Death Match, page 26
part #3 of Sten Omnibus Series
“Excuse me, sir,” Mahoney broke in, “but why would they do this? Why would they give up all that power? As you’ve taught me, that goes against the nature of most beings.”
“Certainly it does. So does the carrot I’m going to offer. As well as the stick. But, to greed first. As provinces they are paying full price for AM2. Plus, they are under strict rationing. As dominions, they will not only pay less for the AM2, but will pay lower overall taxes, as well.”
“What if they refuse, sir? What’s the stick?”
The Eternal Emperor smiled. A nasty smile. “Oh . . . to begin with, I’m also announcing a tenth of a credit tax hike on AM2 for all provinces. That’s on top of increased rationing. Which — since economic nature will then take its course — will push the price of AM2 on the spot market into double digits.”
Low laughter.
Mahoney shuddered.
“That’s just for starters,” the Emperor said. “I’ve got a few other thumbscrews in mind. As a long-time kingmaker, I’ve gotten pretty skilled at unmaking them, as well.”
“Back to my original question, sir. How do I fit in?” Mahoney did not forget that his real first question had been “How can I help, sir?”
“I want you to be point man with the provinces. I want to heap more glory into your honors chest. As thanks, as well as to boost your prestige in the eyes of the fools you will be visiting.
“And I want you to visit every major province leader. Cajole them. Irish charm them. As well as twist the right arms if you have to. Just be firm, Ian. Make nice promises. But make sure they see the weight in the stick I’m handing you.”
“I am deeply honored, sir,” Mahoney said quickly. “But I am the worst man for that job. I would be disloyal not to refuse this honor. Such an appointment would not be in your best interests . . . sir.”
The Emperor turned a cold face to Mahoney. “Why, Ian?” The question was soft, the eyes looking blankly over Mahoney’s shoulder.
“Because I think it’s a terrible idea, sir,” Mahoney burst out. “You’ve always asked honesty of me. I’ve always given it to you. So . . . there it is, sir. I don’t want the job, sir. Because I don’t believe in it.”
“What’s there not to believe in? It’s a plan. Not a . . . religion.”
“First off, sir, in my estimation, the stick will be needed more than the carrot. You’ll have to force dominion status on most of them, sir. And they will resent the clot out of it. Which means, your orders will be followed grudgingly at best. Which automatically sets all your actions up for failure. And that, sir, is my humble opinion.”
It was also Mahoney’s professional opinion that anything micromanaged was doomed. If no one had anything to gain, why chance failure? A “let the big man do it” attitude develops fast. It also offended his democratic, Irish soul.
In Mahoney’s view, beings were best left in charge of their own destiny. In the past that had been what he had always loved about the Empire. It had problems, to be sure. But, mostly there was room for all sorts of ways of doing things. Room for genius, as well as for fools.
Now he was even beginning to wonder about his previous view. How much room was there? Really?
“In normal times, I would agree with you, Ian,” the Emperor said. “I could list many examples from history.”
“The British Crown’s takeover of Earth’s old East India Company comes to mind, sir,” Mahoney said. “One of your favorite examples, sir. As a lesson in failure, I believe.”
The Emperor laughed. Mahoney thought the laugh had a little bit of the old spark to it. It made him feel a little better.
“Go ahead, Ian. Throw my own logic back at me. Not too many people would have the nerve. That’s the kind of thing that keeps the mental juices going. Keeps me from getting stale.”
He leaned over his desk, lowering his voice slightly. “I tell you, Ian, the crew of beings I’ve got around me are gross incompetents. I miss the old days. When you and I and a few other talented beings — like Sten, for example — kept things going on the fly. I love that old kind of political freebooting.”
The Emperor sat back and sipped his drink. Coldness shrouded back over him. “Unfortunately . . . that is no longer possible. And I’m not just speaking of the current crisis.
“Things have become too big. Too complicated. Governing by pure consensus is ideally suited to a tribe. Twenty or thirty beings, maximum. Any number after that weakens the effectiveness of the ideal.
“It’s time for a new order, my friend. A universal order. New thinking by right-minded individuals is called for.”
Mahoney couldn’t help himself. “I’m not sure that rule by an enlightened monarchy fits the definition of ‘new thinking,’ sir,” he blurted.
The Emperor shook his head. “You’re right, but you’re wrong, Ian. You’re forgetting I’m . . . immortal.”
He settled his gaze on Mahoney. His eyes were like mirrored glass, reflecting Mahoney’s image back at him. “I can think of nothing more perfect in the social art of governing, than to have a single-purposed, benevolent ruler, who will keep the course until the end of history.”
The Emperor kept those eyes riveted on Mahoney, boring in at him. “Can you see it, now, Ian? Now, that I’ve explained? Can you see the sheer beauty of it?”
The com buzzed. Mahoney was temporarily saved from answering. Then, as the Emperor spoke to the individual on the other side the reprieve became permanent. He was rescued by the worst kind of news.
The Emperor snarled orders and angrily cut the line. He turned to Mahoney. “There’s been a disaster in the Altaic Cluster, Ian,” he said. “I mean, Imperial-troops-dead-in-the-most-humiliating-circumstances-type disaster.”
He turned his face to the window and looked out at the idyllic grounds of Arundel. He was silent for a long time, thinking.
Finally, he turned back. “Forget the previous job offer, Mahoney,” he said. “We’ll argue that matter later. I’ve got something much more important for you to do.”
“Yes, sir,” Mahoney said.
This time, he knew there was no way he could refuse.
Chapter Thirty
DIGGING OUT THE Guard’s barracks was three days of grimness. Five hundred and eighty soldiers had been inside when the monster bomb of the gravlighter had detonated.
Four hundred and thirty-seven dead. One hundred and twenty-one injured — most with major traumatic injuries requiring amputation so severe that the embassy’s surgical team doubted if more than half would accept limb regeneration. Twenty-three uninjured — physically uninjured.
There had been twenty-six, at first. Three soldiers had been dug out of the rubble seemingly unscathed. One of them had stood up, grinned, said “Thanks, you clots, now, who’s pourin’?” taken five steps, and dropped dead. The others just died quietly in their hospital beds. And the twenty-three survivors were all psychological casualties, of course. No one ever knew — or reported, at any rate — how many Jochi civilian workers had also died in the blast.
But it was three days before the last screamer, lost in the maze that had been a palace building, rasped into silence and death.
This battalion of the Third Guard had ceased to exist. Otho found the battalion flag buried near Jerety’s body and had it cased for shipment to the division’s home depot. The battalion might be reconstituted after an appropriate interval. Or it might never exist again.
The wounded, and the injured Guardsmen who had been outside their barracks, were loaded on the Victory and evacked.
Sten had put Mason in charge of the rescue operation, and he himself had spent as much time as he could digging with the rest of the Imperials. Then he had ordered Mason to take the Victory to Prime and unload the casualties. He had sent Prime a copy of Mason’s orders, but had not much cared whether they would be met with Imperial approval or not. He was slightly surprised to receive that approval — and a brief, coded addendum that further support would be provided immediately.
The next communiqué from Prime had been announcing medals. Some were given to Gurkkhas or Bhor that Sten had commended. Others went to Colonel Jerety and the top-ranked officers of the Guard’s battalion. If these officers had survived the blast, of course, they would have been relieved and at the very least shot for criminal incompetence.
Sten, Kilgour, and Mason were also gonged. To them the awards were meaningless medals to be tossed in a drawer and forgotten. The disaster should have been studied for its lessons — not memorialized with tin and ribbon. But that is the nature of any military unit.
By then, Sten had other problems.
The blast that destroyed the Guard unit seemed to be the catalyst. The planet that was Jochi went berserk.
Suddenly, the Empire was the enemy of the Altaic Cluster. The Empire must be taught a lesson. The Empire must not meddle.
Sten admired — slightly — the campaign. To a degree it was spontaneous — peasants never seemed to need much direction for their latest pogrom — but mostly it was carefully choreographed.
At first, Sten had been in a reactive position: filing the correct protests with Dr. Iskra and what Iskra laughingly called a government; filing the appropriate responses, trying to keep the livie reporters off his ass . . . and incidentally keeping the embassy functioning and his staff alive.
He had immediately declared Jochi a high-threat world and informed all Imperial worlds that any citizen visiting the Altaic Cluster did so at extreme personal risk. He insisted that Prime require a visa for anyone coming to the cluster.
He sent out teams of well-armed Gurkkhas and Bhor to find all Imperial citizens and escort them to the safety of the embassy.
Most Imperial visitors — thank some non-Altaic god — had been professional businessbeings, who were skilled at sensing trouble and scooting out of its way. But there were always the exceptions: the elderly couple who were determined to see a part of the universe they had never visited; the honeymooners who, it seemed, had picked Jochi out of an archaic travel fiche. Sten rescued the old people. He wasn’t in time for the newly married beings.
And then the embassy itself came under siege.
At first it was just small groups of Jochians, and any person or vehicle attempting to enter or exit the embassy was stoned. Sten consulted with Kilgour. Yes, Alex agreed. The situation looked to be worsening.
“Then we’ll show them how to throw a real riot.”
“Aye, boss.”
And Kilgour set to work, readying the response. He could have done it in his sleep by now. This was hardly the first time he and Sten had been besieged by “civilian mobs” on a “peaceful world.” They had a very effective standard defusing order prepared.
The crowds grew bigger. Instead of rocks, they were throwing firebombs and nail-wrapped improvised grenades built out of low-grade explosives.
According to Dr. Iskra’s flunky, J’Dean, these people represented the righteous wrath of Jochi. Wrath about what, Sten did not bother to ask. J’Dean told him that Dr. Iskra, who was quite busy at the moment, would happily send out troops to clear the area, if Sten so requested it. Right, Sten thought. Another massacre, which will be clearly and positively laid at my hands, since I know this conversation is being recorded.
“No,” Sten said politely. “The Empire will not harm innocent Jochians freely expressing their political opinions as is their right.” He broke the connection. He didn’t think even Iskra’s tape doctors could butcher that into a statement of slaughter.
Then the sniping started. Projectile weapons, being fired by marksmen who had seen at least some training. One secretary was shot in the leg, and one clerk was temporarily blinded and permanently scarred when a near miss shrapneled rock from a wall into her face.
That was enough. Sten ordered everyone nonmilitary inside, and only essential movement to be made during daylight hours even by troops.
Naturally, the next stage would be a direct attack.
Sten put all nonessential personnel into the many levels of sub-basements under the embassy building. He stationed anyone with any military training or weapons familiarity near the entrances and exits to the compound buildings.
The Bhor had been quite busy following Kilgour’s blueprints. The somewhat monstrous beings may have been thought of as barbaric killers — which they were, of course — but they were also sophisticated traders and pilots. Which meant that each of them had, by now almost at a genetically transmitted level, talents as shade-tree mechanics. Any of them could, for instance, weld anything, up to and including radioactive materials, by hand, safely, and with minimum shielding. Or rebuild a broken engine never seen before — given no more than hobbyist’s machine tools and an hour to puzzle it out.
The embassy already had two elderly riot-control armored vehicles. The guns were stripped off, and Alex rearmed the clunkers with his own choice of devices. Four embassy vehicles, including the stretched luxury ceremonial gravlighter that Sten had inherited from his predecessor, were stripped, given improvised armor, and equipped with the same weaponry as the riot vehicles.
Four of the Gurkkha trooplighters were also modified, with heavy iron vee-blades welded to their prows. These four were stationed near one of the embassy compound’s sally ports.
Sten and Alex were building and camouflaging bombs, then planting them at ground level on the compound’s outer walls.
That night, Lalbahadur Thapa, who Sten had commissioned Jemedar, took two unmodined lighters and a platoon of Gurkkhas out a side gate on a smash and grab on a central hardware depot. He returned having taken zero casualties and having accomplished his mission, although, he told Sten, he had never seen a mongery so large but with so little stock in trade. “How can these Jochians find so much time to be killing their neighbor and have so little time to be taking care of their own food and shelter?”
Sten didn’t know, either.
Kilgour told off twelve members of the embassy’s own security staff for special duties. They would be armed with the stolen “weaponry” and were dubbed, with Alex’s archaic sense of humor, Tomcat Teams.
By dawn, the embassy was ready. Sten thought the assault would come sometime between noon and dusk — it takes time to organize, fuel, oil, and motivate any mob.
The Gurkkhas and the Bhor were put on standby for reaction forces, in the event the mob made it through the gates or over the wall, or if a charge became necessary.
That left two tasks.
Alex took care of the first — he ran a last-minute, complete check on the embassy’s security, concentrating on any structures outside the embassy grounds that had line of sight on the compound and could be used as command centers. These included two buildings — one a new office structure, the other one of the near-abandoned vertical slums. Each had a new com antenna on the roof.
They were marked.
Cind had her best riflemen in the embassy courtyard, and targets set up. The range was subminiature, of course, and was intended only to let the snipers make sure the sights of their weaponry hadn’t been jarred or shifted since fired last.
Cind was grateful that the rounds to be fired were AM2 and not projectile-type, so she did not have to calculate at what centimetric range a target would give the same zero as the desired thousand-meter flat zero or any other stone-age nonsense. The AM2 went, without deflection and with a straight-line trajectory, straight for its target.
Their weapons were Imperial sniper rifles. These ultralethal devices were modified-issue willyguns, using the standard AM2 round.
But the “propellant” was not a laser, as on the standard infantry rifles, but modified linear accelerators hung around the barrels. A conventional-looking sight automatically found the range to the target. If the target had moved out of sight — behind a wall, perhaps — the scope was twisted until its cross hairs were where the sniper imagined the target to be, invisible on the other side of the wall. A touch of the trigger, and the weapon shot around corners.
Cind had her own personally modified sniper rifle, fitted with every comfort known, from thumbhole stock to set trigger to heavy barrel. One of the Gurkkhas, Naik Ganjabahadur Rai, spotted for her.
Sten hoped the crash of gunfire from behind the embassy walls might deter some of the prospective rioters’ enthusiasm, but he doubted it.
They waited.
The day built, with shouts, rocks, bottles, and chants coming over the embassy walls. It was midafternoon before Sten felt the mob was all frenzied up and ready to be dealt with. It probably took so long since the day was raw and windy — not exactly perfect weather to destroy an embassy.
He moved Cind’s snipers to the roof of the embassy. One floor below, lurking in an office with the windows removed, Alex waited with two Bhor antimissile teams.
All of Sten’s assault troops were on a single command freek, which normally would produce instant com babble. But since he was using the superexperienced Gurkkha and Bhor soldiery, Sten thought he could keep the gabble within reasonable limits. Their coms were also set for an instant-override section band.
“All sections, all troops,” he opened. “On standby, this band. Section leaders, make your com check, both freeks, and report. Sten, out.”
He was broadcasting en clair, since there was no time for codes, and no particular need, either. If whoever was masterminding this “spontaneous demonstration” wanted to listen in and try to react, that was fine with Sten.
All elements checked in five-by and zed probs, except that one section leader had to replace two com units. One of these centuries, Sten thought, they will actually come up with an infantry radio that is reliable five meters beyond the manufacturer’s bench. But not this one.
Sten moved a tripod-mounted high-power set of binocs into position and decided it was time to check the street scene outside.
Shouts. Banners. Horn blasts. Screaming rabble-rousers. Barricades blocking the side streets. The dull crack of a couple of small-caliber weapons, aimed at he knew not. The embassy was completely surrounded by a sea of madness. The mob swayed, roaring.
