Empire's End (11 page)

Tired beings make mistakes, and Sten could afford none.

He spread his four ships out among the Wolf Worlds, hid them well on rural airports, and gave his troops some R&R. Sten worried his presence among the Bhor would be discovered by the inevitable Imperial agents, but Kilgour had told him not to fash. He already had a Plot, and would take care of that little matter before his own vacation. Which involved Otho, vast amounts of stregg, and whatever trouble he could get into.

Cind had the op order for Operation Vacation already drafted. A conventional lover might have looked for tropical oceans and romantic islands with ten-star resorts and twenty bow-n‘-scrapers for each guest But Cind was a descendant of the Jann, had grown up among the Bhor, and was a hard, experienced field soldier. To her, vacations meant the wilderness—and Sten’s own ideas weren’t that different.

The Bhor home planet was still glacial, even though the Bhor had reluctantly removed some of the glaciers as civilization and the birthrate increased. Scattered across the world were volcanic “islands”—oases in the midst of freeze. Most of them had been settled aeons ago by the Bhor, but there were still a few that were unpopulated.

Cind had planned on kidnapping Sten and taking him to one of those, and had been trying to figure out which of the possible areas could provide the best skiing and even some winter climbing. Sten had taught Cind rock scrambling, and she was determined to become at least his equal and, she hoped, his master.

She had found something better on a recent aerial photo-mosaic. Not on any map. Completely unknown. All that was necessary to get there was to grab a pilot and a gravsled and they could be there in an hour.

Cind sneered. That, too, was no vacation. Getting there was half the fun.

And so, carrying packs heavy enough to give them the trail staggers, they had Kilgour drop them off where the dirt path ended, with a promise to return in five days to pick them up—or start the search parties in motion.

Among the reasons their packs were so heavy was that neither Sten nor Cind fancied carrying dried rations—they could stay in the barracks and on duty and get ratpacks. They were willing to break their backs carrying some other, minor creature comforts.

Their route on skis through the foothills to the base of the mountain. Where the mountain steepened, they would follow the course of a generally frozen river upward, through a gorge, to Cind’s secret spot. Since the maps of the wilderness were rotten, they would navigate from the aerial.

And so it had been—until they reached this place not too far below the mountain’s summit, where the river went vertical, and became thirty meters of frozen-solid waterfall. They were trapped.

This was a helluva fix she had gotten him into, he thought. And so observed.

“Shut up,” Cind said helpfully. “I’m trying to figure out if we can slither back down this slope to that ravine we passed an hour or so ago. And maybe go up that to the summit. Then we could drop back down to where we want to go.”

“That sounds like work.”

“Stop whining.”

“I am not whining. I am sniveling. How much rope do we have?”

“Seventy-five meters.”

“Dammit,” Sten swore. “See if I ever play climbing purist again. Right now a couple of cans of climbing thread, jumars, and a grapnel would be welcome. Or a stairway. But oooo-kay, we’ll do it the hard way.”

He undipped from the rope, set his pack down where it hopefully wouldn’t start sliding all the way back down to the foothills, reroped his harness, took a deep breath, and started climbing.

Up the ice of the waterfall.

“I don’t like this,” he muttered. And he didn’t—the only reason Sten knew that ice cubes could be climbed was because he had seen it done once in a livie and also because he had once spent a weekend with one of his instructors in Mantis—and whatever happened to her, he wondered—who had been a nut on climbing waterfalls when the temp went below zed Centigrade.

He had come off twice and had to be near-hoisted to the top, he remembered. No. His memory was wrong. None of the four of them had made it that long and bruised weekend.

Follow Cind’s advice. Shut up.

It wasn’t that bad, he thought No worse than, say, dangling by your hands and having to do a pull-up every two minutes.

At least the ice is good and frozen. Don’t have to worry about any kind of a spring thaw.

And you’ve got a good place to stand every now and then. As he was doing at the moment.

“What’s that called?” Cind wondered from five meters below him.

“Suicide,” Sten panted. “Front-pointing.”

His good place to stand consisted of two front metal spikes of his crampons—alloy plates clamped to his boots that had vertical two-centimeter-sided spikes around their edges and horizontal ones sticking straight out from the toe.

One foot suddenly
skrüiched
out of the ice, and Sten went back to dangling. He twisted back and forth for a while, getting the hang of things, did another pull-up, reached out for a handhold, found a handjam, kicked in his free boot. Half a meter farther up.

Two wheezes, and try it again.

And again. And again.

Eventually, there was no ice above his hand to grab, and he flailed a little. Hand moved to one side. A rock projection. Rock? Such as no more waterfall?

No more waterfall.

Sten pulled himself to blessedly level ground, and rested. Then he tied off, and shouted down to Cind.

First came the packs, tied to the rope and hand-over-handed up. More wheezing. Not only getting old, but old and weak, Sten thought

Now for Cind. He waited—in spite of an impatient shout— until he’d gotten
all
his wind back. He wouldn’t mind losing a pack, but…

Cind tied on.

“I’ve never done this before,” she shouted.

“All the girls say that.”

Cind started climbing. Naturally, Sten thought in some disgust, she’s a natural. She swarmed up the waterfall as if it were liquid and she an Earth salmon in spawning season. Nor was she breathing very hard at the top.

“I didn’t know you could even
do
that.”

“All the girls say that, too.”

Sten shouldered his pack. Helped Cind on with hers. They were next to a frozen pool, rocks sticking through the ice. Sten noticed the ice looked hazy the further back it got.

Just ahead of them—not more than fifty vertical feet—a cloud drifted toward them of a draw. Wonderful. Now they’d be climbing in a fog.

Sten was wrong: the rest of the climb—a gentle walk on level ground—took only four minutes.

They moved through the draw, into a winter paradise. The draw opened into a tiny valley. Shrubs. Grass. Wildflowers.

“Well, I’ll be go to hell,” Sten marveled. To one side of the valley a hot spring bubbled, its water flowing across the minimeadow and joining the larger river, still hot enough to melt the ice. Pools dotted the course of the spring’s flow, and they were anywhere from boiling to frigid, the farther away they were from the spring.

Sten thought it was almost worth the climb.

The steaming springs drew them—but both of them knew the unchangeable ritual: first shelter, then fire, then food, then fun. Shelter was easy—snap three sets of shock-corded wands together, sh’de them through slots, and their tiny dome tent was up. They staked it down for security. Fire was also not a problem— their stove was a Mantis-issue item no larger than Sten’s palm. But it was AM2-fueled and could run at full blast for at least a year without a recharge. Sten took it from his pack and set it near the tent, between a circle of small rocks that his small fold-up grill would sit on. Food? They skated on that one for the moment—their muscles were sorer man their bellies empty.

Or at least that was the pretext.

“Damn, but these rocks are cold.”

“Of course they’re cold. Get in here where it’s warm.”

Sten, naked, slid into the pool near Cind.

“What,” she asked, “is in that bottle?”

“You will observe what appears to be a standard alloy campflask, which disgusting people who espouse clean living and good thoughts probably fill with some sort of healthy soyagunk. But some subversive clot happened to dump the organic glop, and fill it up with stregg.”

Sten uncapped it,
whoooed
, put the cap back on, and tossed the flask to Cind.

“There are three more like it in my pack.”

“Oh, boy. I brought two myself,” Cind said. “So much for the clean life.” She drank.

Sten eyed her lasciviously.

“They float!”

“Brilliant observation. You’re only just noticing, and we’ve been together how long? Is that why they made you an admiral?”

“Yup.”

“What a guy to go Empire-toppling with,” Cind said. She rolled over and kicked against the rocky wall of the pool, sealing out into its center.

“Hey, you can almost swim out here in the middle.”

“Uh-huh.”

Sten had no interest in swimming. He lay on his back in shallow water, parbroilingly close to where a stream of water bubbled into the pool. Years of trouble and blood seemed to wash out of his body and mind.

“I think,” he managed, “every muscle in my body just turned to rubber.”

“Oh dear.”

“Not quite. Come here, wiseass.”

“Observant, romantic, and complimentary to boot. Well, here I am. Now what?”

“There… like that. Now. Down a little.”

Cind gasped as Sten arched his body. He moved his hands up, across her breasts and moved her up, into a sitting position across his body.

And then neither of them had any words.

Dinner, somehow, never was prepared.

The only light in the world was the tiny candle hanging from the tent’s ceiling, glowing through the tent’s thin red-synth walls.

“I… think,” Cind managed, “that I am dishrag city
for
the rest of the night.”

“I didn’t suggest anything.”

“Then what are you doing?”

“Just… sort of stretching.”

“Yeah. Right.”

“I read someplace once that you didn’t need to do any moving. That you could focus your attention, concentrate, and
whambo
.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“I never lie. It was called Tantric or Tentric or something,” Sten argued.

“At least you’re trying it in the right place. Hey. You’re moving.”

“No, I’m not. You are.”

“I… am not. Would you… at least slow down? Hey! If you try to put my leg up there, I’m… liable to get burnt!”

Sten blew the candle out.

Neither Cind nor Sten woke the next day until very late in the afternoon.

“How long do we wait, Mister Kilgour?”

“A min. An hour. A lifetime,” Alex said with complete indifference. “Intel’s noo frae th‘ impatient.”

The com tech, Marl, shifted. Perhaps she was impatient, perhaps she felt a bit strange, stuffed into the gravsled’s shell rear between the beefy Scotsman and an equally looming Bhor police constable. The amount of room available was further decreased with the jam of electronics.

But she didn’t say anything—Alex had handpicked her as being the most likely candidate for intelligence training of all the
Bennington’s
com crew.

Kilgour already had an extensive spookery section as part of Sten’s embassy team, plus some likelies he had spotted among the
Victory’s
crew and trained on the Altaics. But he needed more. Marl was a good candidate, he thought. Enough time in life and the service so she wasn’t still a mewling infant. And built proper, not like the wisps Sten seemed to favor. Not that Kilgour would consider doing anything—romancing a subordinate under your command was about as unethical to him as, say, inviting a Campbell up to your castle for a drink. But he could look.

A box clicked. A needle swung. A screen lit. A sweep swept. The gravsled was a disguised mobile locator.

“Ah-hoo,” Kilgour said in satisfaction. “See whae Ah said aboot patience? Oh whistle an‘ I’ll come’t’ y‘, m’lad. Right on schedule.”

“First lesson. I‘ y’re’t’ be a spy, Technician, dinna be stickin’t‘t’ any schedule. Nae y’rs, an‘ ’specially nae y’r control’s. He/she’s more worried‘! aboot niakin’ dinner than whether you’re blown. One a‘ y’r few real weapons i’ bein‘ unpredict’ble. Yon lad’s signalin’ away like a clockwork mouse.”

Quite suddenly all the gadgetry went to respective zeros.

“Nae quick enough,” Kilgour mourned. “Ah’ll say third floor, back. Whae’s your call, Paan?”

The policeman keyed his com, linked to a second locator. “Right.”

“Ah,” Kilgour said. “Jus’ th‘ lad we thought. Human,’t‘ boot. Another lesson. F y’re runnin’ field agents, ne’er use your own people i‘ y’ can recruit locals. They’re nae as easy to spot.”

“And,” the technician-in-training said, “if they get blown, you don’t lay awake as if it were one of your own.”

“Y’re leamin‘. Y’re learnin’. Noo. Let’s go visiting.”

The agent, who was using the cover name of Hohne, was carefully combing gel into his hair when the door came down. He spun away from the mirror.

“Help! Police!”

“Button it!” the Bhor snarled. “I
am
the police!” He held out his ID shield.

“Who are you? Who’s he? What do you want?”

Kilgour wasn’t listening.

“Const’ble Paan,” he said casually. “I‘ y’ll pick up yon door, an’ prop it up, wi‘ you on th’ other side, Ah’ll be wantin‘ a wee word wi’ this fine, upstandin‘ young man.”

The policeman followed orders.

“You don’t have any right—” the man said.

‘Tsk,“ Alex said. ”First mistake. Lass,“ he said to the technician, ”he had his game right th’ first time. Full a‘ prop’it outrage thae his privacy’s been invaded. Which he should’a kept oop, an’ shoutin‘ aboot how some clottin’ human dinnae hae jurisdiction here i‘ th’ cap’tal ae th‘ Bhor.“

“I want to see some kind of warrant,” the man said firmly.

“Thae’s no warrant,” Alex told him. “Y’re nae under arrest. Thae’s noo record ae police activ’ty i‘ this district’t’night.”

Hohne paled, then recovered.

“Aye,” Alex said. “Thae ‘tis th’ price ae spyin’t. But thae’s a price y‘ ken already, Sr. Hohne. Y’re noo a baby spy, y’re the senior Imperial agent i’ th‘ cluster. ’Sperienced, an‘ thae. Although Ah mus’ admit thae Ah noo c’nsider you lads frae Internal Security fit’t’ wipe th‘ arses ae th’ lowliest Mantis bairn. But thae’s m‘ prejudice. Noo. Let me ap’rise y’ ae where y‘ stand. In th’ middle of a deep, deep bog, my friend.