Death Match, page 51
part #3 of Sten Omnibus Series
When the Eternal Emperor had made his long and twisted return from the grave, it was a Dusable election that had given him his first large step up to the throne. Since then, he’d repaid that debt many times over.
To begin with, Walsh and Kenna owed their current exalted status to the Emperor’s not-inconsiderable political savvy. He’d stolen the election from Tyrenne Yelad—a boss with three decades of experience in ballot-box larceny.
But the Emperor was a fervent believer in that ancient law of politics, “He who was with me before Chicago,” and had ladled favor with a heavy hand.
Against this backdrop Solon Kenna hit the stump. Electioneering as if the big date were a week away, instead of a year, even though all his advisers said the election was in the bag. They pointed out that Dusable had never been so prosperous. The landing orbits of its big shipping ports were jammed. Factories were working twenty-four-hour shifts. The GNBI (Gross National Bribery Index) at record levels.
AM2 was not only plentiful and cheap, but the Eternal Emperor had gifted the system with a brand-new AM2 depot—servicing two vast sectors in this area of the Empire.
Kenna refused to be soothed. As the president of the Council of Solons and the power behind Tyrenne Walsh, he had a great deal to lose if there were any miscalculations. Which was everything. Kenna had no intention of repeating Tyrenne Yelad’s most crucial error: overconfidence.
He approached his first major speech of the campaign season with special care.
To begin with, he chose a friendly audience—the Cairenes division of the giant shipping union, the SDT. The union had been one of Kenna’s power bases since his days as a rookie member of the Council of Solons. The brawny shipyard workers could always be counted on to deliver, whether it was votes, hefty campaign-chest contributions, on-demand wildcat strikes, or strong-arm good squads to raid rival wards.
Next, he dipped deep into his private war chest to provide the entertainment. There would be three hundred refreshment tables, creaking under the weight of tons of food. A hundred more would serve as open bars. A central stage was erected, and scores of musicians, comedians, and scantily clad dancers were pressed into service for dawn-to-dusk entertainment. Fifty tents were thrown up at the edges of the big main shipyard and staffed with teams of patriotic joygirls and joyboys, who were called on routinely during the quadrennials to give their all for Dusable.
Finally, he put gentle pressure on the Emperor to provide him with suitable ammunition for his speech. And the Eternal Emperor, Kenna was pleased to tell his aides as he mounted the platform to address the assembled SDT members, had come through with more than he could have hoped for.
The roars of greetings that met Kenna were loud enough to drown the sounds of an inbound liner. He stood for long minutes under the rolling thunder of applause and huzzahs. He affected an attempt at interruption—-a weakly raised hand for silence. Then the hand fell. Helpless before the enthusiasm of his admirers. As a newscaster’s camera pushed in for a close-up, Kenna flashed that humble grin he had perfected over decades of working the hustings.
Three times, Kenna attempted to halt the applause. And three times, he had to bow to the will of the masses and accept their praise. On the fourth attempt, Kenna made a small hand signal, which was instantly picked up by the shill captains, who passed the word to their minions peppered heavily in the crowd to cool down. This time, the applause and glad shouts slowly diminished to a hush.
“I have one question before we get started,” Kenna intoned, his voice blasting over the portaboomers. “Are you all better off today than you were four years ago?”
The crowd noise was even louder than before. A news tech watched the needle of his popularity meter bang against the max peg and hold for a full minute. He nudged his anchor, whose eyes saucered. It was a near record.
Then the claque brought the crowd to a hush again, and Kenna continued.
“It is with great pleasure and humility that I stand before you once again to ask for your support,” he said. “Now, my worthy opponents think I’m a fool for rubbing elbows with good, honest, working beings such as yourselves.”
He allowed a space here for a growl of anger at his snobby “worthy opponents.” The growl came on schedule.
“But I say to them, without the working class, where would Dusable be?”
A shill shouted a carefully crafted impromptu from midcrowd: “In the drakhouse, that’s where!” The crowd hooted laughter.
Kenna made with the swamp-beast-eating grin again. “Thank you, sister!” More laughter from the crowd.
The smile was replaced with Kenna’s patented frown, in which his two gloriously thick eyebrows met in a dramatic, inverted V. “There’s change in the wind, my friends, and no one, but no one, knows it better than the working being. And of all the hard-laboring folks of Dusable, it is the SDT Union which has led the vanguard in promoting these changes.”
It took no prompting by shills to get a deafening shout of approval here. Kenna waited until it died of its own accord.
“Now you all know I’m not one for false humility,” Kenna said. There was laughter. “But, I’m going to have to be honest with you good people here.
“These winds of changes I’m speaking of have graced Dusable with the greatest prosperity in its history. Full employment. Record wages. Prices at near-record lows.
“All these things we’ve enjoyed partly because of the enlightened leadership of Tyrenne Walsh…and my humble self…but, there is really one being all of us have to thank for our good fortune. And that is…the Eternal Emperor himself.”
The crowd went wild at this. Shouting. Pounding on one another. On and on it went, the shills working the lines with fervor. This time the news tech’s needle pegged out for one and a half minutes.
Kenna stepped in again. “My opponents say all the benefits we have received since that historic day when the Emperor revealed himself among us, is charity, pure and simple.”
There were loud boos at this. Kenna smiled in acknowledgment, but pushed on. “They say Dusable is at the beck and call of its master, the Eternal Emperor. That since we’ve become a dominion of the Emperor, we’ve abandoned our traditional independence.”
The crowd hooted.
“You’ve heard all these lies, and more,” Kenna continued. “But, the truth is, Dusable is being listened to for the first time in its history. And I mean really listened to. We can hold up our heads in all the great capitals of the Empire now. And who does the Emperor turn to for advice in these trying times? Why, our own Tyrenne Walsh, who labors as we speak in the great hall of Parliament on Prime World.”
Kenna sipped at a special throat-soothing drink as the crowd applauded.
“Yes…Dusable owes a great deal to the Eternal Emperor. There’s no doubt about it. But, the Emperor owes us as well. And in these trying times, he needs us more than ever. I spoke to him personally, just the other day, and he told me to thank the people of Dusable for their undying efforts for freedom.
“And he said he especially wanted to thank the workers of SDT. He said he wanted you all to know that without the great shipping unions of our Empire, all his struggles would be for naught.”
The crowd took forty-five seconds to thank the Emperor back.
“But as you all know,” Kenna said when the applause waned, “the Eternal Emperor is not just a being of words. And I’m here to tell you this day, that once again he’s putting his thanks into action.”
Kenna lofted a large, old-fashioned piece of parchment. The news cameras pushed in to show the Imperial seal at the bottom. Then panned up to Kenna.
“First off, our brand-spanking-new AM2 depot—orbiting now high above our blessed world—has just been raised to a Triple A rating!”
The crowd really took off on this. A Triple A rating would bring even more business and work to the port.
“But, that’s not all,” Kenna said. “Along with our new rating, comes an even greater responsibility.
“My friends, I’m pleased to announce the Emperor has diverted an enormous AM2 shipment from a less deserving system. The amount is enough to supply all the needs of this entire sector for two E-years.
“As we speak, this AM2 shipment is approaching Dusable. And when this shipment is safely stowed away in our state-of-the-art depot—constructed, I might add, by our own talented people—Dusable will be able to rightly boast of the Emperor’s respect and faith in us.
“For, from this glorious day forward, Dusable will be the only supplier for AM2 in this sector. And that, my friends, is anyone’s definition of loyalty repaid.”
The applause, cheers, and general pandemonium greeting this statement rolled across Dusable’s capital. Beings in distant wards looked up and wondered at thunder on such a cloudless day.
Aboard the Pai Kow—sixty-seven million miles away—the cheers became a sudden blast that nearly cracked the com unit’s speaker cells.
Captain Hotsco chopped the volume, chortling to herself over Solon Kenna’s lavish promises of AM2 aplenty. She hit a monitor touchpad and Kenna’s face—silently mouthing the words of his speech—became a small window in the right-hand corner of the screen. Space filled the remainder.
Hotsco scanned the monitor, singing, “Mushi, mushi ano nay, ano nay…mushi, mushi ano nay.”
Then she saw it. Lights winked at three o’clock.
“Ah so desca.” Hotsco laughed. “Come to Momma, bright eyes.” She glanced at Kenna’s round face, still flapping its jaws to the union masses. The captain gave Kenna a mock salute. “Solidarity, brother!”
Fingers brushed touchpads and Kenna’s face vanished. The winking lights shifted to dead center. And the monitor snap-zoomed in.
Hotsco sucked in her breath as the robo “train” came into view. The lead element looked like an Imperial battleship chopped in half. In a way, it was. The ship had been turned out decades ago in one of the late, not so great, Tanz Sullamora’s yards. The command and weapons part of the ship had been buzzsawed, a new nosecone installed, and now it consisted almost entirely of engine. Tractor beams ringed the center. Starboard was a hump that was the brains of the ship.
The sole job of this giant engine was to tow the eighty-kilometer formation of barges trailing behind.
Hotsco started an automatic count of the container ships, then quit in awe as the sum reached into the scores.
And each and every one of them was filled with the most precious substance in the Empire—AM2.
Captain Hotsco, part-time pirate, full-time smuggler, was gazing upon a dream prize. The value of the AM2 train bound for Dusable’s depot was unimaginable. Even allowing for a Kenna lie involving the quantity—clot, cut it in half—Hotsco knew she was looking at not one fortune, but as many as the number of ships in the convoy.
And it was just sitting there for the taking. Okay, she couldn’t get it all. But she could certainly cut out enough to buy two or three systems the size of the Cairenes.
Wild would be livid enough to cut her pretty throat.
Clot Wild.
But, what about that cute Kilgour? It was his intelligence that had turned up word of the AM2 shipment. She had fallen in lust with the tubby Scotsman as he had laid out the plan to Wild and a group of his captains—which had included Hotsco.
The drill was for the smugglers to use their normal runs to the Cairenes—usually carrying expensive illegals for the pols and their cronies—as a cover to sniff out the AM2 train.
It was a damned good plan, too. Proof was looking out at her from the monitor.
And there was no one, but no one, around to know.
But if she followed her instincts, she might never learn the answer to that age-old question of what lies under a Scotsman’s kilt.
Clot the kilt.
Look at all that AM2.
After all, she hadn’t promised anything. Not really. She had only said she would take a look. And she was looking, wasn’t she?
Then a terrible, dream-souring thought trickled through. What would she do with it? Who could fence that amount? And if she tried dribbling it out, someone would eventually fink. And the Imperials would soon be hot on her trail.
Clot the Imperials. Hotsco had practically been born on the run.
Yeah…But…She had never had to run from entire fleets. Which is what would happen. All that AM2 double-damned-guaranteed it.
Oh, well.
Hotsco decided to do the honest thing—no matter how much it hurt.
To cheer herself, she thought of Alex’s broad, smiling face. And that short kilt.
She quickly coded the message, including the coordinates of the AM2 supply train. Then she sent it in one short, powerful blast.
Hotsco waited for two, or three breaths.
Her com unit bleeped.
It was the Victory.
Message received.
Hotsco quickly shut down and scooted out of the area, thinking, I hope you’re worth it, Alex Kilgour.
Dusable’s new AM2 depot was the size of a small moon. In looks, it resembled a quartered sphere.
Each “slice” was placed in the corner of an imaginary square, then linked with its sisters by enormous tubes. All traffic and freight flowed through these tubes. Laid over this configuration was an elaborate spiderweb of com lines, repair walks, and pipes carrying everything from industrial liquids to recycled air and sewage from the life-form units.
The depot normally required six hundred beings to operate. But there was nothing normal about Dusable.
Even here, parked in high orbit, the rules of featherbedding applied. There were twice that number lazing away when the AM2 shipment arrived.
Most of them were asleep. Or partying in the rec center. Kenna’s announcement hadn’t been a surprise to the depot people. They had been alerted days before to get ready for the shipment. Not that there was much to do. The depot was almost entirely automated.
A sleepy operator noted the approach in his log. He half checked that all automatic units were functioning, and then returned to his bunk and spooned up to his joyboy’s smooth back.
For a moment, he thought about waking the lad for a little fun. His loins stirred mildly. Then sleep overtook him, and he was snoring away.
On the monitor, the image of the giant AM2 train closed in. Then it stopped as the convoy reached a synchronous orbit with the station. Signals went out. The com board lit up with computer-exchanged messages.
The first container units separated from the train. They moved in a slow arc toward the depot where units waited to snag them and guide them aboard.
If the operator had been looking, he would have seen one of those AM2 container units detach itself from the convoy and scoot away from its fellows.
The depot’s shadow fell across the scene. And all became darkness.
“I’ll never be able to hold up my head in the stregg halls again,” Otho mourned.
“It’ll do you good,” Cind said, as she jockeyed the phony barge away from the pack of container ships closing on the yawning main depot bay.
“You could stand to lose about eighty kilos. Get your girlish figure back.”
“By my mother’s beard, you have no heart, woman,” Otho said—keeping an eye out for the patrol boat it was his job to track.
He figured they had about fifty-five minutes before it completed its routine circuit.
“I, Otho, have been ordered to do a thing that is less than glorious.”
“Poor baby,” Cind mock-sympathized.
She was getting used to the controls now. It had been awkward at first. After all, she was basically piloting a hulk—except it had been gutted, and a standard ship’s lifeboat hidden inside. The only clue that the container wasn’t standard was the slight cutout in the stern for the boat’s drivetube. It was so battered from millions of light-years of travel that only a close inspection would reveal the exit bay the Victory’s sailors had cut out with torches under Kilgour’s direction. The lifeboat contained herself, Otho, and half-a-dozen Bhor warriors.
“When my good friend Sten informed me that our first target was the quisling politicians of Dusable, I thought my old heart would break with joy,” Otho said.
“By my father’s frozen buttocks, I thought, but this is a true brother of the stregghorn. For there is nothing a true Bhor loves to hate so much as a politician. And here I was offered a whole planet of these vipers to slay.
“I tell you, Cind, I dreamed of a long-old age, spinning the tale of all the thick political skulls I cracked. Their blood would flow like stregg at a blessing. The only sorrow I foresaw was that there would be so many souls to drink to hell, I would not live to honor them all.”
“Quit trying to soften me up, Otho,” Cind said. “First off, you’re not that old. Secondly, you’ve done more than enough killing to boast for six lifetimes. So, forget it. I’m not going to suddenly feel sorry for you, and say, ‘Well…if you feel so strongly about it, dear…let the slaughter begin.’”
“A slaughter wouldn’t be necessary,” Otho said. “If only I could crush a throat or two, I would be satisfied. A happy Bhor.”
“No,” Cind said. “And that’s my last word on the subject.” Just then, the container coasted against one of the depot slices. It bumped once. Twice. Then she had it steady against the steel walls.
She applied small bursts of power, edging the container along the station’s hull. Finally, it came to rest against a repair port. Cind locked on.
“Now, let’s get inside,” Cind said. “And remember, Otho. No killing. We’re freedom fighters, remember? And a bloody trail of innocent civilian victims makes for a lousy image.”
“If you insist.” Otho sniffed. “I suppose I’ll become accustomed to these modern ways in time.”
A few blurred minutes, and they’d peeled the sealed port door with a small charge and were inside.
Cind clicked her com unit twice. A moment later, there was a return click from the Victory.
Step one complete.
