coalesce.

  "Sohnar?" The voice asked, mild, compassionate.

  "Yes." He sounded better now as he sucked on a small plastic tube of liquid.

  "What happened last night?" The gentle voice soothed him, making him feel safe.

  Last night? What did that mean?

  "Last night, Sohnar. I can see confusion on your face. What happened?" A pause while he tried to sort it out and then the voice reminded him. "You were on guard duty."

  An image formed in Sohnar's stumbling mind. "Yes. Walking the compound."

  "That's right."

  He searched his memory, struggling to recall. "Boring. Terribly boring."

  "Did you see anything unusual?"

  He felt himself try to nod, pain lancing at the back of his neck.

  "What?" the voice prodded through the pain, bringing him back to the wavering image.

  "Officers. Two officers. Man and a woman." Yes, he could remember. Both coming down the white wooden stairs from the First Assault Division Headquarters.

  Sohnar explained slowly, having trouble with the words.

  "What did you do?"

  Sohnar thought, closing his eyes so the blurred images outside didn't confuse the ones in his mind.

  "Saluted."

  "Good for you . . . and then?"

  What? Sohnar thought, trying to pull the pieces from his wobbling, shifting thoughts. "Not right," he whispered to himself, remembering.

  "What was not right, Sohnar?"

  "The woman," he added, remembering her face. Drawn, white, nervous. "And. . . . And. . . ."

  "Go on. And what?" the soothing voice prodded. "It is vitally important that we know, Sohnar. Please . . . please, we need you to remember."

  Important. Must know. Sohnar struggled, his mind starting to shy away from the thoughts. A feeling of something terrible stirred in his subconscious. It came to him.

  "Her armor," Sohnar remembered. "Bloody. Thought she might have been on a raid. Scared. She was scared."

  More began to fill in the blind spots. "The man, big man, dark-skinned, saluted. Good soldier doesn't question an officer. I returned to my patrol."

  "Yes, Sohnar, go on," the gentle voice caressed him.

  "Walked around the perimeter fence," Sohnar added, seeing his route through the lighted section behind the First Division Headquarters. "Saw them again.

  At the electrical panel behind the headquarters."

  The horror trembled beneath his memory. Fear began to mix with the pain he lived.

  "Good work, Sohnar, don't let us down now, son. We need you. Need your report."

  "They . . . they did something to chips in the box. I walked . . . walked quietly. Could hear them talking. The man spoke. Said, hat's good. Red-green to white-blue. That reconnects the alarm.' "

  Sohnar hesitated.

  "And then?"

  "Then. . . . Then. . . ." Sohnar swallowed, his mouth gone dry again. "The woman closed the box and she leaned against the wall. Sick. . . . Sick. . . .

  She threw up on the ground. The man put his arm around her shoulder.

  Comforting, you know?"

  "You're doing fine, Sohnar. Tell us all of it. You are so important."

  A shaking tried to climb out of Sohnar's mind. Fear tangled his speech center, making him utter strange noises.

  '"Give him a half cc to calm him. This is the critical part."

  Another slight prick and Sohnar felt his fear recede— unfortunately, so did some of his carefully maintained coherency.

  "Continue, Sohnar," the gentle voice prompted.

  "Walked forward ... to see ... if I could . . . help her. Saw . . . her look ... up. Amber eyes." Fear, despite the repression, surged again. Stubbornly, Sohnar fought with all his Ashtan bull-headedness. "She made . . . strange noise. I ... only . . . help her. To help her. Didn't have . . . time to react."

  His voice locked.

  In his mind, Sohnar relived that moment, watched in horror as the woman tensed, the man stepping to one side, pulling a pistol from his belt.

  Sohnar, understanding too late, crouched, bringing his blaster up, turning to meet the man. The barest flicker of movement caught at the edge of his vision.

  The woman—he'd forgotten the woman! An iron grip caught his throat, stifling the scream of warning. He'd tried to turn, looking into her face. So pretty.

  The image barely flashed across his mind as he tried to pull back, scared. Her knee caught him low in an explosion of pain only partially absorbed by the combat armor.

  He'd tried to back-heel her, throw her off, but something warm and wrong flickered in his belly. Terror had blinded him as his body went oddly weak and he sagged
in her grip while his lungs burned for want of air.

  And as it all went dizzy, he slumped in her arms, eyes locked with hers . . . falling.

  Funny thing, she had followed him to the ground and all the way he'd looked into those frightened eyes. In the compound lights, he'd seen her hair falling around him as he lay on the ground. Reddish with a hint of brown, it had cast rainbows in the floodlights

  As his world grayed, he'd wanted to tell her not to be afraid, that things would be all right. But they had gone, the man dragging her away while blood bubbled up in Sohnar's mouth, filling his lungs and trachea.

  Alone, the world going dim, he realized he'd smeared more blood on her armor as he dragged her down.

  Sohnar could barely hear the gentle voice calling to him. A faint sting came from his face. Grayness drew close around him . . . sinking. ...

  Division First Mykroft sighed and crossed his arms as the psych interrogator ceased to slap the boy and looked up.

  "Condition?" Mykroft demanded.

  "Dead, sir. This time, I think he's too far gone. We might have dumped too many stimulants into his system as it was." The interrogator checked one of the instruments hooked to Sohnar's claylike flesh.

  Mykroft chewed his lip and nodded. "Very well, we got all we could out of him, I guess. Woman and a man, hmm? Must have used a vibraknife to get through his armor that way."

  The interrogation officer looked up. "At least we know they did something to that alarm system."

  Mykroft ground his teeth and frowned. "Indeed. At the same time, they murdered most of the First Division commanders. Thank the Blessed Gods they didn't come after the Second." He paused, as if talking to himself. "That would have been me."

  The interrogation officer calmly shut down the systems pumping blood through Sohnar's body and stood. "In the meantime, what will happen to First Division?"

  "That's up to the Minister of Defense. Of course, we won't let any hay grow under our feet in the meantime. We can turn the situation here to our advantage by ..." Mykroft caught himself. Irritated, he gave the interrogation officer a blistering look. "Just like an interrogation man Third. You're full of too many damned questions. You've got me answering them now."

  The Interrogation Third fought a smile. "Yes, sir."

  "And put out an arrest order for a big dark-skinned man and a woman with the description he gave us. Damn you, Sohnar, you died too quickly." Mykroft shook his head at the corpse and left, boots clicking hollowly on the hospital floor.

  "Hauws! Break five men to the left through that gully! Move, Gods Rot it!

  NOW!" Sinklar bellowed into his comm. That slight sensation of unreality gave him a split second warning to throw himself face first into the rocky earth as concussion and gravity flux raised havoc with his ears and balance. The ground heaved under him.

  Dirt and rocks pelted his body in a clattering rain, bouncing off his armor.

  Sinklar shook his head and wiggled his jaw to clear his ears as he struggled up on all fours. Teeth gritted, he refused to trust his feet after the effects of the disrupter detonation. He glared angrily up at the raw sky.

  The battered ridge that the Second Section of the First Division called home had been turned into a blasted no man's land of trenches, foxholes, and bunkers that he and his Groups had gouged out of the resisting Targan soil.

  They lived among cratered and pulverized rocks. Smoke, intermixed with dust, drifted across it while laser and blaster fire shot lines of color through the haze.

  "Hauws? Did you get that?" Sinklar demanded, a cackle of blaster bolts sounding like burning air over his head.

  "Affirmative." Hauws' voice came back. A hollow thump from a mortar reverberated through the system. "They just got started. Uh . . . hold it. I hear firing from their direction. Good call, Sink."

  "Sink?" Shiksta's voice came through, interrupting. "I think we've spotted something headed toward Kap's flank. Might be ten Rebels. Request permission to lay down a dispersing fire under signal seven conditions as per the manual, sir."

  "Shik! Damn you, I don't care what the manual says. Fry them bastards if you can! Shoot! And from now on, I don't want to hear what the holy gawddamn book says. You're up here to kill Targans and keep the pass closed to resupply efforts! Now, shut up and SHOOT!"

  "Yes, sir." Shik sounded contrite.

  Sinklar shook his head, face contorting. "Hauws, be ready to back those boys up if things get too hot in that gully. That's one of your weak points."

  Sinklar got slowly to his feet and managed to take a few tentative steps.

  Through the smoke and dust of his battleground, he began to look over the situation. Two Targans fled Hauws' gully. One tumbled as his shoulder erupted in a puff of pink. Good shot, that.

  "Mac? How you doing?"

  "Five casualties Sink. The good news is that from where we're dug in here, we can see about forty of their dead. They keep sending advances out into that hollow down there. Why are they doing that?" Mac sounded genuinely confused.

  "Every time they trot out, we tear hell out of them!"

  Sinklar's cracked lips curled up in a wicked smile. "Answer's easy, Mac. If a column advances in the open, what's the holy gawddamn book say an appropriate defensive response is?"

  "Uh, let's see. Advance and flank, right?"

  Fire lanced from Shik's heavy ordnance into a splintered cliff side to the right of Kap's position. A vortex of blaster bolts mixed with frag bombs and sonic shells left the mountain erupting dust, shattered rock, and, with a little hope, blasted Targan bodies. Maybe Shik was learning after all.

  "That's right," Sinklar agreed. "Makes you think they got a book, too, doesn't it? The rest of you guys hear that?"

  He felt the tingle, pitched face first into the dirt, and waited while a second disrupter blast shook their position. Sink pulled his face out of the ground, spit mud from his mouth, and grimaced at the grit and sand that crunched in his teeth.

  "Shik? You get a trajectory on that last shot?" Sinklar demanded, wiping clinging grime from his face.

  "Affirmative. We're computing for return fire now."

  "Atta boy, Shik. You stuff a soic shell down that thing and we'll all buy the beer."

  Someone laughed on the comm.

  Sinklar studied the layout of his people. His eyes traced each of the fortified positions.

  "Ayms? You got anybody covering that slope on your right flank?"

  Ayms cleared his throat. " 'Firmative, Sink. Three men. Dug them in just like you said. So far they've sniped off two or three Targ-ets who tried to sneak up there with some sort of back packs. Probably some sonic explosive or other.

  If they could send a big enough seismic shock through this ground, they might stun us enough to overrun the position."

  Sinklar nodded to himself. "Now, that's thinking, Ayms. You read that in the holy gawddamn book?"

  Laughter spattered through the comm like static. "Nope, Sink. Thought that up on my own."

  "You'll make sergeant yet, Ayms. Stick with it."

  Sinklar yawned and blinked at the fatigue in his eyes before crawling up to a rocky point where he could look down over Mac's position.

  Shik's heavy stuff erupted in a barrage that speared the sky with streaks of light as rockets and mortar fire laced over a distant ridge. Centering his spotting goggles on the ridge, he could see rock slides break loose and trees shake— and that was on this side.

  "Think I got that big gun of theirs," Shik muttered selfconsciously.

  They waited, occasional shots lacing the slanting light of evening. No more gravity shells fell.

  Sinklar heard gravel crunch and turned to look, seeing Gretta climbing up the slope to drop down next to him.

  "How's the war?" Sinklar asked around a wry smile.

  Her blue eyes twinkled in a dirt-streaked face. Her teeth gleamed white behind her sensual lips. Strands of mahogany-brown hair had slipped out from under the helmet.

  "You heard Third Section is pinned dow
n? Calling for orbital bombardment? fifth Section is running, shooting, and running some more. LCs are supposed to go in and pull them out after dark. That leaves us surrounded."

  Sink nodded. "Yeah, and we've been under constant fire with only casualty LCs coming in. Heard Fifth wanted reinforcing last night and no answer came from Division. Their supplies didn't even arrive. Sort of like sacrificial goats, don't you think?"

  "Neither did ours," she reminded. "What in hell is happening in headquarters?"

  "Playing cards, drinking Myklenian booze?" Sinklar lifted a shoulder, anger rushing hot inside.

  Gretta chuckled sourly. "Makes you wonder what we're fighting for, huh? We've got wounded to evacuate. If an LC doesn't come in tonight, we'll lose a couple."

  Sinklar looked out at the setting sun and listened to sudden growing silence.

  "Guess it does make you wonder, doesn't it?"

  She nodded, looking away at the distant purple mountains. "Pretty up here."

  And then, "Sink, most of us are still alive. You've seen the numbers we've been up against."

  "Yeah," he nodded, remembering the masses of men and women who'd come running—jumping from rock to rock— weapons of all sorts in their hands. The battle for their rocky pass had been brutal and endless. "Where'd they all come from?"

  "Their mamas." Gretta poked him in the ribs, not too effectively since his armor had been battered hard. Impact broke the interwoven microscopic tubes that held the chemical agent which intermixed and hardened within nanoseconds.

  She studied him, a curious longing in her eyes. "Come on, let's go down to your place and get something to eat."

  He took one last look at the quiet battlefield. Three days now of continuous assaults, endless sniping, and constant pressure. Maybe they—and the Targans—had simply worn out.

  He ached as he skipped and slid down the slope to his bunker. Gretta pulled an opaque graphstic sheet back and ducked in. Sink followed and stood in the cramped space a couple of privates had excavated with vibrashovels.

  Gretta switched on a field light and slapped a ration pack onto the wobbly table made of crate top. Three rickety chairs—from Gods alone knew where—were propped against the wall. His narrow bunk lay along the other side where it collected the dirt that fell out of the wall every time a shell landed nearby.