Death Match, page 84
part #3 of Sten Omnibus Series
The sled may have been registered, but its drive was in unspeakable shape—the McLean generator would only lift the gravcar three meters, at max, and held the car at a 15-degree angle to the side. Top speed was no more than 55 kph.
Alex dropped another hundred credits to the seller’s purported brother, to get it running right. He knew the “brother” would jury-rig the repairs, and probably fill the lubricant reserve chambers with something on the specific gravity of molasses—frozen. But what of it? The craft was intended for only a oneway trip.
Twenty klicks outside Fowler, the city closest to the Imperial grounds, Alex found a litter-filled field just beyond one of Prime’s omnipresent parks. Clottin’ gorgeous, he thought. Put i’ a park, w’ penalties f’r trash, an’ thae’ll still be clots thae’ll dump their slok ten meters beyon’ the gate. Exact whae Ah been seekin’, however. He lifted the gravsled into the middle of the lot, grounded it, smashed the ignition and choice parts of the drive, stripped its registry off and buried it, and abandoned the wreck.
He hitched into the city and disappeared into its high-rise slums.
Step One, Two, and Three were accomplished successfully—getting onto Prime, setting up a secure base, and infiltrating into Fowler. Now for a cooling-off period. There was just a possibility he’d been tracked from his arrival, and the Emperor’s Internal Security was giving him rope, to see what mischief he had in mind. I’ dinnae be likely, he thought. But why chance m’ neck i’ th’ noose? I’s th’ only one Ah hae.
He had rented the room because it had two separate “back doors”—one out onto a rusty, abandoned fire ladder that Alex had secretly reinforced, and the second from the other side of the corner room onto some rooftops just made for a rapid departure. Plus it had a half-arsed kitchen, so he wouldn’t be forced out into public view.
After a week of laying low and eating packaged food not much better than military rats, he concluded he had dragged no tail with him. On to the next part.
He treated himself to a bottle of expensive brandy, remembering he would have to dump the flask somewhere else to avoid suspicion, since people in the district he had taken lodgings in seemed addicted to simpler pleasures, such as filtered industrial alk or home brew. And he plotted.
Stage Four would be getting himself as close as possible to Arundel. Stage Five would be getting into the Emperor’s castle. Stage Six would be out and gone for home, hopefully in one flat-out run.
Alex’s plan—one in, twa oot—was that he’d have a partner when he left.
Poyndex. He was fairly sure the man might have some objections to being snatched, and might become violent, or at the very least vocal.
Neither of which was in Kilgour’s scheme, especially since a brouhaha would produce an uncomfortable feeling for him, such as death. And for his overall plan to work, Poyndex would have to vanish silently and completely. The Snark would have to be a Boojum. But he didn’t want the distinction to be made positively until it suited Alex, Sten, and the rebellion’s plans.
Alex’s ambitious plan was to vanish Poyndex straight to the brig of the Victory. There he would be offered the same choice his agent on Vi, Hohne, had been given: double or be brain-scanned.
Alex cynically figured that Poyndex, being a purported professional, and having turned his coat once, wouldn’t even hesitate as long as Hohne had.
All of Alex’s sources on Prime said Poyndex was the Emperor’s cat’s-paw in everything. His knowledge of the Emperor’s closely held secrets would help in the final days.
At that point, Alex planned to have Poyndex surface, publicly. That would be yet another blow to the Empire.
All he had to do was bell his pussycat…
He forced himself to pay no attention to that little backbrain chant saying, “And lang lang may the maidens sit/Wi’ their goud kaims in their hair,/ A’waiting for their ain dear love/For him they’ll see nae mair.”
Maybe he would be killed this time. He felt it likely. Maybe this was his last run—but what of it? He had never had the idea he was either immortal or that he would die in a silken bed of old age. But he was determined that at the least, his ran on Poyndex would succeed before he would consider taking the journey to the Isle of the Blessed.
He muttered as he finished the bottle. He was going on like a creaking seer, mewling around a cauldron on a blasted heath, thinking naught but wrack and rain. Stick to bus’ness, lad. But if he was a seer, and his plan held up in the sober morn, Alex foresaw a minor crime wave in Fowler’s future. At that point, he shut off the single light in the shabby room and rolled over to sleep.
He slept. If he dreamed, he did not remember them when he awoke. He ignored the hangover and reconsidered his drunken plans of the night before. They still made sense. Alex went out for one beer and a plate of greasy eggs and settled down for a nap until night.
The first theft was from an ambulance, parked at the back of an emergency ward. Kilgour, cross-trained as a medic in Mantis, knew just what he needed to clip from the gravsled’s kit. He got what he needed, muttered at one object’s unwieldiness, and left, relocking the ambulance’s door behind him.
He stashed his loot, and checked the time. Ver’ good, he thought. Ah still hae time, i’ Ah hurry. Th’ bistros’ll nae be closin’t frae another three hours. Back out into the night he went, headed crosstown to another part of Fowler, where an ungrated window didn’t immediately suggest a brick and an eyeball-calculated trajectory.
The joint wae jumpin’, he thought, looking through the mesh fence at the luxury gravcars parked behind the exclusive boite. One…two security bein’s, a couple of carparks. Nae problem.
He used a small laser to cut a Kilgour-sized hole in the fence and went into the lot. He stole the registration plates from six gravcars—and put five of them back. On different craft than the ones they had been taken from. He replaced the fence grating and, with the sixth plate, went back to his tenement. Clean and simple. Kilgour rewarded himself with a couple of beers in an after-hours dive. He bought some rounds, and made some friends.
The next day, he lazed around, after doing minor stretch exercises, only going out for a meal and a shopping expedition. He bought three days’ worth of dried rations, a pack, a canteen, a flash, a set of camouflaged coveralls, and a cammie ground-sheet. He wished the Mantis phototropic camouflage was available on the open market, which it of course was not. He couldn’t have brought a set with him, since he had carried nothing that would even lift an eyebrow in the event of a stripsearch. The birdwatcher’s gear would have to do. His final purchase was a small but heavy-bladed “survival” knife. His next stop was at an electronic hobbyist’s center, where he bought some innocuous devices and the tools and circuitry necessary to modify them.
Then he allowed himself one of the two indulgences he had promised himself for the mission. He found a grocer’s and bought three kilos of inexpensive, thin-sliced lean beef, salt, fresh parsley, and a collection of dried spices. Back at his tenement, he strip-cut the beef, about three centimeters wide. The strips went into a marinade of soy sauce, water, some cheap red wine, some hot sauce, and spices—garlic, a handful of juniper berries, summer savory, pepper. The garlic, berries, and spices were sauteed a bit, and then dumped, hissing hot, into the rest of the marinade. The strips of beef went in to soak for a day.
About midnight, he went back to the dive he had scouted the night before. One of his new friends was waiting. He had secured what Kilgour had expressed interest in. Actually, he had an assortment. Kilgour sneered audibly at the miniwillygun, although that was the weapon he would have preferred. But, as he told the fence, ’T Ah gie nabbed, wi’ one ae th’ Eternal Emperor’s owene pieces ae AM2 artillery, Ah’m f r th’ high jump, an’ Ah dinnae wan’ t’ revisit m’ old haunts, f r a while yet.” Also that’d keep the fence from thinking Kilgour had major mayhem in mind, and possibly keep him from singing to the local constabulary about the gun-buying stranger to whom he owed nothing in the way of a buttoned lip.
For similar reasons he rejected a large-caliber handgun, and a folding-stock carbine, even though they were conventional projectile weapons. He chose—and then bargained for half an hour over the price of—a smallbore targetshooter. “Ah dinnae wan’ t’ be doin’t more’n bluffin’,” he lied.
Happy he had convinced the fence he was no more than a lightweight mugger, he trundled home and to bed.
Early the next day he finished off the first indulgence. The strips of beef were drained and laid on the counter. Over them Alex sprinkled salt—at least a pinch per slice. After that, chopped parsley. Then very generous pinches of a potpourri of the spices he’d bought. Thyme. More savory. Sweet basil. Pepper. Garlic pepper. Herb pepper. Marjoram. Some cumin, just for the hell of it. He pressed the spices into the meat with the flat of his knife, then flipped the slices over and repeated the seasoning. The meat went into the tenement’s dilapidated oven, set at its absolute lowest, and with a cork holding the oven door open a centimeter or two.
While the beef dried, he went to work on the electronic devices, turning them from innocent gimmicks into proper burglar’s tools.
He took a long nap, storing energy for the future. When he awoke, just before dusk. The slices of beef were dry, twisted, black, thoroughly nasty, and no more than a kilo in total weight. He admired his jerky. Ah’m noo th’ cook th’ Emp, Marr, Senn, or e’en m’ wee Sten is. But this’ll chew easy, i’ th’ woods i’ th’ rain. He sealed the jerky in a water-resistant pack. Then he packed and cleaned house. If Security was able to find the tenement, all of their most clever sweeps would yield them nothing, except that the slum had been rented by someone who was compulsively neat.
He went looking for his second indulgence. Taking all of his debris, from that brandy bottle to the electronics tools he’d purchased with him, and leaving them in an industrial dumper.
He found a restaurant big enough so he wouldn’t be remembered, and savory-smelling from the outside. And he ate. First he protein-packed, even though he knew that wasn’t the best way to prep himself for the run, but clot th’ nutritionists, he thought. Ah’ll hae someat’t’ think aboot, eatin’ bushes an’ pap. Three seafood cocktails. Two very large steaks, ultrarare. A side of sauteed fungi. A large salad, with a simple dressing. A half bottle of wine, to help digestion. The waitress lifted an eyebrow when he finished, sighed, and announced he was now ready for part two of his meal, but said nothing. Part two was carb-packing. He stuffed pasta, in as many permutations as the menu offered, until even he could detect outward movement in his rotund belly. He drank heavily. Water. Pitcher after pitcher of it. Water-packing.
By the time he finished gourmandizing and rolled out tipping well as Laird Kilgour ought, considering this might be his last real meal, it was getting on.
Now he was operational. The plan was running.
In an exclusive residential enclave he had cased several days earlier, he stole an expensive gravcar, easily subverting its alarm and ignition cutouts. He put the registration plate lifted from the bar’s parking lot on the car, and that craft’s legal plates on the gravcar just in front of it. Confusion shall noo be m’ epitaph, he thought and lifted the gravcar away toward his slum. That was a bit of a risk, as he left the out-of-place gravcar down the street long enough to grab his gear and bid a long, last farewell to the slum. Ah’d say thae’s naught humbler, but Ah know, i’ an hour or so, Ah’ll be thinkin’t ae aught havin’ a roof wi’ infin’te fondness.
Into the car, and away. He headed for his jumping-off point—the ultra-luxury part of Fowler, the grand estates of the wealthy who sucked around the Emperor and his palace as closely as they could.
Now was when his registration switchy-swappy of a few nights before would pay off, if it had even been noticed yet. If it had been narked, and a copper bleeped him, they would be expecting a prankster, not a criminal. A pity for them, he thought, making sure the pistol in his lap was loaded and locked.
The Imperial Grounds around Arundel were walled and given every imaginable security device. Alex parked his stolen gravsled on the closest street to the wall, and shouldered his gear. Again, another justification for the swapped plates. When the gravcar was reported stolen, it’d be on every rozzer’s hotsheet, since it belonged to a richie. Or, at any rate, its registration plate would be. And that plate was sitting on another vehicle entirely, back at the theft site, adding more confusion to the situation.
Kilgour needed this expensive sporter of his to sit where he had parked it without being noticed for at least three days-—and he knew that any money district, especially one as close to Arundel as this, would be patrolled. He also planned to use the gravcar for his slither-stage-left, with Poyndex, back to Ashley-on-Wye.
Confusion to m’ enemies, he thought, sitting across the street from the wall, meter-metering the security precautions. In two hours, he had the Emperor’s system nailed. A walking guard every hour/hour and a half, one well-trained enough to vary his appearances. One sensor just before the wall. One atop it. The coiled razor wire on the wall itself would be tagged. He thought he saw a tree-mounted sweep in a treetop on the other side. An aerial about every hour. A vehicle patrol in between on the street.
Amateurs, Kilgour sneered. A’ th’ rankest sort. A standard Mantis test was to break in—or out—of a max-security prison within one E-day. The test wasn’t regarded as one of the section’s more stringent.
It’s time, lad. And he went across the street, through the security, over the wall, and was on the far side of that tree-mounted pickup in less than ten minutes.
Tsk, he thought. Th’ Emp’s noo only gaga, but he’s hirin’ brainburns’t’ boot.
Now it would get sticky.
There were twenty-seven kilometers of unpopulated forest and glade between him and Arundel Castle.
What would be a morning’s jog took him three days and nearly cost him his life on four occasions. Dogs. More auto-sensors, of every possible configuration, from seismic to UV to motion to anything the Imperial Household’s Head of Security could come up with. Set in unlikely locations. Irregular patrols. Aircraft. It could have been worse, however. A weak point was that the Emperor had insisted his security must be as unobtrusive as possible. So this meant dead zones, killing fields, checkboard light-searches, and the like had been forbidden by His Eternal-ship.
Alex remembered a boast he had once made to Sten, saying he could do something, i’ his sleep, draggin’ a wee canoe. He felt as if he was doing just that, lugging the McLean-powered stretcher he had stolen from the ambulance that he planned to stick the unconscious Poyndex into, which would give Alex only a few kilos of weight to lug all the way back to the wall.
He moved a few meters at a time, checking his backtrail, sanitizing it when necessary. He never slept, but huddled under the camouflaged groundsheet now and again for a necessary breather and a return to full alertness. He defecated in streams and carried his empty ratpacks with him. Once he hid in a pond, trying to find the promised pleasure in gnawed jerky as a pack of hounds quartered the shores.
At last he saw Arundel, standing black against a blazing hot sky. Its cannonports appeared eyes, staring straight at him. And the crenellations of its battlements…he turned off his imagination.
Alex stashed the stretcher in an impenetrable thicket. He was right on schedule—it was midmorning of the first day of the weekend. By tonight, he would have to be inside its walls, or else go to ground for another week.
He would, if necessary. But he would rather not.
There was nothing between him and the 200-meter-tall, 50-degree-sloped walls of the castle’s bailey, walls that actually enclosed offices and storerooms for Arundel’s vast staff. In the late afternoon there came a clamor, and he imagined the palace employees who had been stuck working on a rec day hurrying toward the pneumosubway that’d whoosh them back to Fowler.
Among them, he knew, would also be the lucky sods of the palace security who had been given passes.
All that would be left in Arundel would be the skeleton weekend shift, plus whatever personnel had pressing tasks that couldn’t be put off for two days, the workaholics, and a full staff of palace functionaries, from cooks to bakers to laundry people to butlers.
Big clottin’ deal, Kilgour thought. There wae a time whae th’ staff’d be taken’t’ consid’ration, bein’ ex-Guard, -Merc, or -Mantis. But wee Poyndex hae all ae those dismissed. An’ replaced, so Senn an’ Marr said, wi’ other people, who’s qual’fications dinnae be greater’n a droolin’ adoration ae th’ Emp.
Plus security.
Not Gurkhas—they were long-gone. Nor the Praetorians—they’d never been reformed after their colonel had converted them to a private army in a plot to overthrow the Emperor. Thae wae th’ prob’ lad, he thought to the memory of the deceased Colonel Fohlee. Y’ were whae thae call a preemie antifascist. An f r y’r pains y’ got fed int’ a meatslicer.
Now the guards were Internal Security. Poyndex’s own. Which no one from Mantis or Mercury who’d encountered Internal Security was very impressed with.
Come night, we’ll find oot, Kilgour thought, if the rankin’s pure jealousy, or wi’ grounds. There were two other beings who would be in the castle.
Poyndex. Sten had been correct—he seldom left his quarters/offices in the castle.
And one other:
The Eternal Emperor.
Kilgour considered that, while he waited. W’d thae be th’ simplest solution, an’ avoid all of Sten’s moils, toils, an’ machinations? An’ c’d he e’en get wi’in striking distance? Most likely not. Gettin’ ambitious, he reminded himself, most oft means y’ bollix up th’ whole clottin’ mess, i’stead ae endin’ wi’ th’ girl, th’ gold haggis, an’ all.
Poyndex i’ th’ lad, an’ th’ on’y lad.
Come night, after he had timed the overhead aerial patrols, he moved out, slithering up the 50-degree slope of the bailey’s walls to just below its crest—to what’s known as the military crest, just below the peak. He followed the line as it veed back and forth, to dead-end against Arundel’s great wall that climbed 700 meters above him to the leering fangs, of the battlements. Alex took off his boots, and tucked them into his pack.
