Battlecry: Sten: Omnibus One (Sten Omnibus) (33 page)

COMMANDOS!
200 OF THE FINEST NEEDED!
DEFEND THE FAITH OF THE CENTURIES!
PAY GUARANTEED

Colonel Sten, late of His Imperial Majesty’s Third Guards Assault Division, is hiring 200 elite soldiers to assist in the protection of one of the Empire’s most respected social and theocratic orders.

NONHUMANOID FREELANCES UNFORTUNATELY
CANNOT BE CONSIDERED DUE TO ABOVE
RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS

Only the Best Need Apply!

The Lupus Cluster and the Faith of Talamein is under attack by a godless and mercenary horde, attempting to invade and destroy some of this sector’s most beautiful and desirable worlds, inhabited by peace-loving people. Needed individual equipment: individual weapons, cold-weather suits, space combat suits. Combatants should expect little ground leave.

A SHARP SHOCK NEEDED!

Colonel Sten, highly regarded in the Guard both for his extensive combat experience (18 major planetary assaults, numberless raids and company-size actions), is noted for having the lowest casualty rate in the Third Guards.

THOSE ACCEPTED WILL BE PROVIDED
WITH USUAL SURVIVOR’S INSURANCE
PROVEN COMBAT EXPERIENCE NECESSARY

To include covert operations, lifts, jugular raids, smash-and-grab, ambush, harassment, and diversionary. Background in following units preferred: Imperial Guards, Trader Landing Force,
Tanh, some specific planetary forces allowed (please check with recruiter).

CONDITIONS OF DISCHARGE
WILL NOT BE INQUIRED INTO
Standard Contract

Individual acquisitions by proficient individuals or units will not be logged, provided point of origin is
not
from friendly forces. Commando-qualified soldiers, individuals or units, should apply Colonel Sten. Breaker House, WH1 . . .

Sten read the onscreen ad and winced slightly.

‘You wrote this?’

‘Aye,’ Alex said, upending his half liter of quill.

‘It’s gone planet-wide?’

‘Aye.’

‘You think you’re pretty clottin’ funny, don’t you?’

‘Aye,’ Alex agreed smugly and keyed for another drink.

Sten looked at the man across the bar table from him and decided he was potentially lethal. About two cms taller than Sten, a kilo or two heavier. Part of his hawkface moved stiffly – a plas reconstruction, Sten guessed.

The man probably had a hideout gun trained on Sten, under the table. And I really hope he doesn’t think about using it, Sten thought, eyeing Alex, who slumped, seemingly half asleep, on a stool nearby.

‘It’s all what they used to call a crock, you know,’ the hawkfaced man said cheerfully.

Sten shrugged. ‘What isn’t?’

‘I’ve got seventy-eight men—’

‘Seventy-two,’ Alex broke in, without opening his eyes. ‘Twa b’hospital, one kickit y’stday, three in a wee dungeon an’ y’ wi’out th’ credits to gie ’em oot.’

‘Good men,’ the man went on, seemingly unperturbed. ‘All with battle experience. About half of them ex-Guards, some more used to be Tanh, and the others I trained myself. You can’t ask better than that, Colonel.’ He carefully put quotation marks around Sten’s rank.

‘I’m impressed, Major Vosberh,’ Sten said.

‘Not from the contract offer you’re not,’ the lean mercenary officer said. ‘I read the fiche. Religious war. Two clottin’ Prophets. Council of merchants, for hell’s sakes. And these – these Jannisars.’

‘You did understand the fiche,’ Sten agreed.

‘And you expect me to commit my people into that maelstrom for a clotting
standard
contract?’

‘I do.’

‘Not a chance.’

Sten leaned forward. ‘I want your unit, Major.’

‘But you won’t get it at those prices.’

‘I will. Item – you signed on for Aldebaran II; your side lost. Item – Kimqui Rising; the rebels won and you offplaneted without most of your hardware. Item – Tarvish System. They signed a truce before you got there. You’re broke, Major. As my sergeant-major said, you can’t even afford to bail your troopies out of jail!’

Vosberh rose slowly, one hand moving, very casually, toward his tunic button.

‘Don’t do that, Major,’ Sten went on. ‘Please sit down. I need your soldiers – and I need you alive to lead them.’

Vosberh was startled. Sten hadn’t moved.

‘All right. I apologize for my temper.’

Sten nodded wordlessly, and Alex got up and headed for the bar. He returned with three liter glasses. Sten sipped from one.

‘Say I’m still in the market,’ Vosberh said, after drinking. ‘The job’s to take out these Jannisars and their boss, right?’

Sten grunted.

‘Ah,’ Vosberh said, interested in something he must’ve caught in Sten’s expression. ‘But we’ll get back to that in a minute. How do we do it? Specifically.’

‘I haven’t chosen specific targets yet. We’ll base on a planet named Nebta, which should make your troops happy.’

Alex handed Vosberh a fiche, which the man pocketed. ‘No major campaigns. No advisory. Assassination. Nitpick raids.

No land-and-hold. Get in, get out, few casualties.’

‘They always say few casualties.’ Vosberh was starting to relax.

‘Since I’ll be with the landing forces, I have certain personal interest in keeping the body count low,’ Sten said.

‘Okay. Say I take standard contract. How’s it paid?’

‘Half in front, to the men’s accounts.’ ‘I handle that.’

Sten was indifferent.

‘How’s the payment handled?’ Vosberh continued.

‘A neutral account on Prime World.’

‘Prime World? What about the Empire?’

‘I checked. They don’t even know where Lupus Cluster is. Private war. No Imperial interests in the cluster. Believe me I looked.’

Vosberh was getting steadily friendlier. ‘When’s the payoff? When this Ingild gets crucified?’

‘When the job’s finished.’

‘We’re back to that, aren’t we? Maybe … maybe, Colonel-by-the-
grace-of-this-Theo-character Sten has some plans of his own? Maybe when the Jann are history there’ll be another target?’

Sten took a drink and stayed silent.

‘A forgotten cluster,’ Vosberh mused. ‘Antique military and a religion nobody takes seriously. This could be very interesting, Colonel.’

He drained his glass, stood, and extended a hand. Sten stood with him.

‘We accept contract, Colonel.’ Sten shook his hand, and Vosberh was suddenly, rigidly, at attention. He saluted. Sten returned the salute.

‘Sergeant Kilgour will provide you with expense money. You and your unit will provide yourselves with all necessary personal weapons and equipment and stand by to offplanet not later than ten standard days from this date.’

Sten lowered the binocs and turned to Alex, more than a little puzzled.

‘If this Major Ffillips is the clottin’ great sneaky-peeky leader you say she is, how in the clot did she get herself this pinned down?’

‘Weel,’ Alex said, thoughtfully scratching his chin, ‘yon wee major makit ae slight error. The lass assumit whan sh’ nae pay h’ taxes, th’ baddies’d show up, roll a few roun’s, an’ then thae’d g’wan aboot thae bus’ness. Sh’ reckit wrong.’

Sten gaped. ‘You mean those tanks down there … are tax collectors?’

‘Aye,’ Alex said.

Below the hillock they lay on was a wide, dusty valley. At one end the valley narrowed into a tight canyon mouth, barely twenty meters wide.

In the valley were ten or fifteen dozen infantry attack vehicles – laser- and rocket-armed, five-meter-long tracks, each carefully dug in. In front of them were infantry emplacements and, Sten’s binocs had told him, a very elaborate electronic security perimeter.

‘Taxes ae Hawkthorne.’ Alex continued, ‘be’t a wee complex. Seems ae mon whae sayit he be th’ gov’mint – if he hae enow firepower to backit hae claim, well, tha’ be what he be.’

‘So when this instant ruler asked for credits, Ffillips told him to put the tax bill where a laser don’t shine, and then they put her under siege?’

‘Aye, yon Ffillips ’raps is a wee shortsighted ee her thrift,’ Alex agreed.

‘And all we have to do is break through the perimeter, get inside that canyon, convince Ffillips that we can pull her tail out, and then break the siege?’

Alex yawned. ‘Piece ae cake, tha.’

Sten took out a cammie face-spray and wished desperately that he’d been able to bring two sets of the Mantis phototropic camouflage uniforms with him.

‘What Ffillips dinnae ken we knowit,’ Alex mentioned, ‘is tha twa weeks ago, sappers infiltrated her wee p’rimeter an’ blew her water-wells to hoot.’

Sten eyed the tubby man from Edinburgh and wished, for possibly the ten thousandth time, that he wouldn’t hold
all
the intelligence until the last minute.

A piece of darkness moved slightly and suddenly became Sten, face darkened, wearing a black, tight-fitting coverall. Behind him slipped Alex.

In front of them were the manned and the electronic perimeters. They’d passed the emplaced tracks easily – armor soldiers traditionally believe in the comforts of home. Which means when night comes they put on minimal security, electronic if possible, button up all the hatches, turn on the inside lights, and crack the synthalk.

Sten and Alex had moved forward of the armor units walking openly, as if they belonged to the tax-collecting unit.

The manned post to their left front was no problem. The two men behind the crew-served weapon were staring straight ahead. Of course there was no need to watch their rear.

The problem was the electronics.

Sten dropped flat as his probing eyes caught an electronic relay point. He moved his hand forward, closed his eyes, and finger-read the unit. Clot me, he thought in astonishment. This thing’s so old it’s still got transistors, I think!

Alex passed him the Stealthbox. Sten touched it to the relay and the box clicked twice. Then a touchplate on the stealthbox warmed, signaling to Sten’s hand that the relay would now send
OK OK OK NEGATIVE INTRUSION
even if a track ran over it. The two men crawled on.

Sten and Alex were barely fifteen meters in front of the manned position when, without warning, a flare blossomed in the night sky.

Freeze … freeze … move your face slowly away … down in the dirt … wait … and hope those two troopies back in the hole aren’t crosshairing on your back.

Blackness as the flare died and crawl on.

The second line of electronics was slightly more sophisticated. If Sten and Alex didn’t need to crawl back out, it would have been

simple to put a couple of ‘ghosts’ into that circuitry, so that the perimeter warning board would suddenly show everything attacking, including Attila’s Hordes.

Instead Sten took a tiny powerdriver from his waistbelt and gently – one turn at a time – backed off a perimeter sensor’s access plate. The stealthbox had already told him there were no antishut-down sensors inside.

Sten set the access plate down on the sand and held one hand back. Alex gingerly fished a very dead desert rodent from his pouch and passed it to Sten. Sten shoved the tiny corpse nose-first into the sensor. That sensor flashed once and went defunct.

Sten then carefully bent the access plate to appear as if the rodent had somehow wormed its way inside. He reinstalled the plate on the box and all looked normal again.

As they crawled past the now-dead electronic line, Alex suddenly tugged at Sten’s ankle.

Sten froze, waiting.

Alex slithered past him and sabotaged a second, independent-circuit alarm. Then he swept the area in front of it with his stealthbox. Finally he took a small plastic cup from his pouch and positioned it, open end down, over the pickups for a landmine trigger.

Sten glanced at him. Alex yawned ostentatiously and waved Sten onward.

‘I agree, Major,’ Sten said politely. ‘You and your force would be a valuable addition. I’ve never had the chance to operate with three-man commando teams and I’d like to see them in action.’

Ffillips was a short, muscular woman with ramrod military posture. She was middle-aged, with silvery hair as immaculate as her uniform. She had cold, assessing eyes that warmed now as she boasted about her troops.

‘Trained ’em myself.’ Ffillips said proudly. ‘Took the best I could find from the planetary armies. Gave them pride in themselves. Taught ’em to look like soldiers. And, I tell you frankly, without bragging, they’re very damned good. Think of ’em like my own children, I do. I’m like a mother to them.’

Ffillips’ people did look pretty good, Sten had to admit, even though he and Alex had been able to penetrate the canyon and infiltrate Ffillips’ camp without being challenged. Sten’s mild egotism was that there wasn’t another soldier in the Galaxy who could see a Mantis soldier until the knife went between the third and fourth ribs. Sten was probably right.

The canyon opened up into a broad, green, high-walled valley. Caves dotted the cliff walls, and there had been possibly half a dozen natural artesian wells in the valley.

Ffillips’ troopers, broken down into their three-man (or -woman) squads, were strategically positioned. Antitrack positions lined the canyon and the high walls probably had dug-in antiaircraft positions.

And the valley was now completely dark, from the fighting positions to Ffillips’ own headquarters-mess cave. Good light discipline.

Since no track or soldier could attack down that narrow canyon, Ffillips’ mercs could have held the position for a century, assuming they weren’t hit with nukes or human wave assaults.

Except that their wells had been destroyed.

Ffillips finished reading the contract by hand-cupped penlight and shook her head.

‘I think not, Colonel. Frankly, I could not, in all conscience, offer my young men and women an offer as penurious as this one.’

Sten shrugged and looked around the cave. He saw a fist-sized boulder, picked it up, and walked over to a nearby well.

He let go, and they all heard the echoing thuds of the rock as it clattered down into dryness. Sten walked back and sat down across from Ffillips. Alex was looking very interestedly at one canyon wall, trying to keep from laughing.

Finally the silver-haired woman said, with obvious reluctance, ‘Lift the siege for us. Then give us three days to resupply.’

Sten smiled.

Sten’s first analysis was that mercenaries work for pay, or for beloved/feared/respected leaders, or possibly even for idealism. Ho. Ho. Ho. None of the latter two applied to these tax collectors.

Second analysis, as he and Alex crouched in the brush behind the ‘tax collector’s’ headquarters, was that no matter how high they promoted him, he better never get so lazy, luxury-loving, and sloppy.

The setup was pretty plush. Five tracks, which should’ve been on line, were semicircled in front of the headquarters. The headquarters unit was three com tracks, two soft-skinned computer vehicles, one security-monitor half-track, and one extended-base track that was the unit leader’s quarters.

Most of the tracks had their rear ramps dropped, and light gleamed through the small camp. What perimeter human guards there were had been positioned well within the light circle, so Sten knew they’d be night-blind.

Sten kicked Alex’s outstretched foot. ‘Time to take the palace, Sergeant.’ Alex rolled to his feet, and the two cat-footed forward toward the headquarters.

Sten was within two meters of the first guard when he was spotted. The man’s projectile weapon came off his shoulder – on his clottin’ shoulder! – to somewhere between present and port arms.

‘Halt.’ Bored challenge.

Sten didn’t answer.

Simultaneous: guard realizing two men were coming in on him/his weapon coming down/hand toward trigger/Sten inside his guard.

Very smoothly … step in … right hand back, left forward. Hip snap and Sten’s cupped right hand shot forward. It crashed into the sentry’s chin, and his head snapped back. The man was probably dead, but Sten continued the attack, one sidestep and the edge of the hand straight across the man’s larynx. Catch the body and ease it to the ground.

And then they were both running.

Alex rolled a fire-grenade into the security-monitor half-track, flat-dove as another sentry fired a burst into his own camp, rounds whining off armor, and was back on his feet just as an alarmed tech peered out of one of the computer vehicles, saw Alex, and yanked the door closed.

Alex’s fingers grabbed the door, centimeters from slamming, and three-gee muscles yanked. The door
skrawked
completely off its hinges and went spinning away.

One of the techs inside was grabbing for a pistol. Alex one-handed a console through the air at him. It crunched the man’s chest, and he sprawled, blood spurting and shortcircuiting the main computer. Lights flashed and then the inside of the vehicle was plunged into darkness.

‘Cask? Cask?’ The other tech’s terrified whisper.

Ah, wee lad, Alex thought. M’moon’s in benev’lence, an’ Ah lie y’ t’livit.

And he was out the door, moving toward the second vehicle. He picked up its ramp and slammed it sideways into the track’s now-clamped-shut door. Door and ramp gave way at the same time. Bullets seared out, and Alex flattened to one side.

Ah c’d use m’willygun ae thae very moment, he thought, and then saw what looked like a hydraulic jack nearby. Alex rolled to it, took the meter-long handle in both hands, and twisted. The handle, only half-inch mild steel, snapped off cleanly.

Alex rose to his feet, hefted the handle, then hurled it through the
vehicle’s door. Followed it with a thermite grenade. A howl gurgled down and then sparks began flashing and Alex could see flames crackle.

He picked himself up, dusted his knees, and looked around for something else to demolish. The headquarters was in chaos – it seemed as if everyone was shooting. But not at Alex.

Since panic spreads, the line units opened up. Alex wondered idly what they thought they were shooting at, then wandered over to see if Sten needed any help.

He didn’t.

Alex started to enter the command track, then checked himself. ‘Ah’m wee Alex a’ th’ Pacifists,’ he said softly.

Sten chuckled and emerged from his lurking place just inside the track’s entrance. He wiped his knife-blade clean and slid the knife back into his arm.

The two men stood, slightly awed by the high explosive and pyrotechnics on the plain around them.

‘C’mon, laddie. Thae clowns’ll be ae it a’ night, an’ Ah’m thinkit Ah buy y’ a wee brew.’

And, as silently as they came, Sten and Alex disappeared back into the night.

‘Ah dinnae like to tell the wee laddie no,’ Alex explained. ‘PREEEEE-SENT … HARMS!’

And the ragged formation of beings brought their weapons up. At least those that had them did.

‘Aw,’ Alex said, entranced, ‘ae likit ae wave an’ all.’

‘You,’ Sten said, ‘have even a lousier sense of humor than Mahoney.’

‘HIN … SPECTION … HARMS!’ A bucket-of-bolts clatter as the assembled hopeful mercenaries snapped their boltcarriers open. The young man wearing captain’s bars, khaki pants, and a blue tunic managed a salute.

‘Unit ready for inspection, Colonel,’ he said.

Sten sighed and started down the line. He stopped at the first person, who was trembling slightly. Sten snapped out a hand for the man’s rifle. The prospective merc didn’t let go.

‘You’re supposed to give it to me when I want it,’ Sten explained. The man released the rifle. Sten ran his little finger around the inside of the firing chamber, then wiped off traces of carbon. He glanced down the corroded barrel and gave the weapon back. Then he moved on to the next person.

The inspection took only a minute.

Sten walked back to the captain. ‘Thank you, Captain. You may dismiss your men.’

The captain gaped at him.

‘But, uh … Colonel …’

All right. He wants an explanation, Sten thought.

‘Captain. Your men are not trained, are not experienced, are not combat ready. Their weapons – those they have – are ready for recycling, not for killing people. If I hired your unit, I’d be …’

‘Like takit wee lambkins t’slaughter,’ Alex put in. Both Sten and the captain wondered what the hell he was talking about.

‘I’m sorry, Captain,’ and Sten started away.

The young officer caught up with Sten, started to say something, reconsidered, then began again.

‘Colonel Sten,’ he finally managed. ‘Sir, we … my unit … need this assignment. We’re all from the same world, all of us. We grew up in the same area. We’ve used all our savings just to get here. And we’ve been on Hawkthorne for five cycles, and so far, well …’ He suddenly realized that he sounded like he was begging and shut up.

‘Thank you for your time, Colonel,’ he finished.

‘Hang on a second, Captain.’ Sten had a thought. ‘You and your men are stranded, yes? Zed-credits? And nobody, justifiably, will hire you?’